Star Wars - Episode I: The Ridiculous Menace

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!

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!

This movie is so funny it made me fall over my self, everyone I showed it to was instantly hooked. Apart from it being really funny, I also truly believe that this is the ultimate version of this movie. TV'sFrink does great work with creatively reshaping this movie into a more consistent tone.
Face it people, Jar-Jar is not the problem with the prequels, he is only the catalyst of hate/dread for otherwise bad movies. I have seen other prequel edits who try to clean up the movies and make them more serious in tone, this doesn't work for me at all, they only make dry movies even more lifeless. They approoched these movies with totally the wrong mindset, don't do away with the humor, increase it!
This edit on the other hand may very well be closer to the original vision and I immensely enjoy it. Am I implying that GL would be better of making space balls at this point? Yes I very well may be.

I got to watch the entire edit online. I loved it. I often rewatch Episode I thinking I'm going to be less cynical this time and will remember how much I can enjoy TPM with an open heart and mind and I'm always disappointed. No 'more serious more dark' versions of the prequels have ever succeeded with me so an edit that does the exact opposite was a great idea. The experience was uplifting and fun.

I love the montage music, the funny overdubs, the cutaways, the satirical optical wipes, the extended conversations and overstretched moments, the motifs, pretty much everything. This edit was made for everyone on this site. There's no other group of people on the internet that know why "intentional creative decision" on the Naboo exterior is funny.

The editing can be considered terrible at times due to the transparency of the overdubs and video looping. But considering the intention, this edit should get perfect points for intricacy, vision, and humorous success. I didn't know how to rate the visual quality considering I watched it over the internet, but it had to get generous points for being so readily available.

That's all. I think it was wonderful and already love what's being done with Episode II. Thank you for sharing.

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.