Do you know what you were doing on May 18, 1999? (No fair checking your diaries.) If not, then you may not be the audience for this comedy about a group of young Star Wars fanatics who cannot wait for 5/18/99, that of course being the release date of Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.

It’s Halloween 1998, and because they can’t wait another 199 days (yes, they’re counting), they decide to drive across the country, break into George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch, and steal a work print. Why the rush? Maybe because these guys in their early 20s want one last shot at recapturing their teen days (though frankly it doesn’t look like they’ve really lost touch with them). Or maybe it’s because one of them is dying of cancer and won’t live until May. That last factor is why this film, which was shot three years ago, is only now making it to theaters. Seems studio head Harvey Weinstein felt that cancer wasn’t a suitable element for this kind of movie and ordered reshoots. The re-cut version was in turn opposed by real-life fanboys (two words that have so little to do with each other) who threatened to boycott Superhero Movie unless the original version was restored. (I swear I’m not making any of this up.) All of which is more interesting than the end product, which has the cancer aspect but so mutes it that it was halfway through the movie before I realized the character really did have cancer. There’s a lot of humor to be found in the subject of rabid fans who devote their lives to this or that television show or band or whatever, and most of them would be the first to admit it. But this bland road movie mines little of it, aside from a scene in which our Star Wars standard-bearers trade insults with a gaggle of Star Trek groupies. (“Captain Picard is gay!” “Han Solo’s a bitch!” “Darth Vader has asthma!” “What’s Vulcan for, ‘I’m gonna die a virgin’?”) I snickered at a William Shatner cameo too, but that’s just shooting fish in a barrel.

—m. faust