Star Wars - Episode I: The Ridiculous Menace
Updated
User reviews
45 reviews
Overall rating
8.0
Audio/Video Quality
8.5(26)
Audio Editing
6.9(27)
Visual Editing
8.6(27)
Narrative
7.8(26)
Enjoyment
8.3(45)
(Updated: May 25, 2014)
Overall rating
7.8
Audio/Video Quality
9.0
Audio Editing
6.0
Visual Editing
9.0
Narrative
7.0
Enjoyment
8.0
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"
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"
User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
DVD
N
(Updated: May 21, 2014)
Overall rating
9.2
Audio/Video Quality
9.0
Audio Editing
8.0
Visual Editing
9.0
Narrative
10.0
Enjoyment
10.0
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!
User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
DVD
M
Overall rating
9.0
Audio/Video Quality
6.0
Audio Editing
9.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
10.0
Enjoyment
10.0
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.
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.
User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
B
(Updated: July 17, 2013)
Overall rating
8.2
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Audio Editing
6.0
Visual Editing
10.0
Narrative
7.0
Enjoyment
8.0
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.
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.
User Review
Do you recommend this edit?
Yes
Format Watched?
Digital
S
Overall rating
8.2
Audio/Video Quality
9.0
Audio Editing
7.0
Visual Editing
8.0
Narrative
8.0
Enjoyment
9.0
Apparently, I've rated this before. Now there are two of them.
Thus begins the Ridiculous trilogy. Off to a nice start! I'm always happy when editors take and implement our suggestions. They don't have to, of course, but it's great when they're willing to listen, as many minds can make a superior product in some cases. I could've done without some of it, but then, it's not my edit. (not crazy about some of the repetition and internet culture stuff, seeing as I'm not a 12-year-old girl) There is also some stuff that I thought was brilliantly done, both straight from Frink's damaged brain and from contributors.
The audio and video are quite good for the most part. I thought some things could've been taken a step further (I would have really tried to do more with pitch changes, even if it didn't seeeeeem to work upon initial tries), but overall, with this type of edit, it's about as good as it can get.
Overall, a must see. It's sort of a 'love it or hate it' type of movie now (like Kung Pow, for instance), as opposed to the 'hate it' movie it was as-is, but I would definitely recommend that every Star Wars fan check this out. You may even begin to—*gasp*—LIKE The Phantom Menace! At least a bit...
Thus begins the Ridiculous trilogy. Off to a nice start! I'm always happy when editors take and implement our suggestions. They don't have to, of course, but it's great when they're willing to listen, as many minds can make a superior product in some cases. I could've done without some of it, but then, it's not my edit. (not crazy about some of the repetition and internet culture stuff, seeing as I'm not a 12-year-old girl) There is also some stuff that I thought was brilliantly done, both straight from Frink's damaged brain and from contributors.
The audio and video are quite good for the most part. I thought some things could've been taken a step further (I would have really tried to do more with pitch changes, even if it didn't seeeeeem to work upon initial tries), but overall, with this type of edit, it's about as good as it can get.
Overall, a must see. It's sort of a 'love it or hate it' type of movie now (like Kung Pow, for instance), as opposed to the 'hate it' movie it was as-is, but I would definitely recommend that every Star Wars fan check this out. You may even begin to—*gasp*—LIKE The Phantom Menace! At least a bit...
User Review
Format Watched?
DVD
R