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 Good- The plot of the movie (as ridiculous as it is) is actually interesting and somewhat intricate. Some of the modest effects work well and even when they don't it's funny anyway. There are a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments here.

The Bad- This movie is at least 20-30 minutes too long. Story arcs languish horribly instead of moving from point A to point B. The quizzical move to insert some generic sidekick instead of longtime friend Mike Matei is beyond me. The chemistry would have been far better had they gone that route. The jokes come at you like a tired pitcher's fastballs, no zip on them whatsoever. It's basically patch work AVGN phrases slapped together in a different order. The script could have used some tightening up and the dialog could have used a lot of work. There are some interesting set-ups that could have been funny but they let those opportunities go by the wayside. Also, he doesn't really seem all that angry here, it's more like the grouchy video game nerd.

The Deal- If you are sick in bed with the flu, then this wouldn't be the worst way to spend your time. It's ironic that he dedicates the movie to his fans and gives them a diluted version of the character. It is impressive that he got the movie made at all. And you can see James's influences throughout the film. The passion is there. However, the ability to pace a movie is not (somewhat surprising). It's not an awful movie, but much like a senior citizen with a walker, it takes awhile to get where it's going and when it does it's not sure what to do. Or, in the spirit of AVGN, it's like being constipated on the bowl for a half-hour and when you finally crap it comes out slower than words out of a post-retired Muhammed Ali's mouth. I think the AVGN well has been tapped.

AVGN episodes are a lot of fun. James Rolfe took all his frustrations, funny and odd moments one experiences while playing those old, retro games and created a series that not only old school gamers enjoy, but also the younger generations, because it introduces them, in a humorous way, how gaming used to be. It's a clever idea and executed in an efficient way. The show makes fun of the "so bad it's good" moments and, most importantly, feels genuine. The movie however... well where do I start?

Its not that much of a problem that the movie immediately feels amateurish. That is pretty much to be expected, after all this is a low-budget production and his first time at a project this big. The same goes for the plot, acting, writing, special effects etc. Some of it is deliberately that way. But even at the lowered expectations, I can't help it not to feel disappointed. The main issue here is that it tries to be so much more than it actually is. For a series that is about a guy expressing his frustrations on an old game (or movie) it sure strays far away form it. And this is where it loses all the charm that makes the series work. It never leaves enough room for the nerd to do what he always does. Too much of it is wasted on the build-up and on things that just aren't relevant to the series. His hilarious rants are replaced by incredibly cheesy dialog, lame jokes and bad slapstick. There isn't even an actual game in it, instead you get some imitation called "Eee Tee", which is understandable since they would have to get the license, but the let-down here is that the movie is all about getting him to review it, and not about the review itself. There isn't much game in it. What is kinda a saving grace for a movie like "The Wizard" is completely absent here.

It goes for the so-bad-its-good-humor, but being that the movie is so self-aware about it, it always ends up feeling forced like it deliberately lets something shitty happen and then just expects you to laugh it up. The first half of the movie drags on and almost bored me out. The second half was better, mainly due to the action, Godzilla-style scenes, which were fun, but ultimately are wasted because it ends absurdly quick with a poor conclusion.

So was the movie worth the wait and the sacrifices? Probably only for the die-hard AVGN fan(boy)s. Everyone else will likely agree that the amount of episodes he could've made in the meantime would've been so much more worth it. For James and his crew I hope it's a valuable lesson and that he stays humble about it. AVGN isn't exactly movie friendly material, so I at least can applaud his attempt. It is ironic that the movie thematizes the "shitty is the new good" idea yet tries to promote the same thing for itself, while completely failing to deliver any good laughs or at least make it feel authentic. The fun the crew apparently had while making it, never showed on the screen. Trash can be fun if done right, but that's not the case here. It's just so bad it's bad.

Well, it finally arrived, after years of waiting. Sadly for James, it turns out that many people didn't like his character's outing to the big screen. However, I can't help but thinking a lot of the disgruntlement is misplaced. Don't get me wrong, it's not what most people would consider a good film, but I think I should offer an explanation of why it turned out the way it did.

First, this is more of a Cinemassacre feature than an Angry Video Game Nerd feature and you will be more inclined to like it if you have spent your time watching the endless movie reviews on the Cinemassacre website. James is a fan of what a lot of people would describe as trash and a lot of this film contains schlock content - dumb characters, corny jokes and silly special effects. Bad / over the top acting and silly dialogue therefore isn't really the point for this type of film - it's a given. If you don't like this sort of thing, then you aren't going to like this movie, period.

The reality, though, is that people love the Nerd character first and foremost above Cinemassacre and sadly he does suffer mildly in the context of this movie. His dislike of E.T. is taken from an amusing irrational hatred into irrational behaviour and his insistence that he won't review the game is a card played a little too strongly. Still, I really don't think the criticisms that there are ego issues going on here are valid. The Nerd is an enormously popular character and people have flocked to cinemas nationwide across the states to support their hero. James showed his popularity in the movie for the purposes of a joke, being that the fictional public assumed that the Nerd videos are for comedy/fun (which obviously they are), which dismayed the fictional Nerd character who simply hated the games - he is famous for the wrong reason. I think this has been wildly and widely misinterpreted as James stroking his own ego and I think that's unfair. It's driving to the plot point to the film.

The plot, of course, is ridiculous and silly. It's a fun concept but gets bogged down by being the film being too long, which makes the plot too slow. Things do get rather confusing towards the end as the Nerd's companions go off on their own mini-adventures but to no real consequence. People just want to see the Nerd. As for the ludicrous monster that appears towards the end, we are right back in Cinemassacre territory with plastic models and men in rubber suits - the ridiculousness is the point.

Regardless of the target audience, the film is at least partially a comedy and it does raise a few smirks. As the laughs are more frequent and punchier in the Nerd episodes, this has left a lot of people disappointed. What we all love is seeing the Nerd spit venom at "***** games", but he's not doing that here until the credits of the film (which is probably the most entertaining and interesting part). The various cameos and fan moments are kind tributes, but are mostly goofy and unnecessary.

I suppose I can summarise by saying that this is not the Nerd movie many of us were hoping for, but just a B-movie starring the Nerd. It was an ambitious project in which an amateur film-maker had the means to pay homage to the films he loved. Unfortunately this was at the expense of the character that the audience loved, which is what everyone really wanted to see. However, I have a huge amount of respect for the project as a whole. What James has achieved with his Nerd character is impressive and a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this movie. There's a lot of heart here and that context gives it a special charm. Standing it by itself though, against slicker and meaner films, it's an easy target for criticism. But to do so in the overly aggressive way that others have is to miss the point entirely.

That's what I think anyway.

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.