Comic Book: The Movie

I was very excited to see this and sat patiently for two years while it spent months collecting dust on the Miramax shelves, finally being released direct-to-video. I'm in it--kinda. Since I was at the Comic-Con that year--I can see about a fourth of my face in one of the crowd shots--this added to the excitement. And I'm a comic fan, and a Mark Hamill fan and a fan of cartoon voices. So what could go wrong?

So I watched it, finally, and desperately wanted to like it. I mean, it was about comic fans! But...after the first five minutes or so the novelty wore off and I was stuck with a draggy, boring movie. The cast is game, but without much going on it gets a-mighty tedious. Still, it was nice to revisit a great con that I've not been to since two years after it happened.

For a much more entertaining evening, go to the second disk on the DVD package for "Behind the Voices," the hysterical symposium fans sat through to get themselves on film. They cut out most of it, (the guys doing the Animaniacs singing the Country song from memory, Billy West singing "Happy Happy Joy Joy) but it's still great. The movie: C+ The Other Stuff: B+

I give the movie itself 6 stars and the DVD extras 8 stars. This movie has its heart in the right place and does assemble some of the best voice talent around. It's great to see these people in front of the camera. I only wish that they had added some writers into the mix. This movie is mostly ad-libbed in the style of "Spinal Tap" and other Christopher Guest movies so some of the jokes work, and others don't. Since everyone is trying to be "realistic" almost all of the jokes are subtle so the inattentive viewer is likely to miss them.

I found that the DVD extras are the best part of this DVD. There are two disks, so there are a lot of extras. There are lots of helpful bios in case you missed some of the many cameos of industry insiders and other "masked" performers. The deleted scenes are actually pretty good (for deleted scenes). The best part is the real convention panel with all of the talent on stage telling stories and doing voices.

Bottom line, if you love comics and animation, and even video games, then see this movie just to learn about the talent. Use IMDb to see what some of these people have done and you will be amazed. If you aren't into comics then this movie might be interesting to you just to learn about a different culture.

Well, not really..........BUT it sounded like a good grabber line.

Actually, it seems as if their creator gave this a "thumbs up", since he allowed them to use that vignette of him. I really didn't realize how much he'd look like "Bob".

Although I was taken aback at how much Luke Skywalker has aged, I did enjoy seeing him still standing up for old-fashioned values. I do enjoy the X-Men, and the Titans, I still have a very warm spot in my memory for Captain Marvel, Aquaman, and The Flash. And I still prefer Robin to Nightshade.

As far as the quality of the movie - it did drag quite a bit in places (Day 1 seemed to take up half the length of the movie) and they skimmed over Leo's realization that the old "hildhood friends" were fake...I'd like to have seen mor of Sid and Johnathan.

I really wanted to enjoy this movie (being a comic book geek and all) but it was just too long and you can see that 90% of it was improve and the thing with improve is that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So the movie is mostly the actors throwing jokes at a wall and seeing what sticks and thats very sad because these guys are really funny. The best voice's in show business today and its a shame that Hammill could not channel that.

I admire Hammill, i mean he really knew his comic book history here. But i think like most comic fans he got hung up on one tinny thing and just grinded it to dust. Loosing the character from the journey of comic to movie is great but it doesn't hold a movie together.

It is admirable that they didn't make fun of the fans. In movies based on the comic book culter people tend to take the easy way and just point at the fans and laugh at how they are so "weird". Its very rare in this movie that this happens, Its more like the "normal" people are the weird ones and thats a breath of fresh air.

Most of the actors did a great job, The camera guy was really stealing the show but i think that Hammill should have railed him in more because too much of a good thing is not good. Billy as always did a great job but seemed to loose focus most of the time. Hammill of course was very good and probably the best of the bunch but i think he didn't take a step back and looked at the film in an objective point of view.

The cool thing about this movie guys is that if you buy the DVD you wont be wasting your money. Hammill does allot of extensive interviews about the history of comics and the subculture. Actually I'm quite sad that he cut it out of the movie when other things should have been cut instead. Hugh Heffeners interview about his history with comics is fascinating! Bruce Campbell comes off very funny in the extended interview, Some deleted scenes were very good, like the comic guy who almost seemed despondent after printing up his comic and going all the way to sandiego, spending money he really thought that he would make back and just to be shunned really makes you choke up a little. But probably the funniest and best special feature is the panel they hosted about doing voice work in animation, its worth the price of the DVD alone.

So all in all, i think that the movie deserves a 6/10

I don't understand -- I like comic books, but I don't love them. I know some of the players in the industry (Stan Lee, Paul Dini, etc.), but not personally and not all of them. But this movie just SUCKED. The female and male studio execs were annoying, the cameraman was lame and even Billy West pulls out some stupid, creepy performance. Mark Hamill is best when he's excited about comics and the rest of it plays out terribly. I paid for this and will be going to the store to return it. Jeers, Hamill, jeers.