Star Wars - Episode I: The Ridiculous Menace

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...

Ever wanted to cry during Episode I and still be able to look at yourself in the mirror? Well the Ridiculous Menace gives you that chance.

There's not much else to say that hasn't already been said. This edit is hilarious. Also, as others have stated, it's kind of rough. But, for the most part, you can tell what joke is being made, and even though it might not sound right, you'll still get the joke, and you'll still laugh. And there really are some great jokes in there. And there are some that I don't get, but I don't really care. That didn't detract from my enjoyment, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who did get those jokes.

The biggest problem with the edit is the length. Two hours is too long for a comedy. Now, I've seen comedies that are two hours that I love. Those runtimes work, because those films have a story. And when I say story, I mean a good story. Ridiculous Menace has a story, but it's not a good one. So it takes a backseat. You don't care about it. The only problem is, honestly, it's still there, and it makes the film lag. As do some of the jokes, which go on for too long. I think this needed to be at least twenty minutes shorter.

Anyway, irregardless, this edit is great. TV's Frink did a hysterical job (in a good way). Show this to your friends.

Review by Rogue-theX — December 23, 2011 @ 4:11 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

January 1, 2012

Original review:

I’m very sorry to say but I really didn’t enjoy this one (but I really really really wanted to). It felt way too long and the majority of the humor didn’t make me laugh. There were some great parts in it, without a doubt, but on the whole it fell flat. The editing was very choppy a lot of the time. And while I understand that it wasn’t intended to be a masterpiece of editing, all the harsh audio cuts ended up taking me out of the edit too often.

But, the parts that did make me laugh were great. Specifically “The Distance”, the lines from “Airplane”, a lot of the subtitle jokes and Bender’s dialog made me LOL, ROFL, PSML and ROFLcopter (respectively).

Expanded Review:

A/V QUALITY. It's fine. 9/10

VIDEO EDITING. Twas good. 10/10

AUDIO EDITING. In almost every scene new dialog is created for the characters, more so for Qui-Gonn and Obi-Wan. Frink lifted bits and pieces of dialog from a lot of different sources and to me it got to be quite annoying pretty quick. I understand that this was done to create a lot of humorous dialog and for most people they didn’t mind the harsh cuts in audio. But the cuts stood out too often for me to overlook them. I would give the audio editing a 2/10 because of all of abrupt cutting. For future edits I feel that if the audio cuts were smoother I would enjoy it more.

NARRATIVE. Phantom Menace's plot sucks, but this was an improvement to be honest.

ENTERTAINMENT. This is another polarizing aspect of this edit in my opinion. Firstly, let me state that humor is mainly subjective. I don’t think anybody (or anything) can be universally funny. Some people may love a certain joke and some may hate it. That being said, the humor was very much hit-and-miss for me. Many jokes did not make me laugh. I felt that the entire edit was too long for my tastes and that it would have worked a lot better without so many repetitive jokes. I give the entertainment value a 4/10 due to how many of the jokes weren’t funny for me and I got bored too easily. I’m sorry, but the stuff that made me laugh couldn’t outweigh everything else.

I’m not going to give the DVD presentation a rating. It looked fine, but to me how good the DVD menus are doesn’t affect how I feel about the rating itself.

In the end, I will say that I know how much work Frink put into this edit and I do not want him to feel that I am attacking him. I know how it feels to be criticized harshly and I really don’t want one bad review to spoil all the positive ones. A lot of people loved the hell out of this edit and for that Frink should be commended.

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"