Star Wars - Episode I: The Ridiculous Menace

Frink has done a terrific job of completely altering the experience of watching this movie. New character traits, running gags, in-jokes, pop culture references, tons of dialogue alterations, sight gags, subtitles, sound effects - lots of effort all around. There's rarely a dull moment -that isn't a phrase that's often associated with The Phantom Menace. Not all of the gags worked for me, but the rapid fire carpet bombing approach to the humor keeps the laughs coming. Some of the visual edits are a little rough/obvious, and some of the audio has music bleed - but this only adds to the silly nature of the project. I regret not watching this in full earlier. But now, I'm on board with this, and will be eagerly watching the sequel(s!) in the near future. I catch on pretty quick!

I watched this the other night. My impression:

It's a mess of a movie-edit and yet it is brilliant at the same time!

First of all, it's simply awesome to make a parody out of "Phantom Menace", the movie is pretty bad, so why not make it at least funny?

Great idea and I'm open to parodies if they are well made like "Naked gun" or "Airplane".

I think the key to a good parody is that it has heart and a comedy at its core. Most parodies fail because at its core there is no believable and relatable character and story.

You can't just cram one funny scene after the other and expect it all to work together. But this edit does just that:

Every scene is made to be funny, every frame really, and that's why it's a mess. The problem is that it doesn't gel as a whole.

So I can understand some of the harsh reviews, scenes are repeated too much to cause laughter, audio is not very smooth...

But even though it's a mess, it's also brilliant because some (not all, about half) of the ideas and humour, and there's a boat loads of it, are spot on and really make you laugh hard:

SPOILER-ALERT

1. Those trade-people always saying "Now there are two of them"
2. That Samuel Jackson, I mean Mace Windu, is constantly beeped out, the bad motherf...(shut your mouth).
3. That all the robots are talking dirty. In fact I wished they were more frivolous and I wished Mace Windu claimed to have written once a speech-code for the android's (no pun intended) operating system...
4. That Anakin despite having lost the race before he could start his engines nonetheless tries to complete the race alone, with that song "Going the distance" playing, pure brilliance!
5. That it was made look like Qui-Gon Jinn desires Anakin's mother, haha! But why did he decide then to take Anakin with him instead of her?
6. That Obi Wan misaimed his jump and came down the other side, haha!
7. That Qui-Gon Jinn wants to communicate with Obi Wan and then doesn't, great!

SPOILER-ALERT-END

So there's a lot to laugh and love in this edit, but it could be better if it was reedited to get rid of those jokes that didn't work, or gel the story and characters better.. there's a real gem here, but it needs polishing, to make all those funny jokes and good ideas work together as a movie with a comedy-heart at its core.

Still, kudos to TV's frink! I laughed quite a few times real hard and felt entertained.


P.S.: At the end I was surprised by the credits, seems like half of this fanediting-community were involved in this edit.

P.P.S.: Oh, just read in TV-Frink's signature, that there is a sequel to this, great: "Now there are two of them"

I think this was my very first fanedit, and it will always be one of my favorites. While not all the jokes land, most of them do, and some of them absolutely split my sides. This will always be an edit I will revisit once every few years, and definitely show a few friends while having some beers. Definitely recommend!

TV's Frink, are you an angel?
I don't know why I didn't download and watch this sooner! This is the very first time I have EVER managed to make it through any of the Star Wars prequels---and I have tried a few fanedits, and I tried to watch with Rifftrax---but none of them could make it bearable until this edit!
I could name things that didn't quite work (sometimes the repetition was too much) but most things did work! This is a particularly inspiring edit to me. It's as if you have found a new way to riff a movie! (I assume from your name, TV's Frink, that you are indeed a fan of MST3K and other incarnations.)
All the audio from Airplane! was used very VERY well, the Cake song was absolutely GREAT, and "look over there", "You catch on quick!" and of course "Now....there are 2 of them!" were all just brilliantly funny! I love all the attempted communications between Obi and Qui-gon. I had wished we could have seen the video, or parts of it, for Weird Al's "Saga Begins" instead of just the audio, but that is hardly a real complaint. I don't actually have any complaints.
In short, this works and it works really well! Like Airplane! or almost any episode of MST3K, there are hundreds of gags coming at you a mile a minute. Not every single joke lands, but its all about the percentage. And the percentage of what worked is really high! (It might help if you are too, when you watch this....)
I highly recommend this edit, and I have already downloaded the sequel and can't wait to watch it next! (This is now part of my personal top 5 list of favorite edits, alongside War of the Stars, Robots vs Kung Fu, Tears In The Rain and Riddles of the Lost Gods; I love edits that really change things a lot! This kicked ass!)

Review by TomH1138 — April 20, 2012 @ 6:08 pm

I LOVED this version of the movie. I laughed myself hoarse.

It was a great idea to turn Phantom Menace into a comedy with the tone and feel of Airplane! and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And to be honest, I laughed as much watching this as I did watching those movies.

I don’t want to spoil too much for those who haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll stick to what’s in the previews.

All good comedies make use of running gags, and this film creates running gags beautifully where there were none to begin with. From Ric Olie’s constant “You catch on pretty quick” to the Nemiodians’ (?) “Now there are two of them!” to Anakin’s “Are you an angel?” to Obi-Wan’s endless falling – and so on.

Subtitling anyone that could be subtitled – from Jar-Jar to the battle droids to R2-D2 – allowed for new funny dialogue to be created where there wasn’t any already. And the dialogue was very funny.

I really enjoyed the stuff with Bender as TC-14. In fact, that stuff was so hilarious that I kind of wish 3P0 himself had talked like Bender for the rest of the movie!

The dubbed sound clips from other sources were used to great effect. Occasionally, a piece of dialogue wouldn’t fit the mouth movements, but then the film just seemed like a Godzilla movie, which made it even funnier. There were a number of times when the dialogue fit shockingly well, considering it wasn’t what the characters were actually saying!

And I really enjoyed the moments when the sound was integrated flawlessly, such as how “Walking on Sunshine” actually faded off into the distance the further away Darth Maul’s vehicle got.

This edit will test every bit of your pop culture know-how. You’ll find references to Superfriends, Rebecca Black, Spaceballs and everything in between.

Sorry if I’m gushing a bit here, but this film was exactly what I was hoping for. I haven’t laughed this hard since Red Letter Media’s review of TPM. This is, in fact, the most entertaining version of TPM itself that I could ever hope to watch.

This is the first fan edit I’m giving a 10 out of 10!

If you get the impression that I liked this edit . . . then you catch on pretty quick.