Just watched One Man Band’s riff of The Thing. And unfortunately I have to give it one out of five stars.
First the good news. From a technical standpoint, the riff was superb. The audio came through very well and I didn’t have to raise the volume on my VLC player unlike some of the other riffs I’ve purchased. Also it was synced well. SJP’s voice was very clear and easy to understand. There was no hissing, popping or other background noise. Overall, it sounded very professional.
Now for the bad news. I didn’t laugh once during this riff. I really wanted to like it, but I just did not find it funny in the slightest. Finally, after around thirty minutes (at the “it’s imitation” sync line), I had to shut it off. Until now I have always listened to a riff the whole way through, but I could not stand this one. Since I didn’t listen to the whole thing, I can only vouch for the first half hour. But here are some of my specific criticisms.
The opening in the bunker with the computer: I thought that the skit went on for way too long and the jokes felt extremely forced. I did like the Sgt. Crumley voice (it reminded me of Captain Dale Dye from Platoon), but the voice of the computer really grated on me with its faux British accent and its whiny electronic tone. By the third minute, I was ready to skip past it.
The actual riff: One of my main criticisms of the riff is the delivery. SJP’s tone felt too rote and stilted for my tastes, almost as if it the riff was over-rehearsed. Some of the jokes might have been funny, like the dog pulling the helicopter, but they were delivered in such a dry way that I couldn’t laugh along with him. Except for a few cases, I felt there was a distinct lack of emotion in the riff. In the best riffs, I feel that the riffer or riffers are really emotionally engaged with the movie (e.g. Cinester Theater’s Total Recall). Here I felt that the detached riffing style kept me at a distance rather than pulling me in.
Some of the joke choices really had me scratching my head. For example, “Here at Dover fresh cliffs are flown in daily” riff in the beginning. I couldn’t fathom why in the world that would be funny. And puns like “Windows in sleep mode” had me groaning—and not in a good way. In other cases, the jokes felt too obvious. Like Wilford Brimley and Quaker Oats. That’s not to say that the obvious choice is always the wrong one, but here it felt like you went for the easy riff one too many times. Next time I’d suggest going for the unconventional joke more often.
Another problem I had with the riff was the repetition. Certain jokes such as Garry sounding like Punky Brewster’s dad and the Bjork jokes weren’t funny the first time. But after the third or fourth time you said them, I found them to be really insufferable. Obviously it’s very difficult to have different jokes throughout a riff, but I think it would help if the running jokes had more of a bigger, funnier payoff than they had here.
Finally, I felt that you used too many jokes in the riff. I’d suggest letting the movie breathe some more.
As a small caveat, I think riffing The Thing is a lot harder than I imagined it would be. Scenes like the dog kennel attack would be hard to riff under any circumstance and I would have trouble laughing no matter who was riffing that part (I don’t like seeing film violence against animals, especially dogs). Having said that, the kennel scene doesn’t come in for around thirty minutes and I was squirming in my seat long before then (for reasons that didn’t involve the movie or needing to go to the bathroom).
I choose the riff in part because of its place on the top 50 iriffs list. However, I feel that it wasn’t really warranted. There were other better riffs (Temple of Doom and Dracula come to mind) that deserved the spot. In this case, I didn’t think that the list adequately represented the quality of the product.
Please bear in mind that this is only my opinion and other viewers may have liked this riff. I don’t like to slam other riffers, but I have to be honest. This riff did not work for me and I would not recommend it.
Topic: iJust Finished Watching (Read 371857 times)
