Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie

Whereas other low budget films like "Tokyo Gore Police", "Vampire Girl VS Frankenstien Girl", "Machine Girl", "Bad Taste" and the original "Evil Dead" were very low budget, they are memorable because of how extreme and screwed up they were.

They have moments that would have you talk to your friends about; "Oh there's a moment where this gruesome scene happens" and so on.

AVGN The Movie has nothing screwed up or extreme about it.

It doesn't have any exciting scenes that you're dying to tell your friends.

It is cool that James has finally made his first feature film. But he's not a professional filmmaker, he's more of an internet video maker.

The jokes in this are quite poor. Since neither James or Kevin are professional comedy writers, we have some really lame jokes that are obviously from first timers who have never written comedy before.

James himself is not an actor and yes, his bad acting adds a charm to the Nerd. That's fine for 15 minutes, but when you keep up the bad acting for 2 hours, the charm wears out very fast.

Yes, the overuse of the Nerd making references to fecal matter is just tiresome. It was tiresome in the show and it is no better here.

The cinematography is lame and feels like a straight to DVD film than an actual movie. Even the trailer looked cheap and bad.

This movie looks more like something you would see on the Sy-fy channel than a theatrical feature.

The special effects in this movie are bad, but are intentionally so for the sake of comedy, like in Austin Powers, Team America, The Lego Movie, Harry Hill's work and The Young Ones. But those movies and shows were actually funny.

Here, the joke doesn't work. It could be the really bad HD and straight to video feel that puts off the charm of the bad effects.

Also the sloppy editing. There are some unfinished looking shots here.

The movie is self aware it's low budget and tries to make fun of itself, but it's just not funny. I'm not a fan of self deprecation. It's too "winking at the audience" for me.

I will have to admit, the score is very good. The opening theme is amazing and I like the theme "Birds Before Nerds".

If this was an internet movie like the TGWTG Anniversary specials, it would've worked. But here, it's an internet movie trying to be theatrical and fails.

AVGN works as an internet series, but not as a movie.

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.

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.

I've been a fan of the AVGN for years, and love his web episodes. I think some of the comedy in them was genius. I also love his short videos where he talks about other stuff from the 80s (TMNT show/films, Rocky, Ghostbusters etc). Consequently, I was so happy that he got to live his dream of making a feature length indie film, through many months of hard work. I was going to see this in the theatre but it was sold out in my city. I was even ready to buy the Blu-Ray to support him, but couldn't wait for it to come out so I watched this in advance of the disc release.

After watching the film, I have to say I was pretty disappointed. Most of the comedy was bad, and the story seemed convoluted. Too many ideas were crammed in and much of it didn't work. There were weird story elements that didn't make sense, the characters were too one dimensional and not likable, and many of the pay-offs were unearned. I could go on but I feel bad bashing James because I like his other work so much.

In the end I respect James for what he did. I just wish I could have liked this film more than I did.

The only thing worse than the actual movie itself is the fans praising it. Having been a fan of the AVGN and James Rolfe's films/reviews since 2006, I've pretty much grown up with the nerd. I started watching when I was around 13 and now I am 22. That being said the movie simply was a let down. For all the build up, all the hype, and the anticipation of the nerd reviewing what could be debated as the worst game ever created in "E.T.", it simply was not a good film. There were some enjoyable moments, like Nathan Barnatt's cameo, or Doug Walker's cameo, but aside from that there really isn't much too talk about. The jokes were the same things you'd see in your average episode of the webseries, the script was decent, but in the end juggled too many ideas and ended up being very convoluted. For what it's worth, with a budget of 300k there are worse movies out there, and if you're a fan you will find some enjoyment out of it. Personally his films like "The Deader the Better" or "The legend of the blue hole" were much more enjoyable than this. Maybe it's a growing up thing, maybe I've grown past the humor, or maybe it just feels dated, I'm not sure. The film left a very sour taste in my mouth, and I would have much rather seen multiple AVGN episodes as opposed to this mediocre film. Seriously though why do the fans have to ride his dick so hard? If you keep telling someone something is amazing when it's not, they'll continue to put out the same mediocre crap. It's out of criticism that they decide to work harder and put more effort into creating something great. To the fans that give this film 10/10, you need to learn to form your own opinions and not be another sheep in the heard. Don't ride his dick, look at this film honestly. Especially when he can be so critical of other peoples work, but doesn't have very many critics of his own.