Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie

I've been a fan of the AVGN for years, and love his web episodes. I think some of the comedy in them was genius. I also love his short videos where he talks about other stuff from the 80s (TMNT show/films, Rocky, Ghostbusters etc). Consequently, I was so happy that he got to live his dream of making a feature length indie film, through many months of hard work. I was going to see this in the theatre but it was sold out in my city. I was even ready to buy the Blu-Ray to support him, but couldn't wait for it to come out so I watched this in advance of the disc release.

After watching the film, I have to say I was pretty disappointed. Most of the comedy was bad, and the story seemed convoluted. Too many ideas were crammed in and much of it didn't work. There were weird story elements that didn't make sense, the characters were too one dimensional and not likable, and many of the pay-offs were unearned. I could go on but I feel bad bashing James because I like his other work so much.

In the end I respect James for what he did. I just wish I could have liked this film more than I did.

Firstly, let me declare an interest: I've been following Rolfe and The Angry Video Game Nerd since about 2007. I've bought his DVDs (mainly to contribute to his finances - since 90% of the content is available free online) and I regularly visit his website, Cinemassacre. His short videos are always a joy. They're informative and humorous, poking fun at the weird curiosities of video-games, board games, movies, TV shows and books.

However, when I heard about an AVGN movie, I was a little puzzled. How could that ever work?

The main problem is that The Nerd isn't really a true "character" as such, he's merely an exaggeration of James Rolfe's personality. Sure, the white shirt is a costume and the love of Rolling Rock is a vague attempt at character detail, but his main characteristic; the anger for awful games - well, that normally comes from embellished truth. This is why the most successful AVGN videos focus on the games that Rolfe has a true history with. Exposing the absurdities of 2003's "Big Rigs Over the Road Racing" (the subject matter of a recent episode) is a lot of fun, but it pales in comparison to The Nerd spitting bile at "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"; a game which Rolfe hated as a child of the eighties and detests even more, decades later.

Nevertheless, The Nerd had built up a loyal army of fan and Rolfe had a guaranteed audience for a movie; irrespective of whether the format truly lent itself to one.

So, with format tinkering needed, where to go for the movie? The obvious answer would have been a small-scale character-based comedy. Explore and expand The Nerd; turn him into an actual character and, as a result,illustrate why he's deserving of a self-titled movie.

Unfortunately (and I take no pleasure in that term), Rolfe has always had desires to dream a little "bigger". Numerous episodes of AVGN and Board James have taken pretty radical deviations after the "reviews" have concluded. Viewers have been treated to bizarre story-lines with budget-stretching special effects, miniatures and fight-sequences. These have, for the most part, been fun - even if they weren't really the reason why Rolfe had been embraced so enthusiastically by the web community.

It are these episodes from which AVGN - THE MOVIE, takes its cues. Rolfe and co-director/co-writer Kevin Finn have delivered an unashamedly hokey B-Movie with an outlandish, wacky plot. There's no deep delving into the Nerd's character and the only "development" he goes through is overcoming a reluctance to do something incredibly minor. And if you're expecting more depth to Rolfe's performance, then you will be disappointed. I lost track of the number of times his reaction to something was simply a lip-pursing frown and a shake of the head.

There's also not a huge amount of comedy here. There are comic set-pieces, sure - but the intention seems to be that you will laugh at the sheer nonsense of scenes, rather than specifically funny dialogue. The closest I got to laughing was a bemused smile towards a couple of moments. And that's the biggest shame; I'd overlook the fact that this is a misguided format for AVGN : The Movie...if the resulting product had generated some decent laughs.

The plot is that a Games Company have developed a sequel to the infamous ET (or "Eee Tee" as it is here) and want the Nerd to review it, thus publicising it for them. This would have been the perfect springboard for a "Wayne's World" type story, with our protagonist being exploited by a large corporation. Alas, Finn and Rolfe seem to lose interest in this plot line...which is why we end up with a finale consisting of a chatty alien, a shiny spaceship and a giant existence-threatening monster.

Rolfe is accompanied by a surprisingly large cast. Most of the performers do what they can with the material but there isn't really much depth to the proceedings, so much of them are essentially cardboard cutouts. "Nerdy Sidekick", "Zany alien", "War-hungry General". I get that this is kind of The Point - but there needs to be more to "spoof" than purely pointing out that you know your way around clichés and conventions.

It's a little ironic that, by attempting to make the scale of this movie bigger, they end up showing the production up as far more amateurish. It seems that Finn and Rolfe dreamed a little too big in the scripting stage and, rather than reign things in with knowledge of budgeting, they simply kept things exactly as they were as they entered production. The result of this is that we get a huge amount of green-screen, miniatures and rubber suits. Yes, there's a charm to it (and Rolfe, as a big fan of Godzilla is obviously paying tributes), but it does make this seem more like the web sketch it came from, than the "Movie" it yearns to be.

I should stress that I didn't dislike AVGN : The Movie. It's far too long (shave off 40 minutes and it would be far tighter) and I was a little distracted during the sagging second third, but it's always watchable. It's certainly more entertaining than the output of The Asylum, with which it shares a similar "look".

And yet, I feel this is a missed opportunity. It's disappointing that Rolfe and Finn were so focused on pastiching monster movies and capers, rather than creating a movie as original as the web series that inspired it.

I leave you with the fact that Kevin Smith made his debut movie Clerks for less than $30,000. James Rolfe and Kevin Finn had 10 times that amount and made Angry Video Game Nerd : The Movie.

I guess I should start off my saying that I've been a big fan of AVGN for at least 5 or 6 years now, so this review may be subconsciously biased for or against due to this fact.

As a fan of the web series, I just didn't feel like the movie lived up to the episodes. The writing (particularly dialog, but also plot points at times) was pretty bad. The acting itself was good for the most part, it was just the writing.

The jokes are completely unfunny. Reminiscent of classic AVGN, sure, but not up to par at all. Most of the similarities come from jokes that were recycled from the web show, and the new material was facepalm worthy. A lot of clichés were used, which is fine for a film like this where they were obviously just trying to mock clichés and cliché films, but it wasn't pulled off satisfactorily.

The effects were hit or miss. I didn't of course expect Hollywood-level special effects, and I realize that similar to the cliché thing, they wanted some degree of cheese as a throwback to old low budget cult classics, but some of them were painfully bad. There was one scene where there were robots walking around that were clearly people dressed in cardboard boxes wrapped in tin foil. Some of the other effects however were surprisingly well done, and I applaud them on that.

The plot holes were really hard to ignore. Where did Cooper (AVGN's new sidekick) come from, for instance? He has never been a part of the AVGN universe in the past, and no back story at all is given as to how or why his character ended up in the film. There was also a romantic hookup between two characters that had no prior chemistry and never expressed a love interest toward each other at all previously, which was just bizarre and felt way out in left field.

Lastly, I felt a strong sense of arrogance in the way that the AVGN character was portrayed, given that James wrote the movie. From the very beginning, he's touted as the voice of all gamers the world over, and THE authority on game critique - even to the point where there was one scene where a crazed fan bought an unwanted item simply because "AVGN spit on it". I felt this strong self importance and shameless self-promotion vibe coming off of much of the film.

I think the movie had potential, but I think opportunities were missed. I also feel that a lot more care could have been taken in the actual writing, and many scenes should not have made the cut for one reason or another, where they could have filled the extra time from the cuts with scenes that filled the plot holes.

I realize that this was an ambitious project with a low budget, but I feel that they probably tried to over extend, spending too much of the budget on things that were either unnecessary or could have been cheesed down slightly, and they cheesed out too much on things that could have had a bit more of the budget put into them.

I'm giving it a 4/10 mostly just for effort, but it's actually just a pretty bad film and would only get a 4 or higher from a fan, as it has no redeeming qualities to anyone not familiar with AVGN.

The only thing worse than the actual movie itself is the fans praising it. Having been a fan of the AVGN and James Rolfe's films/reviews since 2006, I've pretty much grown up with the nerd. I started watching when I was around 13 and now I am 22. That being said the movie simply was a let down. For all the build up, all the hype, and the anticipation of the nerd reviewing what could be debated as the worst game ever created in "E.T.", it simply was not a good film. There were some enjoyable moments, like Nathan Barnatt's cameo, or Doug Walker's cameo, but aside from that there really isn't much too talk about. The jokes were the same things you'd see in your average episode of the webseries, the script was decent, but in the end juggled too many ideas and ended up being very convoluted. For what it's worth, with a budget of 300k there are worse movies out there, and if you're a fan you will find some enjoyment out of it. Personally his films like "The Deader the Better" or "The legend of the blue hole" were much more enjoyable than this. Maybe it's a growing up thing, maybe I've grown past the humor, or maybe it just feels dated, I'm not sure. The film left a very sour taste in my mouth, and I would have much rather seen multiple AVGN episodes as opposed to this mediocre film. Seriously though why do the fans have to ride his dick so hard? If you keep telling someone something is amazing when it's not, they'll continue to put out the same mediocre crap. It's out of criticism that they decide to work harder and put more effort into creating something great. To the fans that give this film 10/10, you need to learn to form your own opinions and not be another sheep in the heard. Don't ride his dick, look at this film honestly. Especially when he can be so critical of other peoples work, but doesn't have very many critics of his own.

Being a huge AVGN fan, I have been waiting for this movie from the very first moment it has been announced. Unfortunately, for me the waiting was not worth it.

The movie commits the biggest crime any comedy movie can commit - it is not funny. Actually, it's kind of tired and boring and at times even cringe-worthy. The jokes are old and forced, the acting is mediocre at best and the pacing is way off. Do we really need to see all the Nerd praising every 5 minutes of the film? We know AVGN is famous. We get it, it was supposed to be self-conscious satire. But in order for it to work you need to use it for something, like plot development. But the movie goes nowhere with that, leaving the viewer wondering if it was really a satire or maybe an actual pointless narcissism. The characters are boooooring and no one really gets a proper development. The plot is unimaginative and it jumps all around, failing to focus on a specific event long enough to engage the viewer.

It feels like the film could have worked if the team just picked a direction they wanted to go. Like if they went full bat-sh*t crazy with it without holding back. Instead, the movie is stuck in this weird limbo between "intentionally so bad it's good" and "we're trying to make a real blockbuster". As a result we have a mediocre mix of AVGN show and some B-comedy movie with both parts interfering with each other and thus not working at all. The film has no identity.

You know those "movies" that team TGWTG make sometimes (like Kickassia)? Those are actually funny because it feels that everyone there are just having fun while going full insane. That's not the case with AVGN, and that's a bit sad.

If you are a fan, consider watching this, but don't expect much. If you are not really into the AVGN, then the movie has nothing to offer you at all.