I just watched One Wall Cinema’s riff of The Shadow and I hate to say it, but this one didn’t work for me. Two stars out of five. I really don’t like giving out negative reviews, but I have to be honest.
Here’s some specific problems I had.
The opening skit with Words with Friends didn’t work for me. It felt really forced and unfunny and by the two minute mark I wanted it to end.
A number of the jokes were repetitive. For example, the “where will you be when diarrhea strikes?”. And in particular, the bit where you keep mentioning about Margo Lane leaving Cranston’s place. The joke was hit on so many times that it became extremely tiresome and I found myself tuning out on the riff. I know it’s hard to be diverse in the jokes with a two hour movie—I have the same problem in my riffs—but I think it might help next time to go through the script, catch points of repetition and change them. Unless perhaps the callbacks have more of a payoff. Here, I felt that they didn’t.
I felt that you passed over a number of prime riffing opportunities. For example, when Shiwan Kahn was in the restaurant. “You Americans are so arrogant.” Something like: “NO, WE’RE NOT!!!” Also when he jumped out the restaurant window, there was nothing.
The use of single shot guns. If they had given Lane a revolver or a Tommy gun, it would have been a much shorter movie. Or something along those lines.
The cleanliness of the hotel. How can the hotel be cleaned if nobody in the city can see the building? Did the Mongol warriors do it in their spare time?
Observations like that, I felt, could have made the riff funnier.
The energy level of the riff seemed to fluctuate a lot too. Sometimes you guys sounded really enthusiastic and you were laughing. Sometimes it sounded low and monotone. A more consistent energy level might help.
Bleeping the profanity. I have the same problem with Rifftrax. I’d suggest either using the profanity or just leaving it out altogether. Bleeping it out seems like a poor compromise to me.
Further, I think you guys were too kind to this film. I think it needed more of a shellacking in the humor. More pungent, wry zingers that ridiculed the film’s poor plot and pacing and the hammy overacting.
On the plus side, you guys did have good chemistry together. Some of the jokes were funny and I did laugh. Like the one about having Margo stay and rip the skin off her face. The audio quality was all right, although some of the lines were a bit too soft and I had trouble hearing the sync lines in the director’s voice. A pitch change might work better.
It wasn’t a total disaster where I didn’t laugh once. But the funny jokes were few and far between. Perhaps this riff might have suffered in comparison to Die Hard 2, where I was laughing the whole way through. In this case, by the end I wasn’t really laughing at all.
Please note, this is only one reviewer’s opinion. Humor is very subjective and what person might find hysterical, another person might find unfunny.
Topic: iJust Finished Watching (Read 381555 times)
