James & Mike Mondays

I admit it: I'm a bit of a James Rolfe fanboy. I have thoroughly enjoyed most of what James has created over the past 20+ years. Like many, I discovered him through his Angry Video Game Nerd series and eventually explored his other work. James is a very talented creator; many of his non-AVGN reviews and short films are thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring. Many aspiring filmmakers consider James Rolfe to be the catalyst for getting them off their butts and finally making their movies. I consider myself one of them. I want to see him make a new (non-AVGN) original film that recaptures the spirit of his college films and jazzes it up with the skills he has honed since then.

What does this have to do with "James and Mike Mondays?" you might be asking. Well...watch his college shorts "Cinemaphobia" and "Legend of the Blue Hole," then watch "AVGN - Ikari Warriors," then watch whatever the latest episode of "James and Mike Mondays" is and you'll see the stark contrast. Where James' scripted productions contain great humor or interesting plots, J&MM contains two guys sitting on a couch and rambling. Occasionally there will be a humorous random thing, but this is not typical. It's unscripted so there is no opportunity to plan the content and make sure it will be interesting enough as a show...which is fine as long as you're good at improv comedy, but James has said in his documentaries that he's not an improvisational kind of guy. It's not yet another "Let's Play" video, a genre that is so shallow and done to death and flooded with participants that I don't care if I never see another one again. At the same time, it's not really about sparking a fun interaction between James and Mike either.

James and Mike Mondays doesn't really feel like anything at all, and that's my entire beef with it. It leaves the viewer with the impression that the videos only exist to keep YouTube views and watch minutes rolling in and to keep audiences engaged. That's totally fine as long as there's something compelling to watch in there, but there is very little about James and Mike Mondays that inspires me to watch the next "episode" and there is no re-watch value.

From a long-time fan of James Rolfe and an avid watcher of his productions, I feel like it's ultimately a waste of his talent and time.

The show features Mike Matei and James Rolfe (who is well known from his Angry Video Game Nerd web series) plays old video games from mainly the NES, SNES, N64, PS1 era. Sometimes they play through games, sometimes they just play game to show them to the audience. The show is mostly unscripted, but cut to make them shorter. There are a few exception, which are uncut.

Sometimes there are guests in the show like Bad Luck Bootsy. The show is free to watch on Cinemassacre's Youtube channel, and there is a new episode every Monday (what else did you expect?).

The episodes are fun, full of random jokes. Fun and nostalgia factor are both very high. The show is recommended for old-school gamers, AVGN fans, James Rolfe or Mike Matei fans. Oh and don't forget to mention, Bootsy kicks ass as a gamer.

Basically you take Two Best Friends and remove the hilarious riffing that they do and that's pretty much what you get.

James and Mike Mondays is a show where the two play games for a limited amount of time and what it amounts to is the two rambling about the game rather then making some funny jokes or for that matter a legit lets play...That's all there really is to it. To be honest it's nothing that we haven't seen before or for that matter something we should care about. The biggest problem I have with this is the fact that James and Mike aren't really that entertaining rather they just say what they're thinking and play the game. Mind you that's not always a bad thing because some people are very good about on spot comedy, but these two are obviously two that need some time to write some golden jokes rather then coming up with good humor on spot. Otherwise again, it's just the two rambling,. This review is short cause the overall show is shallow and uninteresting. You're better off watching other lets Look at's or Lets plays overall

Just watch something else on their site

James and Mike Mondays started out as a show that was kind of just there to pick up the slack of the fantastic Cinemassacre YouTube channel between the episodes of Angry Video Game Nerd, it now it's turned into a pretty solid little show in its own right, although it certainly has nothing on the Angry Nerd. It's really a very different kind of show, it's very plain, there's just James Rolfe and Mike Matei sitting there and talking as they play all kinds of games both old and new, but I find them fun enough to listen to, James seems like a very chilled out kind of dude when he's not in full Nerd mode, and the always lively and kinda scary Matei is hilarious when he gets all worked up and frustrated at a particularly tricky part of a game, but overall you can just really tell that these guys love this kind of stuff and I think that's what I personally like about it, I just like to watch this show and relax. Some of the best episodes are the multi-Part ones, such as the Batman one for the NES, a full playthrough where you certainly felt their pain! Not the very greatest that the awesome world of Cinemassacre has to offer but still a lot of fun, and regardless, for both retro movie and videogame buffs James Rolfe is still one of the best the internet has to offer, keep up the good work dudes! X