Honest Trailers

When it originally started, I loved Honest Trailers. The idea was extremely fresh in that what would happen if movie trailers were truthful about the film being advertised? Thankfully, the series in its early days served that premise well, making fun of the shortcomings in many films in a smart and analytical manner. All of this the while having a narrator whose exaggerated deep voice (meaning to spoof similar narrators in actual trailers) delivered the scripts with such an over the top nature that it becomes hard not to laugh at some points (their Twilight episodes are good examples of this - the inability to pour ketchup still cracks me up every time). Because of this, the show in its early days was fantastic and along with other great web shows that mocked films (like How It Should Have Ended & Cinema Sins) showed how movie spoof and satire is alive and well on the internet, especially when film & TV have come up short recently (Seltzerberg anyone?).

However, like many other comedy series, it's fair to say that Honest Trailers is starting to lose its mojo. My main problem with the show is that instead of being a well mixed combination of criticism and comedy like it previously was, one element now dominates. They feel more like straightforward critiques of the films instead of more tongue-in-cheek ones. While this fine if you want that sort of thing, if you were expecting laughs, they are sadly far more sporadic than before, despite some exceptions (like the Frozen or Inside Out HTs). Also, whenever politics gets involved, it's rather cringey rather than funny. When they whinge about how bad the attitudes of old Disney movies were for instance, they come across as nagging Anita Sarkessian SJW types rather than witty comedians. When they mock Donald Trump, not only do they feel like they're going for the low hanging fruit for humour, but also don't offer anything new in that field. Not to mention how they won't be balanced and mock other politicians like Hillary Clinton. That leads me to another point, in that they aren't as brutally honest as before, which not only makes it less funny, but also less different especially when they go for the obvious points about certain films, like their Spider-Man trilogy trailer.

Another issue for me is that the current narrator (John Bailey) isn't as exaggerated as the other ones. I understand that their narrator differed in sometimes in their earlier trailers, but they still kept the tone right, whether they be similarly over the top (like in their original Phantom Menace 3D trailer) or be monotone in an exaggerate way (like their Avatar trailer). However, Bailey doesn't get it quite right, as he isn't very exaggerate and (like many other things in the series) a lot more straight faced than the other narrators. This means that some of the jokes come off as flat and he isn't as entertaining a narrator as his predecessors.

However, the new Honest Trailers aren't completely awful. As I said, as plain reviews they're entertaining and offer some interesting points about certain films, like how in their Hunger Games: Catching Fire supposed feminist icon Katniss Everdeen is helped more by men than that title would imply. Also, there are still some good laughs here and there and some episodes are consistently funny too. And at the very least, they're at least very entertaining videos to watch and their USP is still a breath of fresh air on a platform (YouTube) whose content can become very redundant at points.

As such, while I do think Honest Trailers is no longer as funny as it once was, it's not bad. Far from it, as they're still entertaining critiques of popular movies with occasional laughs. Even so, I do feel that the show's best work is behind them, and now we have a subpar version of what came before. It's like eating at the Ritz and then afterwards eating very nice food at your local pub. Still good, but quite anaemic in comparison as to what came before. And hey, at least you're not eating at some crappy KFC, which is what the rest of YouTube can feel like sometimes.

Fun etertaining .... It is a nice and old series on yt that is perfect

Who cannot remember his/her first honest trailer? What a blast it was! From that moment on it's a catching-up-game to watch them all.

Honest trailers to me is very comparable to South Park - which also had very good and most of all diverse ideas at the beginning but after they had to produce season after season it became very formulaic and "by the books". The same thing happened to honest trailers - one might argue it is because I'm now used to the concept. But still, when I watch older Honest Trailers the laughing comes instantly back.

There may be more than just one reason for this. One is definitely the choice of movies as the makers primarily choose current blockbusters or all-time-classic blockbusters which are very formulaic in their nature, leaving not much room for parody. Therefore most argumentations are based on the same flaws in those movies, and subsequently very similar.

Also Honest Trailers work mostly on bad films which are made with good intentions but fail to convince. But the fans demand Honest Trailers for basically every current blockbuster (good and bad) and so it also happens that movies are picked which are actually very good (Fight Club, Forrest Gump, Ang Lee's Hulk, etc) to create an artificial parody about points which aren't very just.

Still, the idea is highly original and here and there a good one pops up - not as frequent in quality as it used to but therefore in quantity. Almost every Screen Junkies box out a new one. Maybe that's also a reason for the decline in quality, but I don't give up hope! I'm still always happy when a new one comes out!

The honest trailers of today may have lost the brilliance of the initial ones....but we're still here

but in all honesty...bring back the voice guy that came after the very first...or was it the third...i think it was the third

or was it the one that did it...went away...came back then went away again

i think so...yeah...bring him back

and how come this voice guy has been doing it soo long....all this while...retire bro!!...

we need another voice guy.

There's no shortage of parody to be found on YouTube, but I can't think of a more winning concept than "Honest Trailers". It captures the spirit of the classic voiceovers dude from the '80s while skewering all manner of mainstream garbage.

And after so many years, it still hasn't gotten old. For me, Jon Bailey is the secret weapon; he makes for an excellent Epic Voice-over Guy, channeling Don LaFontaine with plenty of room for his own humorous touches. It doesn't matter whether they're taking jabs at some low-hanging fruit like "Armageddon" or a bulletproof classic like "The Empire Strikes Back", it's always funny. And when they're really trashing a movie, it is glorious (*cough* "Suicide Squad" *cough*).

Few YouTube shows are consistently this entertaining.

10/10