I love AVGN...been a fan since early '08 when I found his Friday the 13th review on youtube.
However, this movie (and yes, I did contribute $) was just average at best. It seems James was trying to make jokes HE thought were funny rather than make ones that would appeal to the fans. Hell, the actual ET review at the end was probably better than the whole rest of the movie.
Cry me a river
Snootchie Bootchie
I agree it was quite disappointing.
I don't know if it was the whole holding back of copyright to the games that gave it a very 'artificial' feel to it, or if it was the plot that kind of went all over the place, or if it was the cursing for the sake of cursing.
I was honestly hoping for a movie that paid a lot of homage to a whole bunch of classic games of the 80's & 90's. Especially the general in the tank. I thought that was paying homage to Smash T.V. (especially the arm loss), but instead it tried to be a real plot.
At least Wreck It Ralph had a lot of inside jokes for classic gamers.
WHAT THE *beep* WERE YOU EXPECTING???
shareThis just isn't a very entertaining or funny movie, I give James credit for coming up with a really great plot, but the writing is mediocre and cliche from start to finish and never feels as clever as any Nerd reviews.
The pacing is what really killed me though, the one female character seems really interesting at first, then she pretty much becomes pointless and get's a bunch of strange and misplaced scenes with the evil girl.
I don't think he was trying to make jokes he thought was funny over the fans, I think he was trying to make something more broad than normal and it ended up failing because it lacks his personality.
^This so much! I was trying to word exactly why the movie just isn't that funny, and that's what it is. He was trying to make jokes that worked off the other characters and the plot and it just didn't work. Most of the laughs from the Nerd are from his over the top nitpicking of bad video games. Right off the top of my head, in the Friday the 13th review, he makes a comment about how he hates the music but he has to listen to it to hear the Jason alarm. His funniest jokes are the ones where he works off of the game he's playing. And even when he is working off other characters in his reviews, it works because they're usually his friends like Mike Matei and Kyle Justin and they're not in ALL of his videos. He has chemistry with them because he knows them so well. The actors in this clearly didn't have any chemistry with James and they were around him in every scene. Things like Cooper naming off a bunch of ridiculous things about the earth he believed in and the Nerd refuting them was not very funny for example. The characters in this were basically carbon copies of the Nerd. He just wasn't the focus of the film and he didn't stand out or shine like he should've. When everyone is just as over the top as he is, there's nothing to work off of because there's no middle ground. Either way, it's too well made for me to give it any less than a 7/10. He did well for what he had to work with, the effects were nice, and there were a few good one liners. But some things just don't adapt well to film. Still better than any of Doug Walker's films though.
shareStill better than any of Doug Walker's films though.
Suburban Knights is his best, I agree. But this is far better than Kickassia imo and better paced than To Boldly Flee which was about an hour and a half longer than it needed to be. I'd say Suburban Knights is about on par with this. That's really his only film I thoroughly enjoyed. That and his short film "The Review Must Go On". That was amazing.
shareSuburban Knights is his best, I agree. But this is far better than Kickassia imo
and better paced than To Boldly Flee which was about an hour and a half longer than it needed to be.