Notes from Melanie

So, Chris Stuckmann is making movies now. Is good? well no not really, but is it bad? Yes, but for fixable reasons.

The idea of a screen writer needing to finally make a jump to making respected movies is one that can feel emotional to people who are writers, and in that lies the biggest issue with this movie. The script feels like it's tailor made for writers (which is an obvious stand in for Chris) and not much else. All the emotional scenes lose any sense of emotion when it revolves around characters you don't feel connected to. On top of that we go over 3 distinct feelings between the two characters that feel rushed given the short run time of the movie. If you've seen the movie you know these moments.

As for the good parts. The camera work isn't bad. It's nothing stylized or experimental, but for a low budget short film it works. The editing is solid leading to some fun moments from John as the D movie actor. The sound work isn't bad either, giving what could have been really bad audio to this film we actually have well recorded audio, so that deserves props.

I loved Chris for his videos for many years. So I want to see him get somewhere with his career, but that being said I think he should pick either being a film writer (in which he need to work on opening up his writing to a larger demographic and saving his passion projects for when he's finally made it) or being a film maker (in which he shows a lot of promise but really needs to find his style) and find a writer for his ideas.

I'll be honest, a lot of the gags here are pretty hackneyed and the plot is just a conversation in which the only real pay off is that the main character learns to steal ideas from his love interest rather than existing movies.

That said, the camera work is spot on and the acting (particularly from Newberry) is so good that you actually briefly believe these characters in this weird roller coaster of a script that bounces back and forth from emotional-to cheesy-to funny.

The gags are each various dressings for over the top Flickinger cameos and they are pretty funny the first couple of times. If the script didn't rely so much on them, they might have retained their humor throughout, but unfortunately it does, and they don't.

In the end, Stuckman will likely go on to bigger and better things and this weird entry will just be a footnote.

Ok where do I start? Bad title. Actress was ok but the actor was awful. Script is bad. Most of the jokes fall flat. Dialogue is bad. Direction is ok but too much shaky cam. Way too much cheap hokie looking CG. So to summarise; its not good.

I cant help thinking Chris would tear this to pieces if he was reviewing it. If he wants to make genuinely good films he needs to give it 100% of his attention. This feels like a half assed side project inbetween reviews.

If you don't know the director is a movie critic, he has reviewed hundreds of movies on his youtube channel and Rotten Tomatoes. I really love his reviews, even through he's way too soft on most movies. The point is he has such a movie knowlegde, so I expected he'd use some of it to create a movie with fantastic plot and cheap (low budget) but genius tricks. Sadly, while this movie has some interesting writting, that's it. Story is very simple, the only thing it's worth watching are the dialogues and movie's somewhat style.

B-

I liked the bits showing the fake movies. The Melanie character seems perpetually outraged which made it very hard to watch. I like Stuckmann's reviews plenty and he seems to do camerawork very well, but he's not great at writing dialogue. He's a talented guy, so I'm sure he'll improve with time.