A hilariously spry effort from an equally unpromising premise.

You'd think the weakest link in Fanboys would be that it's all in-jokes, but they're actually not so "in" that a casual fan won't get them.

Unfortunately, while Fanboys has moments of success, it is mostly a middling road picture that doesn't do a lot more than any average, forgettable entry into the tired genre.

Delayed a couple of years, shown to fans at conventions and retooled, Fanboys is an uneven and largely predictable adventure, but it has its moments.

At times, Fanboys is every rowdy low-budget '80s road movie you've ever seen on Cinemax at 2 in the morning. What keeps the movie near, if not actually in, hyperdrive is its love of deep-dish geek culture and a gaggle of cameo appearances.

The most appealing aspect of the movie is that the guys and gal at the center of it don't just love the Star Wars saga for its own sake. They love the way they feel about each other when they're escaping into its universe and sharing all the wonder and the trivia.

Mildly cute, mildly drooly, majorly too late spoof/homage.

For its amusing premise, Fanboys is scarily flat.

Fanboys doesn't have a fan's obsessive attention to detail, or the giddy geekiness that can make Tarantino's movies both thrilling and trying. It's not nearly nerdy enough.

End result feels like an uneven cross between an amateur "Project Greenlight" pic and such recent comedies as "Superbad" and "Pineapple Express," in which indie directors brought a certain edge to material that might once have felt more at home under the National Lampoon label.

A genial, sloppy, minor affair, offering a smidgen of inside baseball, which includes a gag at the expense of the forgotten, late '80s Lucas-produced epic "Willow."

Fanboys has a lot of talent in its margins, including Jay Baruchel, Kristen Bell, Seth Rogen, and other usual suspects.

There are enough good jokes in Fanboys, a road comedy about geeks on a "Star Wars"-related quest, to satisfy hard-core fans of that George Lucas franchise. But the film doesn't have the boosters, or thrusters, or whatever, to elevate it to more ambitious heights; it's weighed down by tired conventions and a general sense of having missed its moment.

It comes as no surprise that the film is less about fandom as it is about the community fans create with one another - who else to turn to when the object of your affection, your enduring obsession, blows big chunks? - and Fanboys, a likable, shaggy picture, pays nice tribute to that community.