Saturday, February 15, 2014

36 - Knights of Badassdom

    A group of LARPers inadvertently summon a succubus during a weekend event.
    Very fun.  But could have been a really good comedy.  There are a few missteps that bring it down a bit.
    There's a crudity to a bit of the humor.  This is typically something I don't mind, but this is an instance where the joke being spelled out actually pulled some of the humor from it.
    I've never LARPed, but I've gotten a sense of what the culture is like from the two documentaries I've seen.  What I've gathered is that most people have a certain sense of insisting on staying in character.  It's not so much a personal thing, as much as it's an act of politeness.  Breaking character hurts everyone's experience.  There are a few moments of breaking character, but most of them are perfectly fine.  What I don't like is the instances where an announcer calls out events in battle, and there are references that definitely count as breaking character.
    The other problem is a bit of a strange one.  The movie is firmly a comedy for most of it.  Once they summon the succubus, a body count starts.  That's okay.  Sometimes, death can be worked into a comedy in a way that lets it play well.  The problem is an event later in the movie.  The succubus is changed into a larger, much more powerful demon.  It kills a lot of people.  It's hard for me to guess, but I'd say about 20 people are slaughtered.  At this point, the movie feels like it changed gears, and changed over to into a horror comedy.  There's still an effort made to turn every death into a gag, but it just doesn't feel right.
    And yet, the movie is actually pretty good fun.  It doesn't seem to judge the LARP community at all.  It pokes some gentle fun, but there's a bit of affection for it as well.
    The ending is a little weak.  It wasn't actually bad, but I think the original song needed some vocal work that was more impressive.  But that's just a nit.

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