Nerds have complained that The Weinstein Company has been delaying the release of its film about them, “Fanboys,” for something like forever.

Well, now it's out.

The geeks should've kept their mouths shut.

It's a cartoonish slob comedy about four Ohio “Star Wars” fanatics who road trip west in 1998 to break into Skywalker Ranch and somehow get a look at the work print of “Episode One: The Phantom Menace.”

Their motivation is noble: one of the developmentally arrested young men has terminal cancer. But that doesn't make them, or the movie, any less dopey. While it's packed with in-jokes for an obviously wide pool of people who'll get them, Ernest Cline and Adam F. Goldberg's script doesn't apply much wit to the referential material.

Our guys, played by Sam Huntington, Christopher Marquette, Dan Fogler and Jay Baruchel, are walking catalogues of Lucas movie trivia, get in repeated fights with even more caricatured “Star Trek” fans, and have a frightening encounter with an uncharacteristically intimidating Harry Knowles (played by Ethan Suplee).

Yawn; real fannish obsession can be much more absurd, and unsettlingly fascinating, than this burlesque ever gets. Other jokes are just old: busted in Texas, mistaking Vegas hookers for hotties who might unprofessionally be into them, endless gay panic and male virginity riffs . . . On the bright side, there's a spunky, brunette-haired Kristen Bell as a fangirl who inexplicably digs one of the dweebs. And director Kyle Newman got a whole raft of fan favorites to make self-joshing cameo appearances, and Seth Rogen to play three different characters.

Lucasfilm appears to have cooperated with the production, too; how many of those props are real “Star Wars” artifacts is hard to say. So there's probably enough in “Fanboys” to satisfy some who've been screaming for it to come out.

The more self-aware among them - providing there are any such creatures - may just wince while remembering that old sci fi story cliche, be careful what you wish for.