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.

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.

Being a huge AVGN fan, I have been waiting for this movie from the very first moment it has been announced. Unfortunately, for me the waiting was not worth it.

The movie commits the biggest crime any comedy movie can commit - it is not funny. Actually, it's kind of tired and boring and at times even cringe-worthy. The jokes are old and forced, the acting is mediocre at best and the pacing is way off. Do we really need to see all the Nerd praising every 5 minutes of the film? We know AVGN is famous. We get it, it was supposed to be self-conscious satire. But in order for it to work you need to use it for something, like plot development. But the movie goes nowhere with that, leaving the viewer wondering if it was really a satire or maybe an actual pointless narcissism. The characters are boooooring and no one really gets a proper development. The plot is unimaginative and it jumps all around, failing to focus on a specific event long enough to engage the viewer.

It feels like the film could have worked if the team just picked a direction they wanted to go. Like if they went full bat-sh*t crazy with it without holding back. Instead, the movie is stuck in this weird limbo between "intentionally so bad it's good" and "we're trying to make a real blockbuster". As a result we have a mediocre mix of AVGN show and some B-comedy movie with both parts interfering with each other and thus not working at all. The film has no identity.

You know those "movies" that team TGWTG make sometimes (like Kickassia)? Those are actually funny because it feels that everyone there are just having fun while going full insane. That's not the case with AVGN, and that's a bit sad.

If you are a fan, consider watching this, but don't expect much. If you are not really into the AVGN, then the movie has nothing to offer you at all.

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.

The Good- The plot of the movie (as ridiculous as it is) is actually interesting and somewhat intricate. Some of the modest effects work well and even when they don't it's funny anyway. There are a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments here.

The Bad- This movie is at least 20-30 minutes too long. Story arcs languish horribly instead of moving from point A to point B. The quizzical move to insert some generic sidekick instead of longtime friend Mike Matei is beyond me. The chemistry would have been far better had they gone that route. The jokes come at you like a tired pitcher's fastballs, no zip on them whatsoever. It's basically patch work AVGN phrases slapped together in a different order. The script could have used some tightening up and the dialog could have used a lot of work. There are some interesting set-ups that could have been funny but they let those opportunities go by the wayside. Also, he doesn't really seem all that angry here, it's more like the grouchy video game nerd.

The Deal- If you are sick in bed with the flu, then this wouldn't be the worst way to spend your time. It's ironic that he dedicates the movie to his fans and gives them a diluted version of the character. It is impressive that he got the movie made at all. And you can see James's influences throughout the film. The passion is there. However, the ability to pace a movie is not (somewhat surprising). It's not an awful movie, but much like a senior citizen with a walker, it takes awhile to get where it's going and when it does it's not sure what to do. Or, in the spirit of AVGN, it's like being constipated on the bowl for a half-hour and when you finally crap it comes out slower than words out of a post-retired Muhammed Ali's mouth. I think the AVGN well has been tapped.