The Nostalgia Critic

The Nostalgia Critic was a very early example of the type of entertaining internet personality who doubled as a media critic. He gave reviews and retrospectives to old works with a flair of sarcasm, injecting some funny jokes and insights. Over time his reviews have become a bit bloated and straying from the point, but I still like them.

I'm not usually one to pay attention to Internet celebrities or web series. But I fairly recently discovered the Nostalgia Critic, and all I could think after watching a few of his reviews was, where has this guy been all my life? I could watch his videos for hours.

The Nostalgia Critic is best known for ripping apart movies and television of the 1980s and '90s that he finds corny or otherwise badly written/acted/executed, but recently he's branched out into the 2000s or even something currently in theaters. Chances are, at some point he's going to take a big steaming dump on something you love, pointing out all of its flaws. Even so, I can't argue with most of the points he makes, especially if I'm in tears laughing. He's known to be very loud and profane, and I admit that sometimes he goes overboard with the screaming and hysterics. But I think he makes up for it with clever writing and editing. He's not just a guy yelling at a camera. A lot of thought and effort goes into making an NC episode, and there are plenty of behind the scenes videos to prove it. It also helps to know that the Critic is just a character that Doug plays and he's not really that angry in real life.

Recent NC episodes have featured some sort of subplot with supporting characters, which fans seem to either love or hate. I personally find the subplots hit or miss. Sometimes they're funny and entertaining, and other times they just detract from the review. I think I will always prefer the older episodes with just Doug talking, but it's nice to see the chemistry between Doug and his Channel Awesome co-stars.

The Critic offers more than just exaggerated bad reviews. Sometimes he'll positively review something, and his editorials and top 11 lists are entertaining and insightful. My personal favorite material of his outside of reviewing movies and TV shows are his commercial specials. It was a brilliant idea to review TV advertisements of the '80s and '90s. Watching the commercials for those products you begged your parents for feels just as nostalgic as watching your old favorite Saturday morning cartoons.

To sum things up, I love this guy. He's hilarious, talented, intelligent, and just plain endearing. If I could spend a day making fun of laughably bad movies with anyone in the world, it'd be Doug Walker.

Like a lot of people I became familiar with The Nostalgia Critic and his portrayer/creator Doug Walker in the summer of 2007 on YouTube. At the time, he didn't have anywhere the budget he has today and because of YouTube guidelines his videos had to try to be less than ten minutes. His content then was very to the point, had legitimate and researched criticism, and above all else was actually funny. Not to say he had a perfect thing going on, he did make a few trivial mistakes with his early videos, but for the most part it a harmless string of YouTube videos.

He grew in popularity which led to various others trying to mimic his style of review, getting his own website where he'd not only create content but others as well( many of who became internet stars in their own right) becoming a guest at conventions, and being able to reach out and get people like Mara Wilson("Matilda") and legendary animator Don Bluth("Secret of NIMH") to appear on his content. However, the popularity only went to Walker's head and the content did not get better, it became worse with age.

As time went, the videos became longer than they needed to be, became pretentious( see his woeful editorials, vlogs, and sibling rivalry videos with his brother) more material was not researched better( or at all) and a lot of the humor became mean spirited and condescending to the viewer. The nice and reasonable personality Walker usually portrayed off-screen with fans appeared more and more like a facade than genuine with how eerily similar his views and general attitude of them were to that of his character - Not the night and day difference he used to display when he first started out making videos. Like a lot of the shows and film franchises Walker usually rants on about as "not doing anything new" and "trying too hard to be trendy with today" he too has ironically fallen victim to this and the majority of his newest content is just unwatchable. Furthermore, Walker seems to really think that he is a legitimate film critic and that his character qualifies as such, not quite as the purpose of creating the character was originally just to riff on things for laughs. How fame can really conquer rational thinking...

Walker made a good call ending the character some years ago and decidedly wanting to create newer programs for his social media, but made the mistake of waiting too late in the game to announce it and thus created a backlash from his fan-base so out of worry he brought the character back, but it was never the same - He started making reviews of films that had just came out recently( contradictory to the word "nostalgic"), did more and more crossovers, had skits that ran longer and didn't go anywhere, and the style of humor was unsettling in a similar sense to contemporary Family Guy.

I would only recommend his much earlier content, nothing he's done in recent years. How the mighty have fallen...Ironically, many Nostalgia Critic imitators are proving to do it better than he has in recent years, go figure.

As far as I'm concerned there are two "Nostalgia Critics" those that were before "To Boldly Flee" and those that came after. Whereas not all the ones before TBF were gold or necessarily all that good, they were a far sight better than what we got afterwards. Let me take a few steps back.

Doug Walker was a man with a dream. He wanted to be the next Stephen Spielberg. He went to school to study filmmaking and when youtube was still new he came up with the idea of being an internet reviewer. His first reviews were fresh, a little raw around the edges, but they were reviews as done by a screaming, sarcastic, angry guy. But as time went on they became more polished and, dare I say it, enjoyable. I genuinely started to enjoy this and through him I discovered other that I still watch to this day. But time changes things. Whereas before he would have small asides, snide comments and short little skits, as time went on they practically became the driving force. Too much time was devoted to them and less on analysis or just having fun with it. And while reviews like "The Room" are still among one of my favorites they're just not like that anymore.

But Doug got tired of the whole NC shtick and wanted to move onto different things. So he killed the character off, started up "Demo Reel" which was unwatchable, tried his hand at a game show called "Pop Quiz Hotshot" which was equally painful and because the fans wanted it he went back to being the Nostalgia Critic.

It wasn't the same. Now the skits took up a good portion of the review. In some cases they practically were the review. And it became less about the movie and more about Doug and the Chicago Crew, all of whom are community theater actors at best. The show just got to be unwatchable. And then came the whole Change the Channel bit.

if anything this served to sour me on the whole NC show and the cast of characters that seemed to grow with each passing month. Too often there would be recurring characters with no hint of subtlety. It was all in your face obvious and there was literally none of the magic that the show used to have, It was reduced to a paint by numbers set and I finally signed off forever.

I would love it if he went back to his old way of doing things. One camera, short asides, maybe a thirty second sketch and actual care taken to review the movie whether it was good or bad. But sadly he seems stuck on this new way of doing things. Sadly he will never really achieve his dreams but will be playing this character until it stops being profitable and then will fade into obscurity having accomplished very little.

I didn't get into The Nostalgia Critic until fairly recently, as I have several friends from IMDb who are fans of his. As I have said, out of all the internet stars, The Nostalgia Critic is my favourite. No matter how random he can be, he is hilarious and pretty consistent. There are times where Doug overdoes it a tad with the shrieking and the rants, but there are many funny moments in his reviews I can't help chuckling.

My favourite reviews of his are:

Titanic:The Animated Movie- This is an instance when the review is a million times better than the film. The film itself is for me one of the worst animated movies ever, poorly animated and edited and a shameless rip off of films(infinitely better films too) from my childhood. When the rapping dog arrived on the scene, I knew I was asking for trouble. In fact the only redeeming quality was Holding Me. The review of course was absolutely brilliant, with some of the funniest moments I had seen in my life, so much so I almost died laughing.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie- Man I cannot describe how awful this film was. Without a doubt for me this is one of the worst movies of the 80s, poorly written, horrible to look at with terrible acting and incoherent storytelling. Another instance of where the review is better than the film.

Quest for Camelot- I have to admit this was funny. I don't hate this film as much as some do in fact while it has a lot of problems(ie. the mismatched singing voices) it does have its interest points such as the song The Prayer, Devon and Cornwall and the fact the excellent and underrated Gary Oldman does a voice. Once again, I thoroughly enjoyed the review, the Ogre's butt comment especially was hilarious!

Batman and Robin- I especially liked this review for the Bat Nipples comment, that was funny. And I do have to admit this is a movie I don't like, in fact I consider this the worst of the Batman movies. Nice costumes and sets, but a bad script and ridiculous overacting(Arnold Schwarznegger I am looking at you) really bring the film down.

Troll in Central Park- Another great review with nice observations that even I didn't think of, and I have to say the film itself I consider one of Bluth's weaker efforts. I actually like Don Bluth, The Secret of NIMH, Anastasia, American Tail and Land Before Time especially are wonderful, but this film while having some sweet moments, nice incidental music and a very good voice cast is forgettable, mostly to do with the lacklustre plot and uneven animation quality.

Is there a review I didn't like so much? I have still yet to see more of Nostalgia Critic's work, but I agree with another reviewer about Last Action Hero. That film is very underrated, it isn't perfect, but it was smart and fun, and I felt that Doug missed the point of the film plus it wasn't as funny as his other reviews I feel.

I also enjoy his lists-: Top 11 Scariest Moments, Top 11 Saddest Moments, Top 11 Villains and Top 11 Villain Songs. In regard to the latter, I personally don't think any villain song list is complete without the mention of Hellfire from the underrated Hunchback of Notre Dame. That is a brilliant song, operatic, haunting, intense and goosebumps inducing and brings a demonic side to Frollo's character, and to think he wasn't complex enough already.

Overall, if you haven't seen any of Doug's reviews I suggest you do so. Whether you agree with him or not is something else, but he is so entertaining often I am past caring. 9/10 Bethany Cox