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!

The edit redefines classic characters
Little Anakin is now mentally challenged. Jar Jar is struggles to suppress the voices in his head. Obi-Wan’s spirit has become disconnected from his body and refers to itself in the third person and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

How Frink has retained any narrative sense in this edit while tampering so heavily with the plot I will never know. Entire sequences are altered and rearranged yet I never felt lost. Running jokes constantly appear but never once did they overstay their welcome. Some attempts didn’t always land (generally due to not having any prior knowledge of the inserted material), however they didn’t come off as try-hard or cringe worthy. Once the credits rolled I realised my face was aching, there was hardly a moment I grinning in delight as I was bombarded with an absurd array of gags and jokes. The musical sequences in particular were hilarious.

Only a couple instances did the dialog chopping/editing become messy, the the ‘ipod’ sequence stands out, but for the most part the background noise/effects accompanying the dialog wasn’t troubling. Again, only once or twice did the tone of dialog placed upon characters feel out of place. Thinking of this edit as a foreign language dub allows you overlook mouths not matching the dialog.

This edit was fantastically funny throughout - my congratulations Frink, you created something special.

This has such good ideas in it. This movie was frankly ridiculous, so to just turn it into a full on joke was a great idea. I laughed many times in this edit. The level of repetition worked most of the time for me. I had a lot of fun watching this edit and would recommend it.

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"

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!