Suburban Knights (2011) Review

Another year passed. Another anniversary came up and That Guy With The Glasses delivered. This sequel to 2010's Kickassia puts the members of Channel Awesome in an even more peculiar situation.

This time around, the Nostalgia Critic(Doug Walker) discovers that in the 1970s, a nerd discovered the existence of Malachite's Hand, a magical gauntlet with nearly unlimited power. The nerd disappeared shortly after. Thus, the Critic reasons that he and his team of reviewers are qualified to continue what the nerd began and hunt down the gauntlet in nd it is fun. The plot is well developed, the characters are "likeable" and if you exclude some pustules, the jokes are witty.
Unlike the previous movie, the Nostalgia Critic gets a lot less focus and the other reviewers get a lot more. The storyline has the Channel Awesome members split into two groups, one led by the Critic and the other led by Spoony(Noah Antwiler).

The movie is a clear improvement over the previous one. The camerawork is a lot better, the story is far more intricate and with twists and turns, the acting is clearly improved(minus Film Brain) and I just liked it more.

Unfortunately, all of the characters wear costumes, which causes a lot of confusion(it took me half of the movie to figure out that "Gandalf" was actually Spoony) and even though all reviewers stand out(unlike Kickassia, where they sort of blended together), I still haven't got a clue who they're all supposed to be, so that's a minus.
Another thing I regretted was how little screen time Linkara(Lewis Lovhaug) got. Sure, he might be a reviewer of comic books, but he is a good reviewer and should be recognized as such. But somehow, FILM BRAIN got a whole subplot. Dwell on that a little.

The movie was obviously trying to give focus to all of the characters instead of just the Nostalgia Critic, but as a result, pretty much everyone are ignored and you start to really ask yourself: "what is this movie about?" more than once. It isn't until the end that the movie is revealed to be about a character who is barely even in it! No, not Linkara, but a recurring character named Ma-Ti! MA-TI!! This movie is about that guy from Captain Planet!

So after the heroic sacrifice of Ma-Ti and the horrific rip-off of Spock's funeral from Star Trek II, the movie finally ends.
My opinion is mixed. It is an improvement over the first movie, but it also takes a few steps back. In the first one, you really got a big(comedical) sense on who the reviewers are, but in this one, they are some kind of a mix of fairy-tale and normal. A very weird mix.

The villain, the gauntlet and the final battle was BADASS. Just had to point those out.
So yeah, overall the movie is pretty damn good, but could've been better. And that, is where the 2012 To Boldly Flee comes in...