Star Wars - Episode I: The Ridiculous Menace

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 he-guy — February 4, 2012 @ 6:46 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

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

Review by kaine23 — December 30, 2011 @ 5:54 am

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

Review by LastSurvivor — December 28, 2011 @ 12:05 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*