Kickassia

To really enjoy Kickassia you have to be at least somewhat familiar with ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com. Essentially it’s a review site, similar to this one except with video cameras and a budget. The reason I say this is because the movie kind of runs under the assumption that you know who all the characters are already, so no one really gets an introduction. One of the best examples I can think of is seeing the Nostalgia Critic dressed up as Raul Julia’s M. Bison from the delightfully awful 90′s Street Fighter film. If you’re not familiar with the Critic it just seems like he’s wearing a weird general costume for no reason, but Street Fighter was one of his earliest reviews, and a short clip of M. Bison from the movie is used regularly throughout his other videos. In fact a sort of society of references is constant between the various contributors to the TGWTG website, and the M. Bison reference is one of the most common.

Kickassia tells the story of the Nostalgia Critic gathering a group of reviewers from his site in order to conquer the real micro-nation of Mollosia. Like I said, there isn’t much of an introduction or explanation for much of what’s going on. Who the Critic is, why he’s calling these people, what relation they have to each other goes basically completely unaddressed in the movie itself. And it is a movie; the whole thing adds up to about 75 minutes. Which is really interesting when you find out that the whole thing was shot in 4 days. That aside, if you actually are familiar with the characters, the whole thing is hilarious, whether it’s seeing the way the characters interact with each other, or seeing someone act drastically out of character compared to how they usually act in their reviews. It’s interesting to note how easy it is to accept the odd plot points that occur, not simply in this movie, but in the various videos made by the reviewers. For example one reviewer, Linkara, has a magic gun. Even in his own videos he never really explains why he has a magic gun, he just kind of does. They never really play it up, but it’s interesting to see how strangely different the reviewers appear. Linkara carries his magic gun because he has it in his own reviews, which tend to have some kind of humorous story in addition to just his thoughts on whatever comic he’s reviewing that week. However, you have guys like Handsome Tom from Game Heroes and Screwattack who is a traditional, normal reviewer in his own videos, so he doesn’t carry a weapon or display unexplained magic powers.

A few of the players really steal the show, though. Angry Joe is really a powerhouse in every scene he shows up in, largely through a combination of the combined facts that he’s so full of energy and also carries the largest gun in the cast. Spoony also ends up with some pretty interesting performances, but a lot of the time that’s simply because the plot revolves heavily around him and his own creation, Dr. Insano. Who really surprises is The Cinema Snob, a relative newcomer to the site who seems to get a lot of screen time simply by virtue of probably being the best actor in the group. That reminds me of one of the things that’s really apparent in the movie: they’re giving it their all, but honestly, not a lot of the people involved are not serious actors in any way. The worst is probably Marzgurl, who, God bless her, just cannot keep herself from giggling or struggling to repress a smile half the time. Film Brain straddles the line on the whole thing; he verges on overacting most of the time, but his character in the film is just so goofy and weird that it kind of works.

All in all for a site like TGWTG, such a huge collaboration is epic. But even apart from the movie itself, it’s really cool to see how a lot of the reviewers took advantage of staying all together in a hotel to do other collaborations for their own sites with each other. I know it’s weird for one review site to recommend another review site to you, but I just couldn’t resist the urge to talk about this with you.