Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (2014) Review

When your Nerd starts making faces like this, you know he's getting too old for this shit.

The Angry Video Game Nerd is a show that I've been following with enthusiasm for the better part of a year now. Not because I'm old enough or American enough to remember the games featured, but because of that infectious hatred towards shitty video games.
Since the purpose of the series is warning us about the games, the Nerd directly involves us. He's playing the games FOR US. That kind of inclusion, the feeling of being accepted for who you are and what you went through(even if it's not actually related to you) is rare and awesome.

The Nerd himself - James Rolfe - has long since "got a life" and turned his own misery into a success, allowing him to finally make films as he dreamed. And that's where we are today.

The film's plot initially follows the Nerd's attempts to prevent people from investigating, playing and making him review Eee Tee(E.T.), a video game notorious for causing a whole video game crash in the 1980s.
Despite its abundance of Nerd references, the film seems more influenced by Rolfe's love of old movies and as it goes on, the story completely unravels in the name of Wilhelm screams, over-the-top villany, catfights, green screens, puppets etc. And I'm not kidding. The story starts out as a comedic trip and ends up as a quest to save the multiverses, megaverses, universes and ultraverses from Death Lord Mwauthyx(creator of God and Devil and the dad of ET). Does that doom the movie?
Yes and no.

The film's main flaw is that there's just too much going on at the same time. The story about ET, the story about Area 51, the story about Cockburn Inc, the story about the Nerd, the story about Mwauthyx... it's all over the place. At the end, I just sort of zoned out because I got completely lost. While I like the B-movie atmosphere with all the crappy effects, it feels like it's trying too hard(remember the Nerd's speech in the end about suckitude only coming through accident?) and some of it is downright absurd.

On the other hand, the surreal elements are pretty epic and there's a plethora of good humour(I loved the scene in the freezer), memorable characters and the direction was excellent.

I think the highpoint of the film was the scenes with the Nerd inside Super Mario and ET. If that had been the plot(the Nerd is trapped in his own games), I would've adored it. The slapstick and set design was perfect in there.

While I don't have any problem with Cooper, I would've preferred Mike Matei, who has great chemistry with Rolfe(seeing as they are best buds).
Mandy was such a cute nerd it hurt, really.

Overall, the Nerd movie is a flawed success. I look forward to more of Rolfe's future projects and until then... fuck off!