Bill the Galactic Hero

This movie is a student film shot in B&W and book-ended with color animated sequences. Given what happens in those sequences, I suspect the decision to animate them was due to budgetary constraints.

We see the progression of a naive young man duped into joining a military force and watch his personality progress alongside his misadventures in outer space and on other planets.

The decision to turn a male character into a female one was interesting to me, and I figured why not, since the character's sex wasn't integral to the plot. (Not Bill, someone else.)

Due to its budgetary constraints, I am reluctant to hold the movie to the same standards of movies put out by major studios, making my rating decision a little difficult to decide on. I did not care for the stylistic decisions of the animated parts. Having said that, I feel like this might've been more interesting -- whether or not it were possible -- to do a crowdsourced version of this in the style of Star Wars Uncut.

I was totally confused througout this whole movie. Apparently, this was a dream project of Mr. Cox's... a dream that didn't come true. Most of it was shot on the University he teaches at.. and it shows. They didn't really try to make the set look like anything else but a modern day University campus. That's about all I can recall of this snore fest.

As a huge fan of the novels, I eagerly shelled out $25 on KickStarter to get a download of this movie. Alex Cox, a real director (Repo Man, etc.)... what could go wrong?

Well... everything. I won't spoil it for you, in case you really want to watch, but here was my reaction while watching Bill:

Sweet! Here we go! Umm... oh. OK. Huh? WTF?? *start skipping to the end* Well *&@)* me...

To somewhat quote Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder, a nut-less monkey could have done better than this. From retarded, childish animation, to even worse black and white home video, to 60's Flash Gordon-type stuff (except not as good), back to retarded animation, this whole pile of dung wasn't even worth the 10 minute download time. It's not even funny or interesting as satire, if that's what Cox was going for. I can't even tell.

This cost over $100,000 to make? Again, I say WTF? At least I'm only out $25.