I sponsored this movie. That was a long time ago, and I’ve followed James Rolfe’s progress as he worked on this. I especially liked one update he did where he discussed some of the more technical aspects of working on the movie - color correction, etc.
I didn’t have many expectations going into this. I thought it seemed odd that he felt that he had enough of a story to spread out to a feature-length project, but… he knows what he’s got.
I can’t say it’s a great movie. But it’s completely competent. He’s done a good job with his budget. Very, very good. But the problems that the movie has are actually unrelated to that.
There are a lot of complaints I see on IMDB about the poor quality of the script. There are a few script issues, but they aren’t nearly as bad as the reviewers think. The problem is that the cast isn’t quite comedically skilled enough to pull off the material. There seems to be some confusion about if the script is bad, and that’s what made it fall flat. No… the jokes are no better or worse than would be expected.
The story winds through a variety of odd places, and the normal AVGN sense of humor shows up throughout. James pays tribute to his usual influences (most obviously, Japanese monster movies). I get the sense that there wasn’t much thought put into tightening things up and editing things down a little.
There are two larger problems, and I completely understand why they happened.
1. The Nerd has no arc. The argument could be made that the Nerd reviewing E. T. at the end was his big character development moment. But that was a foregone conclusion. For a story centering on the Nerd, he doesn’t really do much. He’s a passive protagonist, and those are normally pretty boring to watch.
2. The movie portrays the Nerd as a reluctant voice for his fans. In the strangest way, the movie tends to treat his fans as pests. They’re annoying, they’re weird, and he doesn’t seem to enjoy interacting with them at all. This would be compensated for if the fans saved the day in some way, but… nope.
I actually think that James Rolfe has much more potential. He handles some of his shorter subjects much more carefully, and I think he could probably do an excellent horror movie, with a few caveats. First, he would need to either work with a forceful personality that really knows a lot about writing. Second, he would need to move away from paying tribute and making references, and focus on developing his own style.
All this is to say that James did a good job with this movie… but it’s easy to see the parts that would have done better.
Music was very good. I’m pleased, since I feel like Bear McCreary has been on auto-pilot since Battlestar Galactica wrapped. Sound… effects work… all the technical elements were generally great. (Although during the first car scene with rear-screen projection, I kept thinking that the color balance was off on the inside of the car.)
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