Kickassia

One must remember when it comes to amateur movies, there has to be a level of expectation set prior to the viewing experience. One of the biggest things audiences have to accept is that the budget is significantly lower than normal professionally made movies. This will obviously affect the look of the film in a number of ways. The idea behind it though is that the people working on it are putting in as much effort as possible to make their endeavor the best it can be. For the crew behind Channelawesome.com, there's no doubt that they are a group of people that love what they do. With each sub-section of the site having different internet personalities covering various mediums, the range at which this team can expand is endless. As flawless and creative as it sounds, being ambitious has its uphill battles and making a feature length movie is no easy walkthrough. With that said, sacrifices have to be made.

A very large component to this feature length movie that was renounced is the story believe it or not. It's funny how Doug Walker (AKA The Nostalgia Critic), the guy who can't stand bad movies, makes a movie with no story. What a paradox. The film is about The Nostalgia Critic wanting to takeover a 1-acre plot of land called Molassia. That's really all that it is and it's done rather quickly. The rest is the NC and his followers going through the stages of a dictatorship, i.e. - oppression, then revolution. It's very bare bones to say the least. Joining the NC are a number of other recognizable internet personalities like the Cinema Snob (Brad Jones), The Nostalgia Chick (Lindsay Ellis), Linkara (Lewis Lovhaug), Spoony / Dr. Insano (Noah Antwiler), Joe Vargas (Angry Joe), Phelous (Phelan Porteous), Film Brain (Matthew Buck) and several others. For the characters listed above, it's difficult not to enjoy who they play because they're playing who they are on the main site. They all have their own special qwerks that make them, them. The only possible downside to this is that if you don't view the site from time to time, the viewer may feel more alienated than familiar with the cast.

But aside from the actors' respective character roles, the writing once again suffers from a lack of any clear motivations or background info. The reason for The Nostalgia Critic to want to go stark raving world domination crazy goes largely unexplained. That is except for the fact of just starting small and then slowly taking over the world. But to be honest, it's out of character because Doug Walker is still The Nostalgia Critic, so why and when did he get so maniacally evil? An example of background information going unused is the character of Spoony with the alternate personality of Dr. Insano. Where did Dr. Insano come from? There must be an origin for him. Anyone watching this for the first time with no other prior channelawesome experience won't have a clue how Dr. Insano materialized. However, even with this second giant defect, the comedy saves this almost script-less movie.

There are certainly a number of laughs to be had here. Whether it be The Nostalgia Critic yelling at high pitches, Film Brain being overly dramatic, The Cinema Snob talking with a snarky attitude, Spoony being too paranoid or Phelous being super sarcastic, the actors looked like they had fun doing their takes. Plus, the facial expressions these actors make are quite hilarious. Another good point is when the cast breaks the fourth wall by acknowledging the budget the film was on. It's not clever but it still is funny. Either that or watching goofy fight choreography with stock footage punching noises that sound like it was taken off a Mortal Kombat video game. Heck, they even got The Angry Video Game Nerd (James D. Rolfe) for a quick, as he would call it an "obligatory cameo". Rightfully so and well said. The only other element that feels obligatory and also bad is the special effects.

Again, it's understood the budget was limited for this production but some of it really looks out of place. Maybe post-production was rushed? It just didn't look right in certain scenes. Then again, camera-work was decent for its finite budget. Cinematography by Rob Walker (Doug Walker's brother) maintains a steady hand for his shots and even gets a number of interesting action choreography. Although, it is hypocritical that there are several shots where the camera is hugging an actor's face. For anyone who doesn't know, Doug Walker loathes that kind of camera-work with a passion so how he let that go, I'm not sure. Weird isn't it? The final ingredient that worked in this film's favor was the music provided by Michael "Skitch" Schiciano. Accept for a couple scenes, which involved borrowed music, much of his composition sounded original. Again due to cost issues, there's a good chance that the way the music was orchestrated was on a very tight budget. Understandable and considering the final product, it deserves a pass.

For Doug Walker's earlier film entries under his alter ego The Nostalgia Critic, the end result is a watchable romp for its comedic moments, its diverse bunch of internet personalities, appropriate music and camera-work (although its special effects are quite shoddy). As for a story, a plot barely exists with little back-story or motivations fleshed out.

Words can't correctly explain how bad this movie is. Reading the snippets of quotes from the movie on IMDb, I thought it might be a worthwhile film to see. The dialog seemed quirky and looked to have a fair bit of humor behind it. Plus I'm easily a sucker for checking out films made by the average Joe with a camera, some friends, and too much time on their hands. The Gamers, Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising, and more popular films like Clerks are classic examples of when this concept works. Unfortunately for me and the hour and a half of my life that I will never get back, "Kickassia" is a true example of what happens when the concept fails miserably.

Though there are elements of humor to some of the dialog, the delivery quickly shows that none of the "actors" (and I use the term rather loosely) really have any business getting in front of a camera again. Writing...maybe, acting...never. I've seen better performances (and more believable sfx) by kids on YouTube with a camcorder and After Effects. If given to individuals that could actually act their way into the paper bag to begin with, there's enough humorous bits to make a rather amusing 15-20 minute short film.

To make matters worse, I did some checking and it turns out that most of the people attached to this film critique movies for a living (under the forum style names that their characters are named after). It boggles the mind that a group that analyzes movies and points out the idiosyncrasies and errors in them, could watch this waste of celluloid upon completion and think that it's good enough to unleash on the general public.

The only reason I give this two stars instead of one is due to the brief glimpses of humor within this mind-numbingly bad film and the fact that Lindsay Ellis (Nostalia Chick) is kind of cute.

In summary, if your thinking of watching this, pouring bleach in your eyes, watching linoleum peel, or banging your head into a wall repetitively would all be better uses of your time.

Remember when Spoony and the Nostalgia Critic used to be funny? When they seemed like regular, down-to-earth guys? After witnessing 'Kickassia', that seems like something that happened in another lifetime.

There were warning signs before, of course. Their previous one year anniversary special didn't bode well, but this film takes the raging Internet egotism and desperately unfunny in-jokes to hitherto unprecedented levels. Not just a failure as a film, this is a misstep of 'Love Guru' proportions, the kind of ego-stroking embarrassment that makes you reassess their previous work and wonder if they were ever actually that funny to begin with.

Yeah, so they're just online critics making something "for the fans", but most of these people critique films for a living and really should know better. It's low budget, but many films have been made for less and managed to throw decent acting, direction and lighting into the bargain, when Kickassia fails to get even the latter right. What jokes there are come off as forced and poorly delivered, when they're not being outright lifted from other sources.

Once a keen fan, I've been losing faith in TGWTG's material for a while now, and this really seals the deal for me. A sprawling epic of compressed awfulness that only the most die-hard of fans could ever enjoy. Avoid.

Doug Walker (Nostalgia Critic) and the rest of the reviewers from ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com come together in a collaboration for their first full length film comedy. As a result, any inside jokes referencing reviews will go over a new comer's head. I for one, only watch Doug Walker's videos and Lindsey Ellis' (nostalgia chick). The story itself is very silly and over the top, but seems to be missing the pacing energy of a comedy.

One must always remember that this is a movie with no budget and made by a bunch of internet amateurs. The story begins with Doug Walker decided to take over a one acre land called Molassia, which is apparently ruled by one man who dresses in an army uniform. They're is no acknowledgment of the fact that the man could just call the police to get rid of an army of internet geeks running around the land, or the fact that once these internet geeks aren't ruling over anything after taking over Molassia since it doesn't have any citizens. This is a very ridiculous premise that's funny at first, but the movie provides no pay off and milks down the joke.

Doug Walker and his team take over Mollassia by an ambush and rename it Kickassia. The ruler of Molassia disguises himself as another person to avoid fighting with the ThatGuyWithTheGlasses team. Doug Walker rules Kickassia with plans to take over the neighbor hood and later Navada.

Doug Walker, Film brain and Spoony deliver a delightful over the top performance, while the rest of the cast (15 people) are either hardly in the movie, or are forgettable.

The best way to see if a comedy is really funny, is if I remember it afterwords. For example, there are several very funny moments in Nostalgia Critic reviews that I always remember, and I will often think of at random times of the day.

The running joke that supplies the movie, is that several scenes are played out serious, but contain a line breaking the mood, or are serious while being over the top. This is a good idea, but doesn't work in a movie as long as Kickassia. Every scene is trying to be funny for the same reason, and uses the same comedy strategy that after the first half of Kickassia, becomes tiring.

Bottom line, there just weren't many laughs during the movie. I wasn't expecting anything spectacular. In fact, I had no idea there was going to be a full length collaboration as an anniversary. I didn't even know TGWTG was doing an anniversary video until I saw the video with Doug raping Ma-Tia (boy that sounded strange to type). So I virtually had no expectations at all. I was just hoping to be entertained and laugh, and the movie didn't deliver very much of that. I laugh more times watching Nostalgia Critic reviews then Kickassia.

Great film, has a lot of passion which is hard to come by in films now days. If you just want to switch off you brain and enjoy something I highly recommend this film.