Lazer Team

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 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.

I had high hopes for this film. Rooster Teeth is one of the best online content producers hands down. Lazer Team was not up to the storytelling brilliance RT (Rooster Teeth) is known for.

The story falls very flat on its face. It was trying to be cleaver but came off as so generic, it was impossible to care about what happened next. The main characters (Lazer Team) are very forgettable. At no point in the film did I care about what would happen to them.

The acting in the film is hit and miss. The Lazer Team characters are surprisingly well acted, besides a few scenes with Bernie's character. The side characters were pretty bad. With the exception of Alan Richson's character, all the acting felt like it was from an Asylum Syfy flick.

The special and visual effects went from bad to mediocre. The alien designs were pretty ugly and uncreative. There were also several points during the film were I noticed obvious green screen shots as well as chroma key errors.

There are a few positives I have with the movie. The jokes are hysterical. Rooster Teeth excels at making clever jokes that hit their mark. I do want to note that I did have an issue with "crotch shot" jokes that happened over and over and over again. The first 3 or 4 were funny, but when it got to 7 or 8 "crotch shot" jokes, I stopped finding them funny. One other positive I had with the film was the picture quality. For a film not being shot with Hollywood cameras, the Red 4K cameras look beautiful.

Overall, I went into Lazer Team to see a great film and laugh throughout the movie. I unfortunately didn't like the film and don't even think that as a movie it is that great. However, I did laugh at most of the joke and I did love the references to many of the Rooster Teeth characters.

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.

For their first movie, it's actually very good. The cinematography is better than expected, and the writing is actually funny and clever even though it's a tired idea. Not the most original of all topics, but its still quite fun to watch. So the big downfall is the acting. The acting isn't anything to call home for, but it's much better than most B or C level films. They probably would've done better if they went outside of the company, but I understand the loyalty. If you're a fan of Roosterteeth it would probably be better since you'll see all of the people you already know. I was neither disappointed nor blown away. It was exactly what I was expecting. If you go into the movie just having fun and not criticizing it too deeply, it'll be a worthwhile movie. Overall, it was entertaining but not the best film I've ever seen.I would recommend it to someone who wants to watch a funny, lighthearted movie, but definitely not to a critic or someone expecting a masterpiece.