Pros and Cons of The AVGN Movie

Pro
1. I was delighted by the running time. I was expecting the movie to be in the 80-90 minute range but the film was almost 115 Minutes. Confirming the late Roger Ebert's claim that no good movie is too long, this movie never feels padded. The elements in this movie are either vital to the movie or just really funny.

2. The movie has a reasonable level of outrageousness. The MPAA would undoubtedly have given this an R but this isn't like "South Park Bigger Longer Uncut" or "Monty Python & The Meaning Of Life" where the movie attempts to shock and provoke the audience at every turn. I never felt the movie was being obscene just for the sake of being obscene. I felt the movie only committed obscenities for the sake of being funny and more often than not, the attempts were successful.

3. Just because your movie's low budget doesn't mean it has to look it. The AVGN Movie never looks like somebody's glorified home videos but actually looks very professional and well done. Nobody's going to confuse this with a major motion picture but considering the lack of budget and the lack of big-name cast and crew, this is a huge triumph. Like James says in the audio commentary: the low budget approach gives this movie a kind of charm.

4. I was amused by the idea of AVGN fans actually buying games that James trashed. I should know, James is partially the reason I bought Ghostbusters and Simon's Quest for NES. In both cases I concur with James that these are not great games.

5. The movie has lots of great references to AVGN's past, movies and TV. My favorite is the General's "it's just a flesh wound" quote. The gory running gag of the General dismembering himself reminds me of Monty Python's bloody brilliant "Salad Days" sketch.

6. I love all the great cameos by Kyle Justin, Mike Matei, the Toxic Avenger Creator and Doug Walker. I was delighted to learn that Cooper was played by Jeremy Suarez, the portrayer of The Bernie Mac Show's Jordan. He was my favorite character on the show and I also appreciated Jeremy Suarez's voice work in Disney's Brother Bear. Suarez going from Jordan to a video game movie reminds me of how Jaleel White went from playing the most famous nerd in Sitcom History to voicing the title character in 3 Sonic cartoons.

7. I find it amusing that a movie about a Spielberg-inspired video game is released on DVD just a few weeks before Jurassic World (Executive Produced by Spielberg) hits theaters. Speaking of Spielberg, notice that the movie shows the ET game getting a sequel when there was never a second ET movie. That's similar to the Spielberg-produced Goonies. There never was a second Goonies movie but the NES did get a Goonies 2 game. In real life, there were additional ET games for Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color. There was an ET Mini-Game in Universal Studios' Gamecube Game (James once stated that the ET minigame is worse than ET for Atari 2600).

8. The audio commentary is well done. Some people in commentaries ramble on or go on too long without speaking. Here the commentary is always on tack and they always have relevant information to give. I was amused that part of the AVGN Movie was filmed in the same location as Super 8 since I remember James giving the film a positive review of Super 8 in the summer of 2011. Speaking of movie reviews, I love that James has devoted a 115-minute movie to reviewing the ET Atari game when he has yet to review the ET movie.

9. I was so glad they put a Wilhelm Scream during the car chase sequence. There was another famous scream when James is knocked out at Area 51. I don't know what that scream is called but I remember it was the sound you hear when Ethan Hunt dies in the 1998 N64 game Mission Impossible.

10. Best Line
Nerd: A Nerd's Job Is Never Done
Cooper: Man, that's a stupid line
Nerd: I only said it for the trailer

Con
1. I gotta admit, I wasn't too impressed by the ET review. The analysis was excellent but the Nerd has been far funnier in other reviews. The review does look good in the context of the other actions and events of the film but if James had just posted this review one day on the Cinemassacre website, I'd have been underwhelmed. I'm going to get hate for this but I'd be lying if I wrote otherwise: If I had to choose between the two, I'd prefer the Irate Gamer's ET review.

2. I was a little disappointed Nostalgia Critic's review of the AVGN movie, included on the Blu-Ray, was omitted from the DVD. It seems a little self-centered that the cast and crew would omit somebody else's piece of work so they can have more extras talking about their own production. I'd rather have gotten the Nostalgia Critic Review that a blooper reel, trailers or an Audience Response audio commentary. I'm also disappointed nobody says "I'm Acting" in the audio commentary when Doug Walker's cameo comes on.

3. James once did a "You Know What's BullSh--" episode about DVDs and one of his complaints were DVDs that don't include the running time or make it hard to find. In light of this, it seems hypocritical that the AVGN Movie running time is never mentioned on the DVD packing or on the DVD disc. At least the DVD stays true to James' complaints about commercials in DVDs. The only commercials on the Disc are AVGN Movie trailers in the Bonus Features menu.

4. Copper mentions the Nerd reviewing Transformers and Spiderman games because of corresponding movies, hoping that it will inspire the Nerd to review EE TEE 2. It's kind of irrelevant since there's never been an example of the Nerd reviewing a classic video game just because a new game in the series is coming out.

5. When Mandi denies even being a single agent, why doesn't Copper mention that He and James had legitimate reason to suspect she was hiding something since she wore fake glasses and left Zander's house without telling anybody?

6. Government Secrets in an Atari 2600 Game? I can't believe it took me 3 viewings of the AVGN movie to realize this is a rip-off of the 1984 film Cloak & Dagger! Granted, Cloak & Dagger did star Henry "Elliot In ET" Thomas so it is kind of appropriate for James & Kevin to rip that movie off for a movie about ET for Atari 2600.