Slamdance Virtual 2025 Field Report #2: Racewalkers, & Fanboy

Sports! Popular the world over. And we have a couple features at Slamdance this year centered around sports and sports culture. Sports are actually a relatively common topic covered in the festival as its Unstoppable programming block often encompasses stories about how disability and the world of sport interact. This year is no different as the one narrative feature in the Unstoppable program (Racewalkers) is sport focused and I will cover that here today as well as the movie Fanboy which is an in-competition feature.

Racewalkers

Dir: Phil Moniz & Kevin Claydon - Canada - English - 80 Min

Racewalkers is Canada’s only narrative feature in the festival this year (I am personally discounting Gamma Rays as it’s been available on streaming here in Canada for a year and a half already. Sorry.). The film tells the story about a baseball pro Matt Mackenzie (Kevin Claydon) who is recruited out of his life of despondent van dwelling after being an all time draft bust by Will Lester (Phil Moniz) who recognizes Matt’s natural aptitude for the niche sport of racewalking. In their push for an spot on the upcoming roster the two become fast friends and help each other confront their personal insecurities all while having some humorous antics in shaping Matt into his elite athletic potential. The film is directed by its two lead actors and the film has picked up some hardware at the festival in the form of the jury prize for the Unstoppable program category. But that might be more out of lack of competition because I find Racewalkers to be a largely mediocre effort despite best intentions.

What does work best in Racewalkers is Moniz and Claydon’s chemistry. The two of them are clearly having a great time making their movie. When the two of them are just kind of goofing around the movie is zippy and fun and feels like you’re just hanging around with friends. When the movie is firing off little running gags and quickly moving on It keeps a light pace that is fun and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Claydon dedicates himself to some serious pratfalls that are funny each time. But the film bogs down pretty significantly when its trying to do more structured goofs. The entire first act is pretty devoid, more concerned with setting up the film’s stakes and characters which means the audience is not really in a laughing mood by the time Racewalkers gets around to actually starting to be funny. I also think the film lacks a central gut busting signature comedic sequence. A movie that is more mildly humorous than laugh out loud funny.

The film also has a pretty banal sub plot about how the racewalking community ostracizes Lester on the basis of his physical disabilities. It’s not poorly executed but is a pretty surface level look at that kind of experience. It’s not that the plot is inauthentic or anything but it is a feels like a story written with the nuance and insight of a children’s after school special. And ultimately doesn’t really contribute to supporting what the film does well. The audience could have deduced how the character felt about his place in the racewalking community just through the context of his actions without slowing the film down by having Moniz just spell it all out explicitly in speeches to other characters.

Overall there’s a good time to be had in Racewalkers if you really miss the sports comedy, but this isn’t a film for the ages that you’ll be quoting or pulling up scenes on YouTube to rewatch years later. Hopefully Moniz and Claydon get other opportunities to be on screen together because they make a pretty solid comedic duo.

Fanboy

Dir: Bean Mckee - USA - English - 83 Min

In Fanboy, Allen (Jon Washington) is a socially awkward young man who has undertaken a kind of pilgrimage to the campus of Ohio State University for the fall college football season. Allen himself is not a student he is merely living amongst those enrolled in search of fellow true fans of his favourite team in a search of a community. More importantly Allen is trying to retrace the footsteps of his distant father, who once attended the university and who Allen is clearly desperately trying to maintain a connection with. Unfortunately Allen quickly finds that he is as out of place amongst the students as he is anywhere else as he faces an internal crises about finding a place where he truly belongs.

I don’t know if director and screenwriter Bean Mckee has seen 2009’s Big Fan but that was the immediate touch point I thought of while watching Fanboy. Both films are about how sports fandom can overwhelm and swallow up social outsiders who rely on fandom as their primary connection to more normal society. But what sinks Fanboy compared to Big Fan is that the latter has a much better understanding of the how sports positively contribute to its characters psyches. It’s hard to tell in Fanboy what Allen is like when he’s loving sports, how it shapes his identity in a singular way. The film undoubtedly has a negative view of what sports culture does to people like Allen, and that is fine. But to understand how his attachment to sport ultimately isolates Allen, the film needs to have a better understanding of how fandom also serves as his foundation. Instead, I feel Fanboy sees sports fandom as Allen’s personal vice, equated to the alcoholism and partying of the other students that he is incapable of connecting with.

I think there is a disdain in Fanboy for sports fandom, and I am not sure the film is capable of overcoming that derision to be insightful on the experience it depicts. It’s too bad because I think there is a quality performance here from Washington who flails trying to find something to ground his performance on. One too many important conversations that happen over the phone where Washington would be better served with having another performance to bounce off of. Ultimately, I feel you’d be better served by just go watching Big Fan again instead of trying to track down Fanboy.