Watch the Big Fan Trailer

Holy cow. Last week, we got a look at the new Ricky Gervais comedy The Invention of Lying. And as much as I'm looking forward to that movie, it can't possibly compare to my excitement over Big Fan, starring my very favorite comedian Patton Oswalt.

Oswalt plays an obsessive New York Giants fan whose tendencies begin affecting the future of the team, and the movie itself looks dark and twisted and awesome. It's the directorial debut of Robert Siegel, who also wrote the script and penned last year's The Wrestler; at this rate, he's becoming the Ron Shelton of the indie world, and that's not such a bad thing. He's also a former writer for The Onion, so we know he's funny.

But what excites me most about this movie is it doesn't look very funny. Instead, it looks like Siegel has written a part specifically for Oswalt and sees things in him that other directors haven't: his obsessive geekiness (in real life it's more about comics and movies than sports, but whatever) and potential for schlubby loneliness. I'm reminded of Paul Thomas Anderson writing Punch-Drunk Love for Adam Sandler; though that movie was much heavier on whimsy, it still showed us a side of Sandler we'd never seen and remains his best movie. I think Patton Oswalt is going to surprise a lot of people with this performance, and I'm hoping it gives him some of that Bill Murray-Lost-in-Translation cred.

I'm so excited about this movie. Check out the trailer for Big Fan so you can be, too.

Big Fan is due for release on August 28, 2009.

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