Film Geek

This movie is quite possibly one of the worst movies I have ever had the misfortune of seeing. The whole story revolves around one Scotty Pelk, a man whose only outstanding qualities are his encyclopedic knowledge of movies and his complete lack of social skills. In the course of this torturously bad movie he learns about life, love, blah, blah, blah.

Sometimes you can find a redeeming feature of a movie, no matter how bad it is. In this case, there isn't even one. The acting was ham-fisted and bad. The writing was either cloyingly sweet ("I love movies more than anything. Movies let you be other people." ACK!), just plain bad, or BOTH.

A lot of comparisons have been made to Napoleon Dynamite, but I think the closer comparison would be to High Fidelity. Both movies are about a young man who has trouble getting on with his life due to an unwillingness or inability to grow up. Both movies feature a protagonist who has allowed his fetish to become the sole source of comfort and empowerment in his life and as a result they alienate everyone around them. The big difference between Film Geek and High Fidelity, however, is that only High Fidelity is worth watching.

1 out of 10 stars - and this movie was lucky to get even that.

I wanted to like this movie, but I didn't. It was simply too low budget to be enjoyable. The acting was generally pretty bad and the story was relatively formulaic.

There was a smattering of funny one-liners (most of which involved the word "basically"), but not nearly enough to get me through the 70 minutes without checking my watch.

Of course, as a film geek, I appreciated the references to lesser known directors and films. In fact, I would have loved it if that aspect of the film was played up. Instead, we get to see a corny pseudo-romance unfold and watch countless "Napoleon Dynamite" wannabe jokes fall flat.

The film doesn't work because the acting and storyline are subpar and the protagonist is a caricature who is far too one-dimensional to be even remotely believable. However, the cinematography is decent for a movie that seems to have been made for about $1000. The music wasn't too bad either.

If someone edited this down to only the obscure film references (which would probably run about 10 minutes), it would be funnier and much more digestible.

I wouldn't even recommend this one to cinephiles.

3 out of 10

Film Geek, from writer/director James Westby, has all the hallmarks of a film that has been made with absolutely no compromises at all and as such comes off as an incredibly self-indulgent exercise on Westby's part. He got every scene and line of dialog he wanted but didn't really bother to let the rest of us in on the joke.

Scotty Pelk (played by Melik Malkasian) is the titular geek whose life we are supposed to find fascinating. Everything from his monotonous droning about movies to his box sniffing is supposed to endear us to this man but succeeds in doing nothing more than reminding us why it is most people who are labeled geeks are social outcasts. He's not funny, he's not charming, he's not sweet, he's not anything but a pain in the butt and we get to be subjected to his nonsense for almost two hours.

And while Scotty is most certainly in the running for the title of Most Annoying Thing About This Movie, the winners, far and above the tepid acting and predictable plot line, are the little bits of dialog that rear their ugly heads from time to time to remind us that Westby has a horribly overdeveloped grasp of melodrama. The only thing worse than hearing Scotty drone on and on about movies is hearing Scotty drone on and on about his dreams and aspirations.

Perhaps if somebody had told Westby (preferably at the script writing stage), "You might want to try to entertain someone other than yourself," it would have been a better film. Since this movie is supposedly based upon Westby's days as a video store clerk, it's easy to see where this narcissism comes from.

i can't say enough good things about this movie. It reminds me of Napolean dynamite except i liked it even better. Partly because its got a more complicated story,and people who are more weird and screwed up in it. i loved all the characters and excuse me for saying so but scotty is hot!! i thought it was so adorable how he knew so much about the movies and everything. The actor who plays him lived in Portland well I guess he's going to be famous now since the movie is gonna play at more theatres then in portland soon. i wanna see the next movie hes in I can tell you that! What a hottie. long live the film geek! there should definitely be a sequel.

This a really low budget film, like say Primer style low budget. But like Primer it's executed perfectly for what they have to work with and it comes out really entertaining and feels more real and personal this way. This is a very cute film. Melik Malkasian is just perfect as the film geek and although not of equal caliber actor, he really reminds me so much of Rami Malek from Mr. Robot. He plays this role with just as much conviction as Rami in Mr Robot. (See I didn't even notice that their names were also similar til now)

This film is kinda embarrassing at times because Scotty can be so socially awkward but it's never pushed like in other bad films to levels that are overly uncomfortable like say Jim Carey has done in the past or the Wayan Brothers do in virtually every movie they make. Its just the right amount to seem realistic. Even Napoleon Dynamite did this a bit too much and made it hard for me to enjoy that film. If your a fan of movies like Revenge of the Nerds, you will really like this one even though its low budget, the message of the movie really comes across well. That message being that even though you may be outside what's considered "Normal" by society; if you're a good person, passionate, and good at something, eventually you'll find a niche of people to appreciate what you can do.

The world is full of different kinds of people and there's a place for everyone. Very well done movie!