The first two months of the year are traditionally a wasteland for movie fans, and this first weekend of the year is a strong case in point. Looking at the film schedule for today, the only new release I see is a “found footage” mockumentary horror about demonic possessions. Another one. Gag me.

With no more “Year in Review” articles to write and nothing worthwhile to cover this weekend, I was perfectly willing to give the blog a short break. But then I passed by my local Blockbuster and I saw those five magical words: “Store Closing. EVERYTHING MUST GO!” Thank you, Jesus.

This particular Blockbuster opened in 1984. It’s been in my neighborhood for longer than I’ve been alive. I used to go there all the time to check out movies and games when I was a kid. I can’t even begin to imagine what that space would look like without the Blockbuster sign above it.

And yet I’m not an idiot. I saw the writing on the wall. I’ve known for a long time that the store couldn’t stay open forever (in fact, it stayed open for a lot longer than I would have guessed) and I promised myself that when the time came, I would honor its memory with a DVD shopping spree.

I kept my word, and I expect that I’ll go back several times over the coming weeks to buy out more of the store’s inventory as its prices dwindle. In the meantime, I’d like to watch one of the films in my initial haul. After all, this seems like an ideal time to see a movie that I’ve been aching to get around to, and Big Fan certainly falls under that heading.

This is the story of Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt). He works as a toll booth operator, which is naturally a very lonely and monotonous job done entirely in a very confined space. Additionally, his interactions with customers last maybe five seconds each and are carried out with the implicit understanding that Paul’s work could be done by a machine just as easily. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that Paul’s job isn’t just the lowest on the totem pole, but beneath the totem pole completely. Say what you will about janitors and fast food workers, but at least they’re treated with a modicum of respect from time to time.

Anyway, Paul copes with the ongoing failure of his day-to-day life the same way anyone in a similar position does: Through entertainment. Specifically, Paul has structured his entire life around the New York Giants. He doesn’t just watch every football game on TV, he drives out to the stadium so he can watch the game on a car-powered TV in the parking lot. He doesn’t just listen to sports radio, he calls his local sports radio station every day with speeches that he wrote and rehearsed during work.

This character is obsessed and pathetic, yet the character is instantly sympathetic for a variety of reasons. Easily the foremost reason is that Paul isn’t really guilty of anything except for an unhealthy obsession. Because he lives vicariously through these players and because the sports radio station lets him vent his spleen every night, Paul has developed an enormous ego that has absolutely no basis in reality. This sort of thing is frequently made fun of by society at large, and the movie makes no attempt to hide just how much of a loser Paul is. Nevertheless — to paraphrase a man much wiser than I — let he who is without a hobby cast the first stone.

Patton Oswalt is another reason why this character works so beautifully well. Here’s a character who looks entirely schlubby and pathetic, yet he has a bottomless reservoir of energy that’s required of any fanatic. Oswalt perfectly looks and acts the part of a geek precisely because he is a geek. He’s long had a reputation for being one of the most prominent and notorious nerdy voices in show business. True, Oswalt is mostly a sci-fi/comics geek who probably wouldn’t know a quarterback from a running back, but that doesn’t really concern his performance or his character. After all, the foundation of every fanatic’s fervor is passion. Paul is a character who’s passionate about football to a point far beyond any reason or logic, and that’s something that a geek of any stripe can immediately relate to on a very intimate level.

Then we meet Paul’s family, which is where another piece of our protagonist’s geekdom falls into place. His brother (Jeff Aufiero, played by Gino Cafarelli) is a sleazy personal injury lawyer who cheated on his wife to screw — and eventually marry — his hot young secretary with a fake tan and even faker boobs. Yet no one in Aufiero’s family — particularly his overbearing mother, played by Marcia Jean Kurtz — can see past Jeff’s money and success. As a result, Paul steadfastly refuses all the pressure to be like his brother because in his mind, that means being a total scumbag. And no one can argue the point because that would mean acknowledging the fact that Jeff is in fact a total scumbag.

Anyway, I’ve gone long enough without mentioning the actual conflict of the film. The long and short of it is that Paul and his partner-in-geekdom (Sal, played by a prolific character actor named Kevin Corrigan) are lucky enough to cross paths with the Giants’ star quarterback, Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm, not to be confused with Jon Hamm). They follow him to a fancy club in Manhattan, where they eagerly and innocently try to get a single friendly word from their idol. Alas, it turns out that Bishop had been hitting the cocaine and alcohol pretty hard, so he flies into an unprovoked rage and sends Paul to the hospital.

At this point, I feel it appropriate to mention that this film premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Since a certain other New York Giants star stupidly committed a violent felony in a club just the prior year, it seemed much more timely then.

So Paul eventually wakes up from his three-day coma, suffering from massive internal trauma but expected to be fine in the long term. And naturally his first question is how the Giants did while he was out. Surprise of surprises, the Giants tanked their last game because Bishop got suspended. And Paul feels terrible about it.

This is the conflict of the movie. Paul is perfectly able to press charges against Bishop, end his career for good, and get millions of dollars’ worth of damages in the process. Yet that would mean destroying (in the short term, at the very least) the only thing that made Paul’s life bearable up to this point.

In theory, this is a great premise. Not only does it present all manner of possibilities to explore the relationship between fans and idols, but it also provides a ton of material for an underrated actor like Oswalt to work with. Yet in practice, the premise can’t deliver. The premise can only end in one of two ways, which means that much like its main character, the film has to stall and procrastinate and put off coming to a final decision until the very last possible second. The movie is only 90 minutes long and it’s still got a ton of padding.

What’s even worse is that the two possible endings are extremely stark in their contrast. Paul can either stay in denial or he can finally admit that he has a problem, and there isn’t a lot of middle ground in between. As a result, Paul stays a resolutely static character even in spite of all the changes and the rising conflict going on around him. This stubborn refusal to change even the slightest bit becomes very grating after a time, even in spite of Oswalt’s best efforts to the contrary.

I’m willing to give the movie a lot of credit in that it doesn’t end in any predictable way, and it’s certainly worth a lot that I genuinely wanted to keep watching up to the end, just to see what was going to happen with Paul’s character. However, maybe this is just the geek in me identifying with Paul, but I couldn’t help feeling like the movie had given me a stiff middle finger at the end.

The movie has a great deal to say about moderation on the part of the fans, yet it offers absolutely no such commentary on the opposite end of the equation. Bishop is never seen again after his one scene, and we’re never given any idea about how he feels regarding the incident. If we knew that he had felt the least bit remorseful over the beating or even if he maintained in an egotistical manner that he did nothing wrong, that would’ve done so much to explore what responsibility celebrities have to their supporters. Alas, this rich vein of thematic material remains completely untapped.

More importantly, Paul develops in such a way that I personally felt insulted by the end. The movie started out building a strong case for making Paul into a sympathetic character, yet it seemed to plainly insist well before the climax that Paul isn’t supposed to be relatable. Maybe that’s the whole point — for fans to realize that they could easily end up just like Paul — but that isn’t anything I didn’t already know. Additionally, the film starts out depicting fans in a remarkably faithful way, only to paint them (no pun intended) as powder kegs waiting to go off in the third act. That feels like something of a betrayal to me.

Ultimately, I was quite disappointed with Big Fan. It started out great, but it failed to deliver a story worthy of its premise. Several storylines aren’t properly developed (the lawsuit comes to mind), many opportunities to explore various geek/entertainer themes are ignored in favor of padding, and the screenplay isn’t nearly good enough to keep the main character’s development interesting.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to like about this film. The performances are all amazing, and Patton Oswalt turns in some career-defining work. Furthermore, this movie fills a very important hole in the pop culture universe, one that someone needed to fill. I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though I didn’t like the manner in which this story was told, I like that someone tried to tell the story at all. Each fanatic of every stripe needs to really think hard about Paul’s initial predicament and ask with complete honesty “What if that was me?”