Rock Jocks

Hmm, if you ignore all the 1-review-only reviewers (who are often seen padding the reviews of obscure films with exuberant use of exclamation points and lack of content), "Rock Jocks" has a mostly lukewarm to negative response from IMDb. I'm not sure why that is because I thought it was a crowd pleaser. Take the absurdness of "The Office", pepper it with some immature humor (but funny I admit) à la "Southpark", add a goofy scifi vibe like in "Galaxy Quest", and throw in just a pinch of symbolic depth & quirky artistic flair (the Smoking Jesus scenes), like you might find in an early Tim Burton flick such as "Edward Scissorhands", and this is what you get. Whatever this is.

The story is about a secret government agency that shoots down rogue asteroids before they pulverize the planet. The comedy is that this agency is operated by a bunch of dysfunctional losers whom you wouldn't trust to valet park your Hyundai, let alone operate orbital satellites armed with planet-deafening lasers. The story takes place over the course of 12 hours, from 5pm to 5am, making up a typical(?) night shift.

The script is pretty funny and the acting is pretty good. Maybe too good in the case of at least one character who is so annoying you wish he would go stick his tongue to a frozen flagpole. Regardless of if you love em or hate em, all the characters are very vivid and identifiable, from the burned-out loser dad (the main protagonist) to the pesky British specialist who's trying to get them all fired, to the twisted old man (who excuses his utter crassness & vulgarity by saying "I'm old! I can say things like that!"), to the terminally uptight overachiever played by Felicia Day (absolutely loved her as the supervillain Panthera in the youtube series "Save the Supers"), to the nerdy whiz kid who is constantly getting abused in painful ways, to the annoying character mentioned earlier who does most of the abusing, to the refreshingly funny security guards whose entire screen time is mostly a dialogue about all the creative ways "motherf--r" can be used in a sentence (Bubba Gump shrimp style haha), to finally everyone's favorite character "Smoking Jesus" whom you just gotta see for yourself.

There are plenty of cute & classic pop culture references (Lord of the Rings, Terminator, Star Trek II, and probably a dozen others which, alas, I'm not quite nerdy enough to get) that spice up this funny script so that it never lags. So if you're looking to be entertained in an unapologetically inane way for 80 minutes, look no further than "Rock Jocks". Guaranteed to meteor expectations.

Employees for a secret organization that polices the skies for asteroids are threatened to be replaced by a computer unless they can justify the reason they are needed.

Could have been a cute little movie if Just Chon wasn't so annoying. This is another case of where a single character makes the whole move a very unpleasant experience (unless you're like five years old or something). I almost turned it off half way through.

The rest of the cast is pretty good. Its always nice to see Felicia Day. Jason Mewes seemed more like a "guest star" than anything else as his role is definitely a throw-away role and not even really needed. I think he was more or less added to have a somewhat big name on the cast.

Some of the special effects are better than average as well.

Unfortunately Justin Chon's "In-Your-Face" performance through 98% of the film makes the movie pretty much unwatchable. Did nobody on set realize he simply wasn't that funny?

It's not often that a low-budget movies manage to unironically entertain me, but Rock Jocks is the exception that proves the rule. I'll admit, I wanted to watch this because it looked cheesy, and on a few levels, it still is. There's one location, maybe about 7 people in the main cast, and the CGI isn't exactly Avatar, but this movie manages to use those limitations to its advantage. The movie takes place in an obsolete and underfunded secret bunker, and it's obvious that this overjoyed the production designer, who filled the room with all kinds of retro junk computers and panels. Since the characters never really leave the bunker, the cast size is actually perfect: everybody has their moment, and nobody is used too much. The makeup for the alien, Smoking Jesus, is amazing, and the guy who plays him is the guy who played all the monsters in Pan's Labrynth! This is how you make a low budget sci fi movie!

I drove to Houston last night to see the screening, and I'm going again in my hometown (Austin) tomorrow night! The movie is hilarious, and you should definitely give it a shot, as long as you don't mind profanity. Andrew Bowen was at last night's screening for a Q&A, and he said he thought the movie beat out South Park in the f-bomb total.

Profanity aside, the movie features some solid performances by Bowen and Felicia Day, as well as the one and only Doug Jones in yet another great creature role. I was a little disappointed that Jason Mewes and Robert Picardo, who were featured in the trailer, didn't play a bigger part in the movie, but they got laughs every time they were on screen. I can't wait to see what first time writer/director Paul Seetachitt does in his next movie!

When this movie hits, it hits the funny bone right on. And on the balance there's a lot more hits than misses with this movie.

The humor is often juvenile and obvious so don't watch this if you want subtle or wry. I think many females will enjoy this movie just as much as males will but the sexual humor makes it seem targeted to males of a certain demographic. What females will like is the female character portrayal gives as good as she gets. And the one liners are really funny.

The cast for the most part is well chosen, and their character's quirks all bounce off each other nicely. The only miss in the cast department is the government watcher guy, not that he was bad but in a movie like this where everyone is basically insane you kind of need even the straight characters to be a little deeper. I really liked Alien Jesus also.

This is a low budget movie, glaringly obvious, but at the same time it's basically dialog driven comedy so who cares really. It's just a fun movie, not a classic, but not bad.