The Mystical Adventures of Billy Owens

It's hard to make a fun, enjoyable "bad" movie. I've seen a wide selection of b-movies, cheesy plots/writing, stiff acting, cheap effects. Some are good fun to watch. Others are painful to force yourself through without MST3K. This is one of the fun ones, filled with laughable content and easy to watch without outside riffing, one reason I gave this 3 stars.

The plot moves along nicely enough, filled with bad lines (i.e. "The strongest bond between friends is friendship"), stagnant acting from most, and topped off with Roddy Piper's accent - a mash-up of Tom Waits and Christian Bale's "Batman" voice.

Any fan of b-movies should add this to their must-see as a blatant Harry Potter knock-off with parts Narnia, parts Goonies, and parts SyFy Thor with extra cheese.

You like magic? Imagine a bored parent who writes a school play and then decides to film it with random people in their neighborhood reciting a few lines, followed by cheap effects they threw in on their PC at home. That's about the level of magic here.

When I looked this "movie" up, I was astonished to see that there is a sequel. However, considering that it appeared to have been made for free, then they shouldn't have had a hard time coming up with the money for another one. What's equally disturbing is the fact that it took no less than THREE people to write this, and yet another to work on the "screenplay".

Rowdy Roddy Piper, if you can believe it, completely outshines the rest of the cast. You can't really blame unpolished child actors for not being very good, but with any level of decent input from a director or an acting coach (even a grade-school theater teacher) you would have gotten better performances. Since everyone else seemed to just walk in and read a couple of lines, we can't assume they wanted any level of "performance".

As other reviewers pointed out, everything else about it was equally amateurish. The camera work, effects, costumes...probably all provided by the people in the movie, who hopefully didn't get paid for much of anything other than residuals from DVD rentals. As the end credits rolled, I saw that a number of the extras had the last name "Gregg." For his sake, I hope that they aren't related to Clark Gregg, the hilariously dark genius involved in Choke and Avengers, because that would be pretty embarrassing.

Still, the kids were cute, if not good actors, and I disagree with others about letting kids watch it - if they're really young, like mine, it will still entertain them, mostly because they haven't learned how to differentiate this from anything good. I'm giving this 3 stars because Roddy and the hot mom gave fairly decent performances, and the kids did better than the rest of the adults, especially with the obvious lack of any kind of training or direction. Hopefully, if they attempt any sort of careers in the performing arts, they will look back on this movie and see the need for a bit of training (any amount would be better than none) before forging ahead.

Oh, that's right, it's the smell of my brain rotting. I started watching the film with an IQ higher than the average person and somehow during the course of the film managed to lose all my ability to think and/or function right for an entire week. The acting was so horrible, it was like these people had just been randomly picked off the street by the director of the film "Excuse me sir, could you give me just maybe two hours of your time? That's all it'll take, I swear. All you'll have to do is say a few lines and don't worry about putting meaning behind the words, it's highly over-rated and we wouldn't want a half-ways descent film that people would enjoy let alone watch. What's that? Oh, you don't want to look stupid on film? OK, we'll find somebody else who's ten times worse than you are." On top of the dreadful acting, the show just seemed to go on and on and on. It never ended. The first five minutes had me wanting to go and violently hurl myself off the edge of a cliff into a shallow pool of water with jagged rocks at the bottom. I didn't even think it was possible to make me WANT to commit suicide. I didn't think it was possible that this movie could reach the level of "Slipstream" that seemed as if it was just thrown together within a matter of seconds. Well it did. It wasn't quite as bad but if you ever have seen the movie with your own two eyes you'd get the picture. Please, please I beg of you, do not let yourself or far worse your children watch this film, it will come back to haunt you and it's just plain torture to sit through an hour and a half of something this abominable. I have set a warning at the bottom of my review.(Oh and by the way this gets a zero out of ten, if it were possible I would rate it lower)

WARNING, Side affects of watching this movie may include: Insomnia, Nightmares, Hallucinations, Nausea, Vomiting, Severe Internal Hemorrhaging, Brain Decay, Diarrhea, Headaches, and a very possible state of Coma. Not meant to be watched in the presence of children age ten or younger. If such an event occurs call an ambulance immediately but by then it's probably too late. Your child has already been scarred.

If you try to compare it to Harry Potter, you will rate it a 1 or 2. If you rate it on what it is, maybe 4 or 5. Yes, there is little story and the sets are non-existent but in exchange for that, the acting is pretty bad. Kids look at the camera sometimes. So just watch it when there is no other choice. Of, yeah, some of the dialog is overcome by music is sound effects. Don't worry, you don't really need it, anyway. Think Goonies on 10% of the budget. That's all. 126 characters to go. Why that requirement? Ok, 82 more. Almost done. 55. Will this never end? 28. Bye bye... 15.9.7.4.2 Done, finally.

Amateurish in every respect. Not watchable. This movie was a big disappointment for my wife daughter. We sat down for an evening together and ending up annoyed and feeling cheated. The movie would be useful for anyone interested in how not to make a movie. A well made movie is seamless and the viewer is not distracted while watching to wonder about he skills of those who made the movie. Conceivably a viewer might be forgiven if they thought that anyone can make a movie. This movie is a sure cure of such delusions. Just watch this and get reminded of how much effort it takes to develop a coherent plot, to have words for the characters that don't make them sound repetitious and insane and to set up shots where viewers can actually see what is going on.