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Have you ever got that feeling when you are losing in a video game and feel like you could replace every word in your sentence with spectrum of swear words? Or when you would rather throw up than play a game when it just mocks you and makes no sense whatsoever? Yeah… maybe my last statement went a little bit overboard, of course nobody would go that nuts just from a video game, right? If you haven’t ever known such person well now you will because that’s exactly what a person going by alias ”Angry Video Game Nerd” does!
Before going into the details one should know something about the series itself. Angry Video Game is a fictional character created by James Rolfe. It first began as a joke when James filmed an angry review of a game called ”Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest” in the 2004 [1]. However the whole thing escalated pretty quickly and few years later AVGN (I will be using this as an abbreviation for Angry Video Game Nerd) became an internet phenomenon and one of the most popular internet series known to this day. So in a nutshell the whole show is about a nerd doing angry game reviews about old and crappy games for peoples enjoyment. It actually became so well known that even James couldn’t believe it himself. Just think about: you’re just a regular person in his early 20s and you make an angry rant about something totally random as a joke and few years later you find out that you have become an internet super star. That’s pretty amazing right, but James took a step further and released a movie about AVGN, simply named ”AVGN – The Movie” on 21 July 2014.
In short the movie is about the Nerd and his adventures revolving around the game called ”Eee Tee (parody of a game based on the movie ”E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” by Steven Spielberg for game console Atari 2600. The game is said to be worst video game in history and obviously one of the most requested games for Nerd to review. Renaming is of course for copyright reasons)” and a myth around it where it is told that millions of game cartridges were buried in the middle of a desert in New Mexico involving aliens, Area 51, the government, cheap special effects and so on . Plot sounds simple yet somehow quite absurd which the movie definitely is – in a good way.
The main cast is James Rolfe as the Nerd (he also was one of the directors by the way. Other one was James good friend Kevin Finn), Jeremy Suarez as Cooper who is something one could a sidekick, Sarah Glendening as the woman of the nerd trio Mandi, Stephen Mendel as General Dark Onward the government agent, Time Winters as a paranoid, ex-scientist wearing a metaphorical tinfoil hat named Dr. Louis Zandor, and Helena Barrett as the female antagonist McButter. In my opinion they all acted their respective roles well but if I were to give an Oscar for one of them I would definitely give it to Stephen Mendel. He really made his character exactly what one would expect from a clumsy and comedic army general.
One of the most hilarious and cheap things in the movie that made me totally lose my sides were the special effects. Even though the budget was really low for a movie presented in theaters (about 325,000 dollars which he received from fans in forms of donation [2]) the special effects are really cheap looking: poorly made green screen scenes, airplanes changed into small props which are set on fire probably with a lighter, not-so-hidden use of wires and thread for jumps, levitating etc. For a person who really doesn’t have any idea what AVGN is this can sound and look quite awkward, like if the movie was made in the middle 60s and such but for a genuine AVGN fan these small, moderate effects just make the movie more enjoyable. It’s James aka the Nerds way to say: ”Hey, I heard you like watching me play bad games and suffer so let’s switch places once in a while.” (excessive amounts of swearing cut for the sake of purity) Animatronics were made really well though, plus for that.
There isn’t much to say about music. It actually is one of those things in the movie a typical movie reviewer wouldn’t consider ”bad” or ”cheap”, really great in my opinion and does what it should do: sets the mood (here’s by the way a link for the official soundtrack). The sound effects on the other hand are exactly the same as special effects: simple, crappy and cheap yet entertaining for hardcore fans and regular viewers alike.
In summary the whole movie can be said to be a big parody. The show is all about the exaggerated reviews, Nerd coming up with new words mankind could have never believed to be in existence, mocking badly designed games even though they were made thirty years ago for a limited hardware, cheap special effects like in the movie, scatological humor, ”abomination of mankind” like the Nerd himself once said, and so on. The list could keep expanding forever. The movie is definitely not for people who take either movies or video games too seriously, can’t take on self-irony, or expect a spectacular performance from the actors and great effects. The movie parodies everything the Nerd and James himself have ever told about things that makes movies and video games ”bad”. It’s clear self-irony. Even though the movie didn’t have a good reception from the critics it still fulfilled it’s main goal: amuse fans. James killed two birds with one stone. He accomplished his greatest dream, and gave fans what they wanted: a whole movie about AVGN and a review about ET. Overall I think it was a great movie with a meaning which can be described with a proverb ”more than meets the eye”. I didn’t have high expectations because I knew it couldn’t have a budget in scale with James Camerons Titanic or Avatar. I recommend it for anyone who has any interest for old comedy movies but don’t care if they have a modern twist or to people who just enjoy other people ranting about stuff for you. I would advice taking a little peek into the AVGN series as it helps a lot understanding the movie and concept behind it, you will not be disappointed.
Official trailer (Swearing warning)