Star Wars - Episode I: The Ridiculous Menace

TV's Frink has made Episode I into exactly what it was from the beginning: a joke. Due to some clever editing to pretty much everything, I found myself enjoying and even laughing aloud at what must be one of the most creative edits I have seen in a while. Let me fill you in on what I did, and didn't, like.

Pros:
-All of the droids are absolutely hilarious. Seriously. They're awesome.
-Many of the conversations are refreshingly new, and they end up being really funny.
-TV's Frink has mastered the art of elongated repetition, having the same thing being said just long enough to be really funny without being annoying. Think of the opening scene of spaceballs for an idea on how this works.
-Really, most of the jokes were just funny. That's all this edit was aiming to accomplish and it did that.

Alright, onto the the bad stuff. Don't let any of this deter you from watching this edit, because they are, very frequently, a side effect of the silliness.

Cons:
-Some of the lines TV's Frink used to create new dialogue have the background music attached to them, which is an unavoidable side effect.
-There were a couple jokes that didn't really work, but I might just not have really understood them.
-The abundance of splicing he did ended up with (sometimes-distracting) visual and audio glitches.
-The storyline was damaged... but that is not too important to the edit.

That's it. I would highly recommend this edit and would watch it again. Heck, might as well replace Episode I with this beauty.

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!)

I want to start off by saying that Frink has created a truly unique edit of TPM. Turning TPM into a comedy is a wonderful idea, one that seems obvious given the source matieral, yet no one to my knowledge has done so up to this point. And with a few caveats, Frink pulls it off very well, showing signs of true comedic and editing talent.

AUDIO/VIDEO QUALITY: 10

I am rating this based on the source I was watching, which was streamed from Vimeo in SD (and I know Frink used the SD as a source). All the additional video and audio material (and there is A LOT of it) were also of high quality. I have no problems with the video quality for this edit. The only minor problem I had with audio was that some of the added audio clips were not intelligible to me due. But I think that might be an editing issue, not a quality one.

VISUAL EDITING: 10

I noticed no problems with the visual editing aspect of this movie. I loved the fact that Frink used purposefully silly transitions in place of the standard star wars ones, and it really had the ridiculous feel of someone who is editing a home movie and thinks that using every single out-of-the-box transition is a "good idea." Not for a real movie, but it was comedic genius for this edit! I only wish Frink had replaced the very few real star wars transitions that were left with his own. But that isn't a technical problem, so it doesn't detract from my visual editing score.

AUDIO EDITING: 6

This, unfortunately, is where I had the most problems with the edit. While some of the audio editing was terrific and well done, there were far too many dubs that were jarring. I understand that part of the goal of this edit was to make the comedy more important than audio editing, but at a certain point, the distraction caused by the sheer number of these types of edits became too much for me to ignore.
I want to point out that Frink did do some excellent audio work in terms of integrating sound effects, droid voices, and new sound track material. And some of the dubbing did work well.
But the big problem for me were the audio dubs that just completely did not fit and felt like they were jammed in there for the sake of a joke. Unfortunately for me, when the audio was too jarring, it made it so I couldn't appreciate the joke. It might have been better to cut the scene or try a different approach. That way it would have not detracted as much from the other elements of the edit which worked so well.

NARRATIVE: 7

There are some moments in the edit where Frink pulls off some really nice new narrative elements/ideas. I loved how Qui-Gon bet on winning Anakin's mother instead of Anakin. Also, the Pod Race change was also great (though it did kind of go on too long after the main point was made). Little ideas here and there also worked well. But in the end, I really couldn't follow what could be called a true narrative for the edit. That would be fine for a comedy, only the problem became the length -- many areas of the story were drawn out by using dialog that was either repeated multiple times in a row, inserting extra pauses, or just having parts of the story that weren't funny but there anyway. My least favorite aspect of the narrative was (what must be an inside joke) the obsession with wookies that seemed to crop up mid-way through the edit. I just didn't get it.
However, with all that being said, the narrative wasn't "broken" in any way; it just didn't appeal to me as a whole.

ENJOYMENT: 8

Comedies, more than any other genre, are very subjective. Luckily, Frink demonstrates he has some true comedic talent, and there are some hilarious moments sprinkled throughout this edit. Some of my favorites include the new TC-14 voiceovers, calling Darth Mall "Darth Darth," all the droid subtitles as well as R2s subtitles, the new sound effects such as ringing phones, Banaka's ring tone, and the video game Obi-Wan vs Darth Maul at the end. The beginning of the movie is especially strong.
What ended up making me lower my rating here were two things: first, the aforementioned audio editing which was just too jarring to ignore. Second, the edit felt like it dragged on too long...and while Frink tried to make Jar-Jar more palatable by adding subtitles, he kept Jar-Jar's annoying english voice and also the subtitles weren't really trying to be funny...so yes, there was too much Jar-Jar for me in this edit.
Also, some of the jokes just didn't work for me, and these had to do with extended sequences of repeating the same thing over and over, either by rewinding footage and showing it again (and again), or having characters continuously say the same things to each other (over and over).
But these were still not enough to cause me to not enjoy this edit overall, which is a tribute to the quality of Frink's best ideas. Perhaps, if Frink ever does choose to revisit this edit, he can take a more critical eye at condensing things so that the best parts are able to stand out more, as there really are some hilarious moments in this edit!

Note - My entertainment rating for the original Episode I is probably around a 4, so obviously I enjoyed this edit much more than the original!

OVERALL RATING: 8

Again, I want to applaud Frink for taking a bold new approach to a much edited movie.

RECOMMENDATION:

I can recommend this movie with the strong caveat that one must be prepared for the audio to not be on par with standard edits, and the smaller caveat that the movie is a bit long for a comedy. If you can live with that (and I suggest you try!) then by all means watch this edit, as you will find much to enjoy!

Kudos to you Frink, on your first edit, and I look forward to seeing your future works!

--
REVIEWER'S NOTE:
I edited this review to coincide with the format of my other reviews, and added what my rating for the original movie would be in the enjoyment section.

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.

Review by QuickCut — January 18, 2012 @ 5:43 am

I haven’t laughed this hard all year.

Technical quality – 10/10 – audio and video were both fine.

Presentation – 10/10 – nice menu, nice cover art.

Editing – 7/10 – the video editing was flawless and just the fact that you merged all those different scenes and audio clips was incredible. I took off a couple points because the audio editing was so horrible, but you can’t really work around that.

Entertainment – 9/10 – I couldn’t stop laughing. The only non-hilarious parts were a few scenes on Coruscant and some of the ending battle. The rest of it was side-splitting. So many funny jokes. Sometimes they got repetitive but still. This was insanely funny. The soundtrack, the dubbing, the yippees, the podrace, the angel jokes, the droids, the video game health bars, Anakin’s father, the list goes on and on and on. So hilarious. I’ll definitely be recommending this one. Would have gotten a point higher if you had somehow been able to make the audio editing a bit smoother.

Overall – 8/10