Review Detail
8.0 45 10
(Updated: September 10, 2012)
Enjoyment
9.0
Review by Brumous — December 23, 2011 @ 1:15 am
Witness the amazing TV’s Frink as he slices, dices and chops like Bart Simpson with a Ginsu knife. The Ridiculous Menace is a gleeful and manic spoof, a kind of comedic vandalism equivalent to drawing mustaches on somber portraits and throwing cream pies at stuffy politicians. The pomp and dreadful pretentiousness of the original movie is unceremoniously deflated through radical alteration of the personalities and motives of all characters, major and minor. Heroes become cads, villains become clowns, and just about everyone is reduced to a state of doddering cluenessness.
Often the humor builds in layers of ridiculousness until the humor reaches a level of surreality that would do Benny Hill or Monty Python proud. Other jokes fall flat or are obscure, but with the batting average so high and the pace of gags so fast and furious, it just doesn’t matter. This is one funny flick.
The video quality is adequate. Compression makes the focus soft on larger screens but it’s still quite watchable. A number of contributors have pitched in with special effects and those come off well, complementing the hacked and manipulated satiric tone.
The soundtrack has received a massive amount of changes, from new background music to new effects to new dialog. The end credits alone must have 30 different music clips! The detail of audio work goes down to individual inserted words, and this is the one area where technical flaws sometimes get in the way of enjoying the movie. Sometimes the words in a sentence are so mismatched it’s hard to understand what the character is saying. Additional audio processing and pitch shifting might help that out, but that would also mean many more months of work! So, as they say, deal with it.
DVD features are basic, with chapter selections and a few bonuses included to add a few gags. No off-color jokes and thankfully no potty humor, so the disk is suitable for children. Kudos to Frink and his many co-conspirators for assembling the funniest Star Wars Episode One ever. 9.5/10
Witness the amazing TV’s Frink as he slices, dices and chops like Bart Simpson with a Ginsu knife. The Ridiculous Menace is a gleeful and manic spoof, a kind of comedic vandalism equivalent to drawing mustaches on somber portraits and throwing cream pies at stuffy politicians. The pomp and dreadful pretentiousness of the original movie is unceremoniously deflated through radical alteration of the personalities and motives of all characters, major and minor. Heroes become cads, villains become clowns, and just about everyone is reduced to a state of doddering cluenessness.
Often the humor builds in layers of ridiculousness until the humor reaches a level of surreality that would do Benny Hill or Monty Python proud. Other jokes fall flat or are obscure, but with the batting average so high and the pace of gags so fast and furious, it just doesn’t matter. This is one funny flick.
The video quality is adequate. Compression makes the focus soft on larger screens but it’s still quite watchable. A number of contributors have pitched in with special effects and those come off well, complementing the hacked and manipulated satiric tone.
The soundtrack has received a massive amount of changes, from new background music to new effects to new dialog. The end credits alone must have 30 different music clips! The detail of audio work goes down to individual inserted words, and this is the one area where technical flaws sometimes get in the way of enjoying the movie. Sometimes the words in a sentence are so mismatched it’s hard to understand what the character is saying. Additional audio processing and pitch shifting might help that out, but that would also mean many more months of work! So, as they say, deal with it.
DVD features are basic, with chapter selections and a few bonuses included to add a few gags. No off-color jokes and thankfully no potty humor, so the disk is suitable for children. Kudos to Frink and his many co-conspirators for assembling the funniest Star Wars Episode One ever. 9.5/10
B