Ashens and the Polybius Heist

Let me preface this by saying I watched this with my partner for a date night. I am a regular watcher of NerdCubed, but do not watch Ashens. My partner has not heard of either youtuber.

The opening 20-30 minutes of the film were a bit slow and choppy feeling, like it was edited and changed quite a bit, but once you got into the 'jist' of it, the movie took off and it was PROPERLY hilarious.

Thinking I was impartial to it, I asked my partner and they loved it as well. If you enjoy dry British comedy, and nerd culture, this is a MUST watch.

There were quite a few points where both of us burst into rolling laughter on the bed. I even imitated a certain "lawn-mower" scene for them later that night as a bit of a cheeky joke.

Overall, WATCH IT. it's 8 bucks, it supports individual creators, and it's a proper laugh.

A decent independent movie. The previous Ashens movie was a good effort but you needed to be a fan of cult movies to appreciate it. This one however is really good. Wonderfull British humour and good acting. If you are into British humour and can appriciate the geeky theme then this movie will not dissapoint you.

The cast was well chosen and the story kept you interested. The characters had enough dept and all contributed to the movie. There was only one gag that seemed a bit out of place but I can easily look past that one.

Once again Ashens graces us with a legit film, featuring more geeky humour than ever before and hoping to dial everything ut to 11 for a knockout sequel.

Fortuneately this film is vastly superior to the first, which was more of an experiment to see if the concept of Stuart Ashen looking for weird put there gaming artifacts would stick. The first, if you remember had some bits that really worked and others that were just cringe inducing, but even so it was recieved well enough for a sequel.

The Polybius Heist already stands on better feet than it's predecessor, the acting has drastically improved across the board (there is an exception I will get to later) and while the overall goal of this film is pretty much the same as the first, the way that goal is written towards is really well done.

Now the acting exception. Daniel Hardcastle is awful in this film, I've no idea how he managed to get into this film, every line he reads is read exactly the same way and similar tone of voice, he cannot do subtlety or even clearly speak.

I'm someone who backed the crowdfunding campaign for this movie all the way back in 2018, so I'm very glad to have finally been able to see the movie!

I really enjoyed this film. More so than the first Ashens film actually, and I definitely think this one is more friendly to people who aren't familiar with Ashens' Youtube channel. It's not for everyone, but if you like this particular style of humour, you'll definitely have an enjoyable hour and a half.

This film set itself two very difficult goals.

The first - creating a comedy heist movie at all - it succeeds at very well. The characters are neither so competent that they are distant, nor so incompetent that the heist itself is unconvincing; the percieved difficulty of the heist is pitched just right, the characters' failing are understandable and identifable, and it strictly limits the amount of humor that comes from character incompetence. The production quality is also remarkably high, especially for the budget involved.

The second challenge is making a character-driven movie featuring YouTubers, who (regardless of acting ability) have the difficulty of their existing fanbases associating them wholly with their "YouTube mood". Ashens himself comes off best, due to his previous acting experience, his fanbase's knowledge of his previous films, and his dry-comedy theme; but as mentioned elsewhere, Dan Hardcastle clearly suffers from trying to play his YouTube persona "Nerd Cubed" in a way his viewers would expect (they even named his character "The Cube"), which leaves his character reacting to a disasterous development like.. well, a YouTuber reacting to an abrupt Game Over on a Let's Play video, rather than a person who is actually in imminent and increasing danger of going to prison for 20 years.

The difficulties of the second by no means overcome the success of the first, though, and the film works extremely well as a convincing heist with some genuinely hilarious moments.

There are a few down spots, though, in part caused by the film's habit of integrating meta-humour about directorial tropes and film-making at odd moments. This often comes up in the backgrounds or details of the film, sometimes so dramatically that it comes close to being its own CinemaSins reel, but when it gets pushed to the foreground it becomes more awkward. The scene where the villain has to pursue Ashens while both are moving extremely slowly through motion detectors probably sounded hilarious on paper but when actually filmed you realize it's just two people moving really slowly in gaits that don't make sense; it looks like a good chunk of that scene was edited out, for good reason.

By far the cringiest of these points was one which a sign inside the facility is written purely in Greek, entirely so that the (otherwise incompetent) Greek-speaking character accidentally recruited by the team can turn out to be crucial. I suspect this was intended as a parody of this trope in team movies, but with no explanation it comes across as so contrived as to just be a horrible example of that trope rather than a joke about it.

As previously stated, though, the highs and the general quality outweight the lows, and while this film will obviously appeal much more to fans of the YouTubers involved, to nerds, and to fans of Ashens' style of humor (whether or not they have heard of the man himself), it's a fun watch for anyone, especially those with prior experience of heist movies.