Lazer Team

'LAZER TEAM': Three Stars (Out of Five)

A sci-fi action-comedy flick; directed, co-written and co-produced by Matt Hullum. Burnie Burns also co-wrote, co-produced and stars in the movie; which also costars Gavin Free, Michael Jones, Colton Dunn, Alexandria DeBerry and Alan Ritchson. It's the first feature film from Rooster Teeth Productions (which specializes in machinima); and they raised most of the budget for the movie, from a successful Indiegogo campaign. The story revolves around four incompetent losers, who are trained to save the world; when they accidentally stumble across a special alien power armor suit. I liked the special effects, and some of the humor, but ultimately I found it disappointing.

We learn, as the film opens, that Earth received a message, from peaceful aliens, decades earlier. After decoding it, we learned that we are going to be attacked, by evil aliens, and need to train someone to fight them. So a man, named Adam (Ritchson), is raised since birth, to be the 'Champion of Earth'. He will be sent a special 'power armor suit', by the peaceful aliens, to wear in battle. The ship containing the suit, is accidentally shot down, by four losers though. They then each become genetically attached, to different parts of the armor. So Earth's new plan, becomes to train these losers, to be 'Earth's champions'.

The movie kind of reminds me of the cult classic comedy flick 'SUPER TROOPERS'; except more geared towards kids. The film especially seems aimed at 'video game loving teenagers'. For that reason, I think a lot of the jokes are too silly, and somewhat forced. A lot of the performances are pretty weak as well (with a few exceptions). There is some witty commentary, about social media obsession though; and how it effects everyone's lives. The film also has some pretty cool looking special effects (as I said before), especially for such a low budget movie. It's not a complete waste of time, but it's nothing special either.

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Plot- This movie is filled with tons of cliché's with lazy writing. The characters are so annoying and forgettable.The only pros I give this movie is the humour, they're not great but good.

Acting- Burnie Burns performance was good, while the other side character performances are weak

Music- Nothing Memorable, it's the same type of music you hear in a teenage Sci-Fi movie

Cinematography- Camera work was OK, but there are few shaky cams that are so annoying. The special effects looks mediocre and you can easily detect it in certain scenes

Overall, this movie is still fun to watch even there is a lot of clichés.

So I'm giving this movie a 4/10

Lazer Team (2016) is nothing more than mindless entertainment. While I can't call myself a current fan of Rooster Teeth, I did quite enjoy them when I was younger. I'm sure people who are actively following them and have grown to appreciate their sense of humor will find this film enjoyable. Still, the major problems lay within the script. Everything is played out and predictable, the attempts at one-liners are flat, and the story isn't even compelling. The special-effects are shoddy, some are fine while some are horrendous. This is a low-budget sci-fi flick, so that's to be expected, but the film relies on those effects too heavily. The acting is fine and everybody at least seems to be making an effort. The action is also pretty solid, but it suffers from being too foreseeable. Clichés are also something to be found throughout to point to where it just blatantly copies from other source materials. 'Lazer Team' is kinda fun but is also kinda annoyingly unoriginal.

For their first movie, it's actually very good. The cinematography is better than expected, and the writing is actually funny and clever even though it's a tired idea. Not the most original of all topics, but its still quite fun to watch. So the big downfall is the acting. The acting isn't anything to call home for, but it's much better than most B or C level films. They probably would've done better if they went outside of the company, but I understand the loyalty. If you're a fan of Roosterteeth it would probably be better since you'll see all of the people you already know. I was neither disappointed nor blown away. It was exactly what I was expecting. If you go into the movie just having fun and not criticizing it too deeply, it'll be a worthwhile movie. Overall, it was entertaining but not the best film I've ever seen.I would recommend it to someone who wants to watch a funny, lighthearted movie, but definitely not to a critic or someone expecting a masterpiece.

I had high hopes for this film. Rooster Teeth is one of the best online content producers hands down. Lazer Team was not up to the storytelling brilliance RT (Rooster Teeth) is known for.

The story falls very flat on its face. It was trying to be cleaver but came off as so generic, it was impossible to care about what happened next. The main characters (Lazer Team) are very forgettable. At no point in the film did I care about what would happen to them.

The acting in the film is hit and miss. The Lazer Team characters are surprisingly well acted, besides a few scenes with Bernie's character. The side characters were pretty bad. With the exception of Alan Richson's character, all the acting felt like it was from an Asylum Syfy flick.

The special and visual effects went from bad to mediocre. The alien designs were pretty ugly and uncreative. There were also several points during the film were I noticed obvious green screen shots as well as chroma key errors.

There are a few positives I have with the movie. The jokes are hysterical. Rooster Teeth excels at making clever jokes that hit their mark. I do want to note that I did have an issue with "crotch shot" jokes that happened over and over and over again. The first 3 or 4 were funny, but when it got to 7 or 8 "crotch shot" jokes, I stopped finding them funny. One other positive I had with the film was the picture quality. For a film not being shot with Hollywood cameras, the Red 4K cameras look beautiful.

Overall, I went into Lazer Team to see a great film and laugh throughout the movie. I unfortunately didn't like the film and don't even think that as a movie it is that great. However, I did laugh at most of the joke and I did love the references to many of the Rooster Teeth characters.