#0002 - Robin Williams can't save a bad movie

RetroGamer on May 21, 2006

This comic took me a lot longer than I thought it would. Technically, it was a very simple comic, but in terms of the dialogue, the comedy… I'm still not certain how funny the actualy strip is. But I'm all right with it, because it details a common occurance in our house. Not revolving around Stephanie specifically, mind you. This sort of conversation has happened a million times on a million different movies. I really enjoyed Elektra. Everyone else hated it. Jim watches the Christmas Story every year and I can't stand it. But the problem is at what point do you stop being polite and express how much you hate a certain movie?
I work at a movie theater, and I get this all the time. People ask me to judge whether a movie they are about to see is good or not. If I like the movie, I tell them so, but if not, I tell them I haven't seen it. I don't want to risk ruining a movie in advance for them.
RV, though. I got in to see RV for free, (one of the perks of my job,) and I still feel like I overpaid. The group that went and saw it was more or less the same as in the comic. I don't think Steph has seen it, though I tink the comic plays better with her having seen and enjoyed it. We all agreed that it was perhaps the worst movie we've seen in years. The plot was contrived, the characters were shallow, and the jokes were the same three beats over and over and over. There were few moments in which I didn't think someone on the screen needed to be slapped.
When last I checked, Rotten Tomatoes has RV at 24%, and Da Vinci Code at 6% I find it difficult to believe that RV is four times better than anything, let alone Da Vinci Code. I'll likely catch it this week in full, and snippets when I can go in to a theater on break until then.
One quick technical note. I changed the font for Rich's speech bubbles. (Clever folks will notice that each character uses a different font.) It was origianlly an old school retro gaming font called Press Start, but it doesn't like to fit, and it makes it hard to give Rich a lot of dialogue, like “It made me appreciate what a fine movie Ultraviolet was.”
Also: Yes, the characters are modeled loosely after myself and people I know. I asked each of them if they were all right with this, and they agreed. I always liked strips like Penny Arcade, where you can tell the jokes came from real conversations, and that's the sort of thing I want to do with GA.