Aaron's Review Thread

[Ned]

So you want to see more of the police, ey? Stay tuned for Boys In Blue, Aaron.

Also, that Pocket Rocket thing... you just have to have seen The Death Commandos to appreciate it. Which reminds me, I need to send it to Crappy Klown for hosting...

[Aaron Haynes]

A New Kind of Airport
Directed by Warren Wagner

Encouraged by his success with The Totalitarian Blueberry and The Protest as short, concept-based films made in a short amount of time, Warren takes the Indie 3DMM idea and runs with it....in entirely the wrong direction. I'm in a pretty frustrating position reviewing this film, because he offered to let me testview it just before release, but I turned him down because I was...well, I was seriously hung over. If I'd known how unpolished his final version of the film was, I'd have told him not to release it. A New Kind of Airport is one of the few movies under that oh-so-elusive category of "bad but interesting"; it does almost everything wrong, but through the length of the entire runtime you are distinctly and painfully aware of how good it should have been.

As of this writing, I have not seen HAIL TO THE CHIEF yet, a movie written by Warren and directed by Mike Storch, using the same black-and-white effect displayed here. I have more hope that that one uses it in an interesting way. A New Kind of Airport is a story....well, not really a story, more of a conversation between a man with extreme (and dangerous) racial prejudices, and a man on the cusp of being swayed in that direction. We learn that an Arabian man was just there, and left his briefcase behind; the first man venomously points out all of the most typical stereotypes about Muslims and suspects that it's probably a bomb. The second man is one of those kinds of people who doesn't think about the problems of the world very often (or just doesn't think very often, period), and is easily swayed to the first guy's point of view simply because he is saying things and seems to believe them.

However, while their conversation builds and is clearly intended to show how stereotypes reinforce each other and end up leading to more drastic and ignorant actions, the movie is constructed literally out of four camera angles: a dead-on shot of the bench and the two men on either side, a dead-on closeup of the first man on the left, a dead-on closeup of the second man on the right, and a dead-on closeup of the briefcase at their feet. Wagner cycles the angles with increasing predictability, and the two men so lazily animated that they never actually face each other while they're talking. In a film that's supposed to be about stereotype and ignorant speculation and how persuasive the easy, hateful solutions can be, the direction renders the entire thing into something far sillier and more simpleminded than it has any business being.

As I watched, new possibilities for camera angles crept up in my mind. A shot underneath the bench, looking toward the man on the right, and tilted so that his legs are visible, so that they turn slightly to face the first man as he asks, "You think so?" A profile shot of the first man from the center of the bench, lounging back and making lazily moronic statements, the airport a busy place behind him. Even a cut to a slightly tilted closeup the second man, who turns slightly to listen as the first is talking. There's so much possible that this script could have suggested about ignorance and persuasion and all of the themes it seems to try to tackling, and the direction pounds it flat at every corner.

The dialogue is unfortunately indicative of a continuing thorn in Warren's side as a writer: a militant insistence on using "fuck" and "shit" for no apparent reason and in the places in lines where it sounds the most gimmicky; a painful lack of subtlety in expressing the themes of the film through the characters' mouths; a weak grasp of what real conversations sound like, specifically in making characters seem like people and not just tools for the screenplay. He has a great voice as a writer, an awesome potential to make things that speak to people, but it was impossible to listen to the dialogue and not imagine the process of writing the script, of Warren writing what these characters are saying. I'm seeing the movie, but I'm also seeing him writing it. You feel like he's hovering just out of the borders of the screen, like a puppetmaster.

I mentioned earlier that Airport was a step in the wrong direction for Indie 3DMM. What I meant, specifically, was that "less is more" is a philosophy that can only be applied as long as the movie does justice to the material. Jason Ruiz can crank out Johnny Samsinite in one sitting and it becomes a cult classic because all the movie has to be is funny, emotive, and weirdly touching, which Ruiz's voice acting handles at least 80% of. A film like A New Kind of Airport practically demands subtlety, timing, good camera angles, and directorial precision. The missed potential practically bleeds right out of every frame in this version.

Critical Score: 35/100.
Personal Score: 40/100.

[Warren Wagner]

Thanks for the review man. I was basically expecting that and I was actually having doubts about releasing it, but I made the wrong decision I guess. People often comment about "fuck" and "shit" being used in my scripts too much, but I don't see it that way because I use those words that much in real life. As do my friends and some of my family. I will try to do better on the next one. Thanks for reviewing it Aaron.

[Tuna Hematoma]

Bird Sanctuary you douche.

[Ned]

Sanity Clause, at your convenience.

[Aaron Haynes]

Originally Posted by Warren Wagner

Thanks for the review man. I was basically expecting that and I was actually having doubts about releasing it, but I made the wrong decision I guess. People often comment about "fuck" and "shit" being used in my scripts too much, but I don't see it that way because I use those words that much in real life. As do my friends and some of my family. I will try to do better on the next one. Thanks for reviewing it Aaron.

It wasn't so much that you shouldn't release the film, it's just that the direction worked against what you were trying to do. The thing about indie filmmaking....about very focused, subjective stories like this, that involve one encounter or one conversation or something incredibly specific, is that your camerawork and pacing are just as important in getting your message across as the dialogue. In TTB your direction and visual style were limited, but they worked; we had closeups of the man, closeups of the blueberry on the floor, only the blueberries and her lips any color other than shades of gray, and generally decent cuts and camera angles. In Airport, the black and white is blurry, I'm not sure if it achieves what I think you were trying to have it achieve, the angles are dead-on and pound flat any depth in the conversation because the characters are portrayed in this 2D plane facing the same direction. What I'm saying is that it needed a lot more than a day on the directorial front, not that it shouldn't have been made or released altogether.

[Aaron Haynes]

Bird Sanctuary, Sanity Clause, and Hail to the Chief are on the way. Then Derelict, then I'll start working backwards again (and taking requests, if you want to see something reviewed).

[Demented Ferret]

I just realised you never DID do a Mean Bread review.

Just make sure you review the next one, k?

[Digital Taco]

Originally Posted by Aaron Haynes

then I'll start working backwards again (and taking requests, if you want to see something reviewed).

.

[Slade]

Ah! Now the LazyShit system is broken! Nooo!

[Aaron Haynes]

Yeah, all of the links were made on the old board, rendering them useless here.

[Salter]

Achoo

[Demented Ferret]

Originally Posted by Digital Taco

.

I'm not even ON the list.

[Aaron Haynes]

STEEL: The Complete Saga
Directed by Pogo
Written by Tom Bown/Red Scorpion

STEEL is one of those rare project concepts that become funnier and more entertaining the more elaborately conceived they are....up to a point, where the extra effort and polish starts to seem too seriously applied, creating an uncomfortable disconnect between the hilariously bad plot and the obvious work Pogo was putting into it. It starts off great, contains some hilarious voice acting, brilliant joke-movie-esque visual gags, and then the momentum promptly dies. After the opening titles, as the minutes tick by, you can sense with every frame the doomed nature of the premise. STEEL, by now a legendarily retarded plot concept by Tarssuin/Red Scorpion, seemed like the perfect setup for Pogo's third parody film, following Replay: Replayed and KRB Revival, but no amount of polish or attempts at meta-humor can draw anything new out of the one-trick-pony plot. You laugh several times, but at the end it all just feels kind of hollow.

For those unfamiliar with the "story," STEEL is a killer and a great fighter, who embarks on a brain-breakingly stupid adventure at the request of other killers. I would say that the wheels of the plot grind and turn right out in the open for all to see, but that would be giving the premise far too much credit. STEEL, as a literary work, doesn't have gears, or wheels, or axles, or any sort of metaphorical machinery that could be used to describe the sequence of events that occur in it. It doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as something so advanced as a wheel. In a scale comparing movie plots to levels of civilization, Killing Ramza Brave could be in the stone age, and Replay in some still-developing hunter-gatherer society, but STEEL is back in the primordial ooze. I hesitate to even say that things occur in the movie; it's more that the movie tells us they're happening.

To this end, STEEL is fascinating to watch in the way a train wreck is fascinating to watch, and this could be both its allure and its ultimate failing. Red Scorpion's premise describes STEEL and his adventures in such a naively matter-of-fact way that you can't help but just stare. Why do people want STEEL's help? Because he's a killer. He's a killer because he kills people. There's also a distinction between being a killer and a great fighter. STEEL is both, which must make him a special person indeed in this depressingly retarded universe. And of course the awe-inspiringly stupid leap of logic Red makes in explaining why killers would kidnap STEEL's family finds its way into the movie, though in a somewhat anticlimactic way. Tom Bown's script takes the flat matter-of-factness of the original premise but kills the endearing nature of Red's naive lack of imagination. The movie ends up reading to you, blankly reciting the words without doing much funny with them. I lost count the number of scenes that ended with STEEL spouting plot-advancing dialogue. Come on, who gives a shit about the plot? So many scenes in this movie fall depressingly flat because it's just a literal interpretation of what Red wrote in the STEEL thread, as if we're supposed to find a straight reading of the material funny by itself.

Not that Pogo doesn't try. It's almost painful to watch, as you can almost see his realization that this material is not enough to hold a movie together, that no amount of jokes can make it an overall positive experience, that he can stay in and keep swinging all he wants, but it will ultimately just make it a polished failure with more bells and whistles. The effort put into this project on the directorial front is exceptional. He takes the flat script and substanceless premise and finds hilarious ways of flaunting what a bad movie they inevitably make. The HOUSE OF STEEL, the family walking around in circles in the house, the absolutely terrible fight scenes, the insulting ease in which STEEL is captured because the premise requires it, the elaborate camera arcs and turns in a simple conversation scene are all staples of the fun he has with bad movies. Sometimes he (or Bown, I suppose) pushes a little too far; if STEEL isn't very interesting as a straight read of the plot-advancing material, he definitely doesn't work very well when he points out logical problems in the premise.

Which is the underlying problem of the movie. The concept is funny, endlessly fascinating, and captures that weird sense of schadenfreude when a movie or premise is so bad you just can't help but revel in it. But at the end of the day, it can only be vaguely entertaining. You can't really bring it to life. It has all the lasting appeal of poking a dead animal, of repeating a popular catch-phrase in the company of friends who were there when it was first uttered: you know it, they know it, and you both know that you both know it, so why say it? STEEL will interest you to the extent that your curiosity behind the legend holds out. Once you've been brought up to speed, you'll quickly want to find something else to do.

Critical Score: 53/100.
Personal Score: 55/100.

[Digital Taco]

MY THEORY: BOWN RUINS EVERYTHING

[Aaron Haynes]

He's a notorious underachiever at least. I always feel bad bashing his work because I proofread most of his scripts ahead of time and said, "Yeah, that seems competent", and it takes seeing the movie to realize how many possibilities were missed.

[Aaron Haynes]

HAIL TO THE CHIEF
Directed by Mike Storch
Written by Warren Wagner

Now this is more like it. HAIL TO THE CHIEF, released at the same time as A New Kind of Airport, deals with race relations, is done in black-and-white, and was written by Warren Wagner. That's where the similarities end. Where Airport was crudely directed, overexaggerated, and consistently sabotaged its potential, HAIL TO THE CHIEF is subtle, pensive, emotive, and expertly directed. The black-and-white looks fantastic and actually fits the mood and themes of the film. And when you consider the laughably pathetic history of movies about racial tension in the 3DMM community, HAIL TO THE CHIEF seems even more impressive.

Describing the plot without giving away the emotional surprises it carries is tricky. It may actually be impossible. The premise in the thread reads: "A man is caught between his race and his country, friend and father, and is forced into an unspeakable situation." That's better than any description I can come up with. The movie sounds like it would be about choices, but from the outset, it appears that the choice has already been made. So, through the main character's monologue, the movie communicates themes of resolve, guilt, rationalization, duty, and principles. Heavy stuff, but Warren doesn't pound it down our throats. We're let in on the situation, and without any emotional outbursts or declarations of What This Film Is About, we're given a cold, calculating run-down of the facts and the man's musings about what's about to happen. When the movie ends, we think about the other possible outcome. Would it have been more daring, or would it make everything too cynical? Or isn't the premise itself already cynical enough?

I don't know. The situation is certainly a bleak one, and I found myself questioning the decisions the main character had made; not from a moral standpoint, but from a screenwriting one. The lack of persuasion of his friend, the intelligence of this man, and the strength of his convictions make me doubt he'd engineer what he describes at the beginning of the movie. I chalk this one up to the somewhat weak scene in the diner, which is the one rough spot in the film. For the most part, the strength of the character, aided by Justin Wawrzonek's excellent voice work and by the quality of the v3dmm model used to portray him convince us. He's obviously a good man with good intentions, and we can buy that he's made a horrifying decision. This theme of loose principles in the hope of achieving what one believes to be positive things pops up in A New Kind of Airport, as well, viewed from the opposite direction.

A thought I had while watching this movie, and one I've found myself considering in most of the v3dmm films I've seen, is just how much new models and techniques affect the subtle aspects of filmmaking with this program. Specifically, how we respond to it. To what degree was I more affected by the main character because it was a unique character model? Certainly if it had been Charlie, it would have been much harder to take the story seriously -- but why so? More because of the goofy grin and cartoony visage, or more because we've been staring at the actor for ten years and our brains automatically make assumptions about what kind of character this is, and what kind of movie this is? With such a radical change like v3dmm, can something as seemingly simple as a new character model completely change the way characters come across in movies? Were Mike and Warren thinking about this when they wrote and directed it? Accidental or not, the actor for the unnamed main character is expertly crafted and adds a level of subtlety and authenticity to his emotional role in the film. If it had been Charlie, or Bino, or Bo, it probably wouldn't have worked. And it's kind of eerie that this revelation is coming to me in a film about stereotypes and race relations.

I thought of Liquid Sunshine at the end of my first viewing, and found that an odd thought. But the similarities seem to hold true; both are narrated as an inner monologue by a depspondent main character, both feature somber, matter-of-fact dialogue, and both end with a bittersweet revelation for the character and the audience both. I don't know if Mike was thinking along the same lines as Jon or found inspiration from LS, it was just my closest point of reference for the emotional tenor of this film. While flawed (the dialogue in the diner with Michael is a little hackneyed, and Justin's delivery on this first line in that scene made me cringe with how stilted it felt), it's more affecting than I'd expected, which is a sure step forward for Mike and Warren both. Mike's films have a pattern of being dark and emotionally creepy, but rarely poignant in a way that goes beyond surface style, and Warren's writing has a way of delving into complex and creative premises but doesn't quite bring them to life. In HAIL TO THE CHIEF, they've both managed to hit solidly. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

Critical Score: 88/100.
Personal Score: 90/100.

[Warren Wagner]

Awesome man! I wrote this script in the summer. It took about ten minutes to write. I didn't do anything about it for some reason, but when I heard Mike wanted something to do, I thought about how his style would work with this. So I showed it to him and luckily enough he liked it. I am glad I didn't have to fucking direct this, because I would've messed it up. I need to thank Mike because he has shown me what an indie 3DMM movie should be. He used good direction, interesting angles, and yet, still kept it simple. I will certinly look at this next time I open 3DMM. Thanks for the review.

[Scarecrow]

Awesome man, thanks. I'm glad Warren gave me this script. It was a fun movie to make.

[Aaron Haynes]

Sanity Clause
Directed by Ned Carlson

Where most 3DMM directors have half-completed major projects sitting on the shelf collecting dust and occasional microscopic additions to their runtime, Ned Carlson keeps up a moviemaking pace that's right out of the nonexistent golden years of the community, when major releases came in batches of two and three a week. Nowadays it sometimes feels like you're lucky to get that many individual viewers. While reviews and general response have dropped off while people complain about the decline of the community like the reasons are some unconnected mystery, Carlson consistently and doggedly puts his money where his mouth is, releasing worthwhile feature films by the bucketfull. The CNCW universe is the most densely populated high-quality series you've probably never heard of, a still steadily-growing library of good-natured, well written, expertly paced movies about characters who would be corny if they weren't so damned endearing. Sanity Clause is the latest addition to the CNCW family, and from the admittedly small number I've seen, it's the best of the bunch.

The story opens with two characters set apart from the crowd I've been familiar with up until now, Dirtbag, Gramps, Ronji, and the gang from Deck the Hacks and Talk and Tampering. I've read various bits about Frankie and Gus in Tom Bown's various hype threads for Boys in Blue and Theatrically Threatened, but this is the first time I've seen one of their movies. I have to say, this character set seems surprisingly much stronger and more solid from a plot and chemistry standpoint. Frankie is bombastically cheerful and sports an amusingly transparent air of sophistication, which evaporates the moment he gets flustered or his self-absorbed nature shines through. Gus is....well, Gus is kind of retarded, in that enthusiastic and excitable way that often skirts the line between amusing and annoying, but usually falls on the amusing side once you've gotten used to him. Side characters are found in the robot, who seems to be borrowed from the other side of the CNCW universe, amd Beachball, Gus's brilliantly named dog, who is at least as smart as he is.

I'm getting sidetracked. The plot (and there definitely is one, and not just in the "clothesline-for-wackiness" that most 3DMM comedies employ) involves a flashback to a particularly nutty Christmas adventure Franke and Gus had years back. During a surprisingly well-done sequence involving a driving lesson gone sour, the pair are pulled over and arrested, but unknowingly thrown in an insane asylum instead of a jail cell (though I have to admit I'm a little unclear on how they could completely miss the claims of a prosecutor that they're both insane at their own trial). While Robot and Beachball work on plans to get them out, Frankie falls in love with an asylum worker during numerous escape attempts and Gus begins to hallucinate that bounty hunters are after him. All this escalates in an exaggerated but not painfully over-the-top way; not an easy balancing act, especially when it comes to movies in this community. Sanity Clause progresses like an episode of Looney Tunes might, piling wacky developments on top of each other and culminating in a revelation or two that would be improbable in a saltier comedy like Moderately Confused, but feels right at home in this consistently good-natured universe.

The thing that always gets me about the CNCW films is how easily they could be adapted as TV episodes in an ongoing series. They're chronological as far as I can tell, but not quite episodic, as each installment is kind of a special adventure given more care and attention than most basic premises for sitcoms or cartoons would be, but the characters are broadly and amusingly drawn, the situations and conflicts comical and lighthearted but strong enough to serve as a plot, and everything is neatly and quirkly resolved by the end. Sanity Clause in particular is a step above the rest, and marks a surprisingly large jump in Ned's writing ability, as the whole thing is much more solid from a pacing standpoint than Deck the Hacks 2. The directing is also vastly improved, never going beyond a basic tracking, zooming, or panning shot, but I was surprised by the number of sequences that depended on a certain sequence of shots or camera moves to work effectively, and actually got them. Many movies, not just some earlier CNCW material, haven't taken the time and planning to go that extra step, and it makes quite a difference in the overall solidness of the work. The driving scene at the beginning and the confrontation in the town square at the end of the movie in particular have a kind of directorial polish I didn't know Ned was capable of, and wasn't expecting.

I had very few issues with the film, overall. I don't think it ever really takes a bad step. The beginning is a little slow and the exaggerated personalities may be a little off-putting considering the kind of content this community is used to, but once it gets going, it's hard not to get sucked into its rhythm. There are a couple of weird moments, like the seemingly mute Nurse Jane (though, to be fair, it fits uncannily well as a counterpoint to Frankie's bombast), and the dancing scene, which is ultimately funny thanks to the timing of the other patients but still comes off as a little odd (I guess you could blame 3DMM's default actions on that). These are the kinds of things I notice in hindsight, and serve more as personality quirks than off-key spots. The movie has a snap and crackle to its pacing and atmosphere that I would say 99 out of 100 3DMM comedies fall just short of, entertainment value notwithstanding. It's vibrant, it's alive, and it secures Ned Carlson as the most productive and rapidly improving director in the community as far as I'm concerned. I'm still smiling.

Critical Score: 91/100.
Personal Score: 94/100.

[Aaron Haynes]

Okay, I think my order is gonna be: Bird Sanctuary, Mean Bread, Echondria: Prologue, and Derelict, then I start pulling them from earlier years. Taking requests too.

[Aaron Haynes]

Well, shit, this is why I left Bird Sanctuary alone for so long, apparently.

Bird Sanctuary, The
Directed by Tuna Hematoma and Heavy J

If there's one life-changing lesson I had to take away from Bird Sanctuary, it is this: Never make a movie that's less interesting than your personality in the community. Call me a cynic, but Tuna's notoriety in the community works against him rather violently here, overshadowing most of the comedic possibilities of the movie and constantly reminding me throughout its runtime that he has made far better, funnier, and more deserving of his specific talents and sense of humor. To this end Bird Sanctuary ultimately works against itself even when it transcends the basic joke movie premise that got Jon Barton so snippy in his infamous review. When it's being lowbrow and intentionally lazy, you smirk and allow Tuna the self-indulgence, but when its transient "epic" sensibilities return to the forefront and the plot comes back from its vacation, it only clashes with the crappy-but-funny style and reminds you of what Tuna could have done with this movie if he'd made it on the big scale he half-heartedly keeps coming back to. Bird Sanctuary tries to have it both ways and ends up second-guessing itself to death.

I know, I know, I've been promising Tuna a somewhat positive review of this movie for something like eighteen months now. I enjoyed it on a basic entertainment level back when it came out, but even then it never really came together in my mind, and I can't remember ever feeling genuinely amused by its antics. It's one of those movies where I want to give the director the credit for the movie, but it's such a botched opportunity and hurts itself at so many corners that it would only be a sympathy review. Even so, I'm reluctant to bash, as Barton pretty much covered the straight review of Bird Sanctuary's narrative failings and wasted comedic potential and all that in so many negative words. I can't bring myself to feel very strongly about the narrative side roads Tuna keeps going down to get a joke or two, and what seems like a lack of faith or, really, interest in the movie as a whole. He obviously cared about it at one point, and thought it would be a fun project to do, but at the end of the day it feels phoned in, haphazardly assembled from the pieces he and Heavy J were inspired enough to actually finish.

The story would sound ridiculously complex in a serious attempt to describe it. The fact is that there's a main plot that comes into focus every once in a while, but only so the movie can end at some point or another. A mad scientist has performed experiments on his canary Bobo, and something goes wrong, turning the bird evil and giving him extraordinary powers, which he decides not to use in favor of pooping on everything he can. Meanwhile (and by "meanwhile", I mean "when the plot feels like it"), an Arabian pot-seller named Tarbash is blamed for one of Bobo's poop attacks and has a conversation with a copy of his Ramu actor inside of a default pot in the default cave scene. Also, some cops are tracking the canary, and the mad scientist and his admittedly funny gay lab assistant pop up occasionally, once to advance the plot by creating a killer superpowered cat to take care of the canary. Then there's a renegade cop, and a Bongo character who waits for the bus, and Tuna and Qaz make an appearance at one point, because why not?

Actually, it feels like Tuna is everywhere in this movie, which again is the main problem it has. It's impossible to seperate his community persona from the characters, and the whole thing is just more confusing because half the time he isn't even trying to do it himself. Several characters he voices simply become extensions of his half-assed "do I really want to be here" comedic monologue, only not as funny and kind of jarring. Some individual moments are amusing, Tuna's acting talent makes several lines funnier than they'd normally be, and the lowbrow humor got some actual laughs from me (the gratuitous shot of the cat's pink asshole in one of the lab scenes comes to mind). I found myself appreciating several really good moments, but as soon as I try to widen my scope beyond specific instances and think of even individual scenes, much less Bird Sanctuary as a movie, they seem to constantly be at odds with each other, like Tuna just ended up throwing the ingredients together and hoping for the best.

And that's what it all comes down to. It's a jarring film, oscillating between no-effort jokes and animation and occasional attempts at bringing some kind of, you know, movie together, and the friction ruins whatever good vibe Bird Sanctuary's got going. The word "salvage" came to mind several times, and I couldn't help but feel that Tuna started a project he really didn't want to finish or work on, and he doesn't want to be here, and the characters don't want to be here, and the end result is something we acknowledge for its effort and occasional good moments, and then leave behind to the 3DMM website archives as quickly as we can so we don't do the uncomfortable analysis on it that turns out reviews like this one.

Critical Score: 52/100.
Personal Score: 45/100.

[Ned]

Thanks for the review, Aaron. It's good to hear from The Best that the movies are getting better.

[Aaron Haynes]

The 3DMM Game Show
Directed and Organized by Tom Breed

The 3DMM Game Show does what the massive collection of community-themed talk shows have failed to fully do up to this point: It captures the insanity of community personalities in movie form precisely and hilariously by simply letting the insanity happen, rather than trying to stylize or put some kind of polish on it. This isn't a new idea, but Tom Breed is able to ringlead this crazy circus in a brilliantly balanced way, building his game show format in a way that lets the contestants' irreverence add to the joy of the movie rather than subvert some rigidly structured plan. When I first read the chat transcript, I recognized his ability to let the contestants take charge of the flow of the conversation without constantly forcing the show back into the focus, but the finished movie takes that craziness and builds it directly into the framework of the proceedings. I never imagined I'd see the community's penchant for self-parodic retardeness translated into voice and film, but here it is. When Taco says "OH GOD EXPLAIN THE BLACK BOX :O" in the chat, every bit of the implied lack of self-control is captured, as his actor (an edit of the Slam model with Frank Evans' face on it) starts rapidly turning back and forth, his outstretched hands repeatedly smacking Denny Betterman, standing next to him. The comic energy of the movie is astonishing.

The entire film was scripted verbatim from the chat transcript of Tuna, Breed, Taco, Denny, Chippy, and Ferret going through the gameshow questions, and every bit of high-octane stupidity you might expect from that crowd stuck together in one chat room is gleefully included and portrayed in brilliantly creative ways. I didn't know it was possible to perfectly capture Taco saying "*is fat*" as a visual gag, but there it is. And the visual gags themselves were the most surprising part of the finished product. Rather than simply cut around the set to have the contestants talk, Tom comes up with a hundred and one ways of visually interrupting the show for running gags, visual approximations of chat room events, random silliness, and occasionally full-blown segments (two of which are elaborately constructed and played out, and are in themselves the two funniest moments in the movie). Somehow, despite the innate tendency of the contestants to get off-track, the pacing of the movie rarely drags, and usually only does so during long visual interpretations of gags that don't work as well as others.

I feel like a lot of credit for this has to go to the voice actors, of whom only Tuna and Denny actually portray themselves. Russ Stepan does the best job as Digital Taco, blurting out all-caps observations in a snappy, fast-paced monotone that sounds exactly like I always imagined Taco's text sounding like. Denny is Denny as usual, though he does a better job voicing his grumblings at failing to ding in ahead of Taco or Ferret, grabbing a few chuckles simply for that. His sister plays Ferret, which is simultaneously creepier and less creepy than it would have been had he voiced himself. Tuna is Tuna as usual, though not the scenery-chewer he was in 3DMMers United magazine episodes, where he had no one else to play off of; here, he's funny as host, but rarely the center of attention, which works well. And Andrew Salter has a kind of thankless role as Tom Breed, who appears the least out of anyone (excluding Chippy, whose role is....well, you'll see). It's hard to truly comprehend or appreciate the difficulty in voicing a project like this; Tuna and Denny are veterans at playing themselves and quickly comfortable adapting their chatroom dialogue to spoken word, but for Russ and Amanda, playing the two craziest people in the gameshow, it's a tightrope balance. The "characters" of Taco and Ferret had to be almost perfectly captured if this was to work at all, and THEN the proper emphasis had to be given to their lines if the jokes were to work. And perhaps the most impressive part of the voice aspect is that every actor's line feels natural in the context of any conversation in the film. No one hits a sour note, or seems to have done all their voices in one batch without context; if it doesn't sound like every actor is in one room actually doing their performances, it sounds like Breed was standing behind them explaining how each line fit in context of what was happening. The challenges of voicing this thing were probably insane.

The questions (partly written by me) are split up into five categories with five difficulty levels, Jeopardy style: Movies, Personalities, History, Teh Psych Ward, and Comedy Option (sample question: "Hmmm....my computer is running kinda slow. What should I do?" The correct answer, which no one gets, is funnier than you'd think). Comedy Option has only four questions, leaving a black box at the very bottom. Upon seeing it on the scoreboard, the contestants are derailed for a full minute before they can focus on the show again. In the chat, Tuna would ask the question picked by whoever was in control of the board, at which point the contestants would type "ding". In the movie, rather than hit a buzzer, the contestants simply say, "ding". Since the script for the movie was based off the chat transcript, the contestants are constantly interrupting each other, dinging at the slightest provocation of any sort, and almost always before the question is asked. Denny is almost always a millisecond too late, and at one point tries to quit the show in frustration. The point system is randomly generated by Tuna or Breed; after the second question is asked and the contestants are given a chance to catch onto what is happening, Taco pounds his fist into his podium and declares, "I'd just like to say, this point system is FANTASTIC."

Occasionally points are bribed away from the hosts, given from one contestant to another, or wiped completely. Taco is usually the first person to get most of the questions, Denny dings in confidently and sweats over what the answer is, Ferret randomly switches between answering correctly and just not even trying (after the mid-game Lightning Round, he's so in love with one running joke that he's useless for the rest of the game). The psychotic and fast-paced nature of the show stimulated the guests enough to stay focused on the chat, firing off nonsense and playing off of each other in entertaining ways. Breed and Tuna make the perfect ringleading team, as Tuna is only slightly more interested than the guests in taking the thing seriously at all, and Breed organizes the show in a way that just rolls with the punches and gives the contestants whatever elbow room they want for derailing the proceedings. And where the simple gameshow format isn't enough to carry the runtime, supplementary gags are provided to either match or act as a counter to the chatroom content and add spice to the transcript. The visual interludes and extensions of ideas from the chat are for the most part brilliant and exceptionally well-animated.

With a 35-minute runtime, well over a hundred jokes, and a script entirely culled from a chat transcript with five 3DMMers in it, not every single second of the movie is going to work. Some gags fizzle, others made me smirk but went on too long, others gave themselves away too quickly and kept going, creating a dead air feeling. But Breed is quick on the rebound, layering each joke with multiple punchlines, and jumping quickly from one gag to another to keep the rhythm going. It's easy to feel drained when the movie ends; it's like watching Hot Shots or Airplane!, with a million and one gags pelting you at every turn, an almost exhausting comic intensity. It has a rough quality to it, like Breed wanted to capture the essence of the community in a jar and simply display it without a lot of polish or restructuring. This is the film's key strength and possible weakness, and may work against it from a standpoint of staying fresh in the audience's mind. But with the probability of more episodes on the way, and in the interest of getting right down to the most honest level, let's make it official: I laughed until my sides hurt. I was grinning the whole goddamn time. It has such energy and such joy in coming together that it's almost contagious. You just want to bounce around the room when it ends.

Critical Score: 92/100.
Personal Score: 100/100.

[Digital Taco]

Originally Posted by Aaron Haynes

(sample question: "Hmmm....my computer is running kinda slow. What should I do?" The correct answer, which no one gets, is funnier than you'd think)

PROOF THAT THIS GAME IS RIGGED: I didn't get points for "you better go catch it!"