1Up

There are so many faults in this movie it is hard to find a place to start. Firstly the acting, characters, directing, and writing isn't good. Every scene in the movie had so many cringeworthy lines in it and all the characters are either hyperbolized stereotypes or just ultra diverse pandering. Then there is the competitive gaming aspect of it. The way that the team starts just isn't real. Collegiate teams have lots of scouting and tryouts to join the team. Also there are very few women who play games let alone play enough to climb the ladder to pro. You actually need to be good at the game and high ranked. You don't just decide you want to start a team and recruit random people and hold interviews. Also you don't compete in the "collegiate esport league". Also you don't just "train" by drinking and playing nintendo 64 games. Then there is the game part. This is a real game, but as the movie goes on the game gets twisted and is just used as plot armor and the scenes with the chicken burning everything down and the blood character just morphing around are just not real. Overall. The movie is clearly just a stunt made by people who know nothing about the gaming scene. If they wanted to make a movie about diversity or sexism they should have just done that instead of masquerading their intentions with this movie.

At Barrett University, Vivian "V" (Paris Berelc) and Sloane (Hari Nef) are two students attending the college on an esports scholarship playing for Barrett's team called the Betas. Following one too many casually sexist comments from the team's other members lead by team leader Dustin (Taylor Zakhar Perez), V and Sloane quit the team and start their own team the 8-Bits with Wheelchair bound influencer Jenna (Lolita Milena), eccentric oddball Lilly (Madison baines), and flatulent LARPing enthusiast Diane (D. J. Mausner). The group of misfits approach History of Video Games professor Parker (Ruby Rose) who had previously worked as a game designer before a glut of harassment and death threats force her to leave the industry out of fear for her son's life and while initially reluctant eventually is convinced to serve as the 8-Bits coach. Now with their scholarships and livelihoods on the line, the team must band together to overcome their own idiosyncrasies, win the intercollegiate esports tournament, and beat the Betas.

1up comes to us from director Kyle Newman and screenwriter Julia Yorks. Newman is no stranger to films tackling fan culture such as his 2009 film Fanboys, while Yorks is more known for her work in children's animated TV such as The Adventures of Puss n' Boots or Trolls: The Beat Goes On. With a charged premise like sexism in gaming and clear allusions to things like Gamergate, 1up seems like something that could've been a provocative satire of a recurring deep rooted problem we see in this community, unfortunately in execution it's a rehash of mid 2000s comedy tropes that have long since been run into the ground and only has fleeting moments of thematic or emotional resonance.

The movie is basically Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story only with Dodgeball replaced with esports gaming, but unlike Dodgeball which took an inherently pretty silly sport like Dodgeball and made the fandom around it part of the joke, 1up takes something that's very real with esports gaming but it presents it in a way that's very broad and glib like an ordinary lowbrow comedy but also talking real world ills in this fandom such as Swatting which is used as setup for a fart/poop joke. As a comedy the movie goes to the school of "loud=funny" so the cast is filled with a bunch of types who are given one note and they play that note at full volume so. Characters like Diane and Jenna are basically repackages of characters you see Rebel Wilson/Melissa McCarthy play or various eccentric weirdo characters like Steve the Pirate only the timing and interactions feel very off and force and become grating after a while. The first hour plays in this fashion but thankfully it does dial back the abrasiveness in the last third where it becomes tolerable if not "good" and I did get some chuckles from sight gags such as a scene in the game where Lilly plays a fire breathing chicken. Most of the characters don't really get a chance to stand out which is a shame as Paris Berelc has shown herself to be a capable actress in other things but has nothing to work with here. The one performance/character who works is Ruby Rose as Parker who's basically an amalgam of various female gaming figures who were forced out of the industry through organized harassment campaigns and she's the only character who gets any emotional resonance as a character and frankly her backstory would've made for a better movie and take on this subject matter.

1Up is given rich potential and squanders it in the most lowbrow and wasteful fashion it can. While it does address or try to address real world problems in the gaming community, the way it handles them in such a broad and glib fashion ends up working against its point rather than for it. If you want to learn more about this type of thing, you'd be much better informed simply reading an article about the real world events that actually inspired this movie. If you want to see a comedy about gamers, watch The Wizard (the characters in the movie even stop to do so), it's not "good" but it's enjoyable.

Going into this film I did not expect much. The reason I has so little-expectations for the film was primarily due to the 1.9 IMDb score which, I must admit, I know is probably (at least slightly) review-bombed. Nonetheless, I still gave it a shot. Initially there was nothing particularly terrible. Of course the cinematography and production design were... poor... but It was at least mildly interesting. Then 1UP revealed what it truly was! CRAP! The character dynamics between the two leads; Sloane and Lee were un-interesting and trivial at best. The acting from both actress' is also shockingly under-developed and thought out. However, the script is so poor that I bet no A-list actor could've given a real shot at it, so perhaps the actress' do have talents that just aren't represented here. The supporting cast and there characters are akin to a troupe of stereotypes you may have found in a 90s DTV Bottom-of-the-dollar-bin teen attempted-comedy. There are extended periods where the groups are playing each-other and these parts are excruciatingly boring. I can't continue this review without pointing out two of the most annoying characters I have had the insincere opportunity of watching. Lilly played by Madison Baines and Diane played by D. J. Mausner. Both characters are equally annoying in their own rights but the worst of the two is by-far Lilly. Lilly is the 'weird,quirky' friend in the main group and her whole character is based around this. More one-dimensional than the perfect line. And Diane is the gross chick in the group. But I hope to never see that damn lilly actress 'Madison Baines' in anyhting ever again!!! Terrible film. May provide inspiration to like two people. That's it. To the other 100,000. Pure Pain. PURE TORTURE!

Production value was not the problem, it was more like the story and what they try to attend with this movie. It´s about a girl who founds an all womens esports team with a few non-professional gamers. At this point you can guess the whole plot already. At the beginning the´re really bad and then they rise and get better and all that stuff...Predictable. Screenwriting wasn´t any better, some dialogues are just cringe, some actions just not fitting. Feels like a B-movie, but not a good one. But I can see it that way, that the filmmakers were given the possibility to make movie, to get experience. Nobody can expect to be pro just in a minute. That´s why I am suprised with the production value, it´s not over the top, but still high for an amateur like movie.

Acting was ok, i guess they intended to overact a little.

The main reason, why this movie is not working out is that they don´t really have choosen a target group. I mean it is about gaming, you can make movie for gamers or you can try to get non-gamers, too. I guess they tried to get the whole audience, but it´s not working out. It´s difficult to get an whole audience, Free Guy would be a good example were it worked out, but this is an another level of filmmaking. If they just focused on gamers, they could´ve focused on a more advanced plot, built tension by using all what competitive gaming contains and not just building a rivaly between teams.

But in the end they missed the gamer audience as well as the non-gamers.

Still 3/10, because I like that they tried and they had the possibility to make this movie. If they learned from it and come up with more experience it was worth it.

3/10 - I will admit there were a few laughs courtesy of Paris Berelc and Hari Nef in between the constant cringe and near constant attempts to ripoff Pitch Perfect, but my biggest question is how did they manage to get so many big names for this and why these actors haven't fired their agents already.