Lazer Team

'LAZER TEAM': Three Stars (Out of Five)

A sci-fi action-comedy flick; directed, co-written and co-produced by Matt Hullum. Burnie Burns also co-wrote, co-produced and stars in the movie; which also costars Gavin Free, Michael Jones, Colton Dunn, Alexandria DeBerry and Alan Ritchson. It's the first feature film from Rooster Teeth Productions (which specializes in machinima); and they raised most of the budget for the movie, from a successful Indiegogo campaign. The story revolves around four incompetent losers, who are trained to save the world; when they accidentally stumble across a special alien power armor suit. I liked the special effects, and some of the humor, but ultimately I found it disappointing.

We learn, as the film opens, that Earth received a message, from peaceful aliens, decades earlier. After decoding it, we learned that we are going to be attacked, by evil aliens, and need to train someone to fight them. So a man, named Adam (Ritchson), is raised since birth, to be the 'Champion of Earth'. He will be sent a special 'power armor suit', by the peaceful aliens, to wear in battle. The ship containing the suit, is accidentally shot down, by four losers though. They then each become genetically attached, to different parts of the armor. So Earth's new plan, becomes to train these losers, to be 'Earth's champions'.

The movie kind of reminds me of the cult classic comedy flick 'SUPER TROOPERS'; except more geared towards kids. The film especially seems aimed at 'video game loving teenagers'. For that reason, I think a lot of the jokes are too silly, and somewhat forced. A lot of the performances are pretty weak as well (with a few exceptions). There is some witty commentary, about social media obsession though; and how it effects everyone's lives. The film also has some pretty cool looking special effects (as I said before), especially for such a low budget movie. It's not a complete waste of time, but it's nothing special either.

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Plot- This movie is filled with tons of cliché's with lazy writing. The characters are so annoying and forgettable.The only pros I give this movie is the humour, they're not great but good.

Acting- Burnie Burns performance was good, while the other side character performances are weak

Music- Nothing Memorable, it's the same type of music you hear in a teenage Sci-Fi movie

Cinematography- Camera work was OK, but there are few shaky cams that are so annoying. The special effects looks mediocre and you can easily detect it in certain scenes

Overall, this movie is still fun to watch even there is a lot of clichés.

So I'm giving this movie a 4/10

Any film professors reading, here is a tip. You can do a final exam by making your class deconstruct Lazer Team frame by frame and identify the really good ideas and the zippy lines of dialog.

It is quite a challenge. The film runs almost two hours and there is no more than 10 minutes of quality material.

My fave: one of the "dumb and dumber" team removes an alien mind-control implant from the only female star and explains, "I was just removing the implant that made my girlfriend act like my ex-girlfriends." Actually the actor mumbles the line so you have to rewind to catch it. But that dialog is one of the keepers.

A Youtube production? In a way that is a good thing but virtually every other network, delivery system, channel, cable provider and postal worker who is now producing independently has done better work. So step it up Youtube.

I wouldn't call myself a big Roosterteeth fan, but I do enjoy their Podcast and early RvB. But I feel this movie relies to much on RT's general fandom, as much of the film's fun factor is recognizing the personalities present from their other productions. But for anyone outside of that fandom the uninteresting plot, stereotypical characters and, downright terrible cgi make this movie incredibly boring and bad.

For me however the biggest disappointment is the humor present or I suppose absence of, in the film. A series of immature jokes of people getting hit in the crotch or banging a daughter that a 15 year-old would question the humor of, fall utterly flat through out.

I was very excited to watch Lazer Team, they've been talking about it on the podcast forever and it kept Michael Jones and Gavin Free from a few Achievement Hunter Let's Play's which I gladly dealt with in hopes that something funny was on the horizon for Rooster Teeth and it would all be worth it.

I was a paying sponsor for their website for a few years because I've received so many hours of entertainment from all of the content they produce and it felt like they deserved compensation for all the laughs delivered to millions worldwide.

I viewed the movie on January 28th at a Tugg fan event and the enthusiasm of the crowd was palpable. Many of the die hard fans (which I want to think I am)laughed at very juvenile jokes, or just when anybody they knew appeared on screen. All and well, I nor anybody else can dictate terms of laughter, but I knew I wasn't laughing. They had a few good lines in there that were truly funny, but creating a film, labeled as a comedy needs a bit more than sporadic enjoyment.

Most of the acting came off as wooden, which surprised me, these guys usually do very well on camera. Colten Dunn was his usual self (he's very funny in Superstore) and came across as the only character I believed. Fans have seen this writing team do better and any outsiders will instantly recognize this as a poor effort. Rooster Teeth is usually very creative and funny and this film won't change my opinion of their online content but I will definitely be more wary in the future when buying a ticket or subscribing to any services offering their newer content.

Don't let any of this stop you from watching the movie, preferably in a theater, yes it's out on the torrents after it hit Youtube Red, judge for yourself. It simply isn't funny and no matter how many dollars you donated to the crowd-sourced fundraiser, or episodes of Red vs Blue, or Let's Play's, or RWBY, or Rage Quit's, or podcasts you've absorbed from RT, they didn't bring any of that to this film.

I've read a lot of the reviews for this movie, many of the professional ones are nice and cite the "enthusiasm of the actors" for making this movie worth watching. It didn't translate to the movie I watched and I wish I had seen whatever they did, otherwise they're liars.