To Boldly Flee

They took something that looks and sounds so terrible far too seriously for it ever to be good in any way.

I'm so, so sorry for writing a negative review of the AVGN movie. Although that film is heavily flawed, it at least has decent direction, cinematography, and acting, and even if the plot isn't good, it at least had a plot. It was a competent film at least. Compared to this train wreck, the AVGN movie is a freaking masterpiece. Seriously this movie is awful. I was a massive fan of Doug Walker and the NC when this film was first released, but even then I remember thinking it was bad. Now that I'm not even a fan of Walker any more, I can truly see just how atrocious this film is. Like, oh my god, this is one of the worst things ever. The plot is very unfocused and confusing, and revolves around resurrecting MaTi, a character nobody cares about. He doesn't have a show on CA, is rarely seen, and is mostly known for a bit part in one single episode of NC. The film acts like he's extremely important to the site, but the entire time I kept asking myself "who is MaTi and am I the only one who wishes this film were about someone else?" As a director, Doug Walker has about as much integrity as a 10 year old making a backyard flick with his friends using his mom's camera. Every shot in this movie is grainy, shaky, and just looks cheap, like it was recorded with an iPad. Could they not acquire a better camera for this massive extravaganza of an anneversery? Or is Doug just that bad of a cinematographer? Also, you'd think there'd be at least one funny joke in 209 minute torture sequence, but no. This film really only needed to be 90 minutes max and could easily be edited down because every scene goes on for about six minutes too long. 90% of this movie should've been left on the cutting room floor but it seems like Doug's massive ego tricked him into thinking every moment of footage was absolutely hilarious, which NONE of it is. Every joke in this movie is either boring, cliche, cringeworthy, or like a rejected joke from Family Guy. In fact, every scene in this movie feels like an unfunny extended Family Guy cutaway gag and it's excruciating. Another minor complaint for people who are familiar with the site (then again how many regular folk would stumble upon this movie without knowing CA?) is that every reviewer featured in this movie acts nothing like they do in their shows. For example, Film Brain is intelligent, snarky, and complains a lot, but this movie portrays him as an easily confused doofus. Linkara is a very well spoken individual with high morals and respects for all people, but this movie has him written as an easily confused (and rapey) doofus. In fact, everyone in this movie is portrayed as an easily confused doofus and it's very inconsistent to their actual characters. Overall, this movie is atrocious in every regard: the jokes are awful, the plot sucks, the direction is ameteur, the writing is embarrassing, most of the acting is terrible, and it's excruciatingly boring. 209 minutes, are you freaking kidding me??? I didn't like the AVGN movie but I'd watch that 100 times before even sitting through 10 minutes of this. Even for diehard NC fans, avoid this!

I used to be a huge Doug Walker fan back in the day, and this is mainly a review on the movie and not to reflect on my current feelings about Channel Awesome. That being said, this movie/miniseries having a total runtime of 3 and a half hour compared to the previous anniversary movies is far too long. Furthermore, it seems that Doug's character, the Nostalgia Critic, is the only one who really matters in the long run, even though the other CA producers are just as talented as Doug is. So compared to the other anniversary movies, this was a bomb.

2/10

I'm giving this "movie" one star not only for it's terrible writing, but also based on how poorly the entire cast & crew was treated during the entire process of this movie. To quote Allison Pregler, "Not a single person wasn't miserable, except Doug, who had no idea how badly it had went."

In fact, the only way to watch this movie is with Allison, Phelan, and Brad's Commentary where they make fun of the movie for 3.5 hours.

It's lazy, self-indulgent, shoddy looking, and quite honestly this makes RLM's Space Cop look like Empire Strikes Back.

P.S. Doug wrote a rape scene

There's a remarkably deep and personal story at the heart of this piece, telling of the disillusionment of independent creators in the face of increasingly strict and unfair online regulation, the changing landscape of Youtube as a community and a group of friends banding together in the face of it. With that said, that message is ultimately bogged down in an overly self-indulgent slog through dragged out wasteland scenes between oases of tradionally clever satire, all of which would have benefited from someone less personally invested in the story in the editing room.