Red Letter Media

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account

Favorite recurring character? (Select 4)

  • Jack / AIDSMobdy

    Votes: 257 24.0%
  • Josh / the Wizard

    Votes: 77 7.2%
  • Colin (Canadian #1)

    Votes: 460 42.9%
  • Jim (Canadian #2)

    Votes: 230 21.4%
  • Tim

    Votes: 386 36.0%
  • Len Kabasinski

    Votes: 208 19.4%
  • Freddie Williams

    Votes: 274 25.5%
  • Patton Oswalt

    Votes: 27 2.5%
  • Macaulay Culkin

    Votes: 541 50.4%
  • Max Landis

    Votes: 64 6.0%

  • Total voters
    1,073
I rewatched nightcrawler and the hitb review of it recently and it's amazing how bad Mike's takes were.

He says the score was "too happy" (which is intentional, as it's meant to be from Jake Gyllenhaal's character's perspective, which highlights how fucked his moral compass is), that the movie needed to be less subtle and add more blatant action, and that the movie is more like "an 80s dark comedy" than a thriller.

I love the guys, but God damn that's a bad take.
 
For all of Jack's faults at least he's a good workhorse.
And damn did he apparently have a lot of work to do. I knew Space Cop was bad, and I avoided it because of that, but I didn’t know so much incompetence was happening.

Is it safe to say most Cannon films are unironically better than theirs?
 
If someone had told Mike his stupid attempt at an old-timey detective accent wasn't funny and they needed actual jokes in the film it would have been a lot better.

Aids Moby did some of the special effects and editing on Space Cop and he made two videos for Previously Recorded of some of the process. It really stands out how unprofessional and how little of a fuck they gave whilst they were filming it: in the first video Jack has to spend an hour doing motion tracking on a parked car because Rich moved around too much in it. He also has to motion track and blur some leaves in the foreground because whoever was filming was too dumb to get a good shot of a parked car directly in front of them:

View attachment 4150755

I also recall him talking about how he had to spend multiple hours fixing footage that was fucked up by someone stumbling into the tripod whilst drunk and damaged audio caused by people talking behind the camera.
Yeah, that's Mike's acting voice, which Jay also did in this movie too. It's really awful because they didn't have a good grasp on what their characters actually are. They couldn't figure out how to make the buddy cop dynamic work. That's a writing issue and needed to be figured out before they started filming. Rich and the police chief and maybe Jocelyn are the only good actors in the entire movie and by good, I simply mean they did the jobs they were directed to do.

And damn did he apparently have a lot of work to do. I knew Space Cop was bad, and I avoided it because of that, but I didn’t know so much incompetence was happening.

Is it safe to say most Cannon films are unironically better than theirs?
Yes. Even Superman IV.
 
I rewatched nightcrawler and the hitb review of it recently and it's amazing how bad Mike's takes were.

He says the score was "too happy" (which is intentional, as it's meant to be from Jake Gyllenhaal's character's perspective, which highlights how fucked his moral compass is), that the movie needed to be less subtle and add more blatant action, and that the movie is more like "an 80s dark comedy" than a thriller.

I love the guys, but God damn that's a bad take.
Funny you mention that. Nightcrawler HITB was the first one I ever saw, just after I saw the movie, and I thought, "Fuck this guy. Nightcrawler had a great score." Don't know how that turned into me loving HITB but Mike was wrong as fuck about that movie.
 
Is it safe to say most Cannon films are unironically better than theirs?
Of course. Have you seen Bolero? It's just 80's Bo Derek nude for two hours.

It's probably been mentioned a billion times but the Cannon documentary is really good, there's even a very Cannon twist at the end if I remember it right.
 
I'm dreading having to subject myself to Space Cop if its as bad as people say it is. Maybe its just me but you can see the misery and despair in their eyes when they talk about it, specially Jay. Is it because it ended up being another shitty internet movie and not the arthouse "that's so deep" real cinema they had in their minds?
There are several jokes and setups in the movie that would have you laughing, if they didn't stretch out into minute-long anti-humor gags that drag on for entirely too long. There's essentially no character that you root with or connect to, which is fine if the gags are good; but on the whole of the experience, I think I remember one actual bit landing. I wouldn't describe it as a painful experience so much as sitting in a waiting room - you know it'll be over soon, and you just sortof hope it comes to a close faster so you can get on with things.
 
There are several jokes and setups in the movie that would have you laughing, if they didn't stretch out into minute-long anti-humor gags that drag on for entirely too long. There's essentially no character that you root with or connect to, which is fine if the gags are good; but on the whole of the experience, I think I remember one actual bit landing. I wouldn't describe it as a painful experience so much as sitting in a waiting room - you know it'll be over soon, and you just sortof hope it comes to a close faster so you can get on with things.
I know Family Guy did the "joke that went too long" bit first and what I'm surprised by is that there is very subtle art in making that kind of joke work versus what RLM did.
 
I know Family Guy did the "joke that went too long" bit first and what I'm surprised by is that there is very subtle art in making that kind of joke work versus what RLM did.
Nah, it's really just taste because I don't find Family Guy's overlong gag to be funny either. But then I find a meatbag moaning about a hurt shin way more annoying than the sounds of a electronic punch code.

I'd also say Family Guy doesn't work because the overlong bit is the point of the joke being overlong. At least in Space Cop a bit like an overlong code on the fridge also has the gag being silly that anybody would have a fridge that frustrating to operate. There's an extra punchline layered in there.

Now maybe other overlong jokes fall apart on similar reasonings in Space Cop, I haven't got to watch the whole thing, but there's no subtle art to it, it's all personal taste of the audience.
 
I know Family Guy did the "joke that went too long" bit first and what I'm surprised by is that there is very subtle art in making that kind of joke work versus what RLM did.
If you step back and look at almost any of them, there's a kernel of a joke that 'works', or is at least inoffensive. The scene where Rich has to punch a combination in to his fridge. I would have chuckled if it just went on overlong for like, five seconds. But it's like... a full half-minute for that one gag. And not even the payoff of having him accidentally close the door into a cut.

Genuinely the only bit that got a laugh out of me was the spam ads in his visor scene. Because it's a funny enough concept, and the gag doesn't run on for twenty years. And I love bad movies - I genuinely adore the Super Mario Brothers movie for how bizarre and awful it is. Space Cop isn't like that - I have no urge to ever see it again.
 
I hope they cover Glass Onion because it's an entertaining piece of shit. So many fucking infuriating things about the story, but also great performances. Wonder what their take is gonna be.

Maybe 2016 and earlier Mike and Jay could make an entertaining Half in the Bag on that, but do we really need another "it was okay, some parts were good some parts were not good" video from them? They're better when they are roasting something or praising something.

I rewatched nightcrawler and the hitb review of it recently and it's amazing how bad Mike's takes were.

He says the score was "too happy" (which is intentional, as it's meant to be from Jake Gyllenhaal's character's perspective, which highlights how fucked his moral compass is), that the movie needed to be less subtle and add more blatant action, and that the movie is more like "an 80s dark comedy" than a thriller.

I love the guys, but God damn that's a bad take.

Similar to his take on Escape From New York needing a more traditional action score and more comedy.

Mike has terrible taste, even outside of purposley bad choices for the lulz like Vampire Assasin his actual opinons on movies are almost always terrible, Jurassic World, etc.

And damn did he apparently have a lot of work to do. I knew Space Cop was bad, and I avoided it because of that, but I didn’t know so much incompetence was happening.

Is it safe to say most Cannon films are unironically better than theirs?
Yes, Space Cop is lowest-tier Bruce Willis movie factory level bad except with those at least they are probably some kind of money laundering scam, Space Cop was ostensibly a "passion project" that took 12 years to make.
 
Screenshot_20221229_120636_Gmail.jpg

Oh boy...
 
Maybe 2016 and earlier Mike and Jay could make an entertaining Half in the Bag on that, but do we really need another "it was okay, some parts were good some parts were not good" video from them? They're better when they are roasting something or praising something.
I don't know, I think the writing is shit enough it could really piss Mike off
 
I'd also say Family Guy doesn't work because the overlong bit is the point of the joke being overlong. At least in Space Cop a bit like an overlong code on the fridge also has the gag being silly that anybody would have a fridge that frustrating to operate. There's an extra punchline layered in there.
This is honestly one of my biggest pet peeves about modern comedy writing, tacking jokes on top of other jokes. The idea of Space Cop locking his fridge with a keypad code is already funny, but as it goes on that's no longer the punch line of the scene
 
This is honestly one of my biggest pet peeves about modern comedy writing, tacking jokes on top of other jokes. The idea of Space Cop locking his fridge with a keypad code is already funny, but as it goes on that's no longer the punch line of the scene
That's actually something I've seen brought up as a key to why classic Simpsons was so good, and I agree. Many scenes had a main joke and one or two secondary jokes that didn't even need to be there but just compounded the humor. The catch is, they have to complement each other to work.

Space Cop opening his fridge with a keypad is, as a joke, really only funny if the viewer realizes that it's weird and catches that it's an unnecessary inconvenient thing to do. That's subtle. The keypad being 50 digits long is on the complete opposite end of subtlety, where the joke is how exaggerated it is. Those two things don't work with each other, so at best one is overshadowed and at worst the scene doesn't work at all.
 
I know Family Guy did the "joke that went too long" bit first and what I'm surprised by is that there is very subtle art in making that kind of joke work versus what RLM did.
Its not funnier but pointless filler works better in a 23 minute episode of a cartoon as a meta joke than something you've presumably made a conscious effort to watch.
 
It's been a while since I've seen Space Cop, and it's ... kind of okay? I liked the time paradox in the film.
I like the idea of a buddy cop comedy that pits two different police stereotypes against one another; Joe Friday meets Harry Callahan, something like that, but are there space cop stereotypes?
 
Back
Top Bottom