Neophyte-Ronin's movie Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Noob Adventures Episode 9]

Although the series has yet to conclude--when I can give an honest, comprehensive review--I have to admit that Minecraft TNA ought to be the official series of the game for two reasons. First, it is not unwholesome by any stretch, and two, it is actually just as dramatic as it is humorous. Few have succeeded in describing a game, its players, the lingo involved, and the hidden tension that goes with playing the game. There are actual dramatic arcs and you almost begin to feel for the characters. There are even moral dilemmas that appear. In short, TNA is more than just a regular parody, it's a solid show in its own right. Let's hope these continue to debut and that there is a satisfying conclusion at the season finale.

[Harry and Terry - Episode 1 - Terry Turns Thirty]

I got a birthday coming up. How did you people at fartoons know?

Harry and Terry is a lousy mock-up of situation comedies featuring a Hare and a Tortoise. Harry is a chipper dude who is trying to cheer up his clinically depressed friend during his thirtieth birthday. Eventually, he gives him a present: a nice noose to hang himself with.

Part of the reason I despise having to head outside the door is the supposition that someone will bring up why I am so morbidly depressed. It ain't to the brink of suicide, but it seems as though that's a classic stereotype that everybody enjoys to laugh at. And my God, it was just terrific to watch yet another pallid, remorseless display of another flash author to stereotype and discredit psychiatric illness for the sake of a few cheap laughs. Part of the reason why the final episode of Harry and Terry dissatisfies me is that it lacks any sense of psychological realism for the sake of a callback. It's also manipulative besides.

The other element that irritates me is that Fartoons decided to use the cheeky, cheery format of a sit-com to juxtapose the seriousness of the subject matter. All it did was grate on the audience's nerves and disillusion those who "got the joke" but didn't find it funny. The real juxtaposition is how this is a technically decent production, despite any asynchronous sound near the tail end due to sheer size of the shock-wave file. It is scripted okay, although most of the jokes fall flat and the last one is seen coming from the very first scene. Why? Because that's how depression is supposed to be funny.

Fartoons's "Harry and Terry" is the very reason why I second-guess the desire to animate in Flash, because if this is the technical caliber I have to beat before Newgrounds is infused with greater psychological realism, I will no doubt have to approach some shit-head reviewer who thinks all the work I had put into something is four naught. And it will be because I didn't generate any laughs over a depressed man hanging himself, either. Because watching depression culminate to suicide isn't funny.

[Attempting to snipe]

What is this?

So this is about a guy who fires his gun at random and hits people. Is this for real? I don't get the joke here. It's goofy, but I don't find anything else in it. Nice job for a first time, though there is a lot of snap-crackle-pop in the audio at the beginning.

VSAworld responds:

erhhmm the sniper is killing all the soldiers ;)

[The Ocean]

This sucks. Not in a funny way, either. I mean, is this inspired by the Chicago Academy of Art? If so, then that place must suck, too.

Okay, so the audio and flash is done by this BPremo guy and he wants to sing about going to the ocean and having sex there. Yeah, okay. Then it unravels in classic Newgrounds fashion, replete of screaming and blood oozing from the skin inexplicably.

This is therapy for BPremo after his impressive NATA submission. He needed something fucking stupid to cleanse himself of the dramatic stuff he's not used to doing. Yeah, so it's just practice, really. It's just a crass catharsis between his NATA participation and his typical fare. In other words, don't expect anything incredible.

The fact that it's all done by one guy requires two stars, but personally, I wasn't amused. I've seen it before, and I'll likely see it again. And I'll always give it low scores unless it manages to make me laugh. Which, in this case, didn't happen.

Bill responds:

"When one is drained of all humor, anything beautiful is met with one of two things: disdainful worry or worrisome disdain. Anything ugly is met with violence. Flash is complex and beautiful, not a toy. Keep that in mind... or things get ugly real quick."

Dude you're on a site where the main export is dick jokes.

[Megapope]

Somehow it doesn't surprise me this was part of a senior thesis at a university. It just doesn't. It really doesn't. Okay. So let's get one thing straight: there should be a disclaimer saying this is a work of fiction. Similarities to persons living or dead are coincidental or unintentional. That way, Lord Spew (Sean Glaze) doesn't get sued out his ass or blacklisted for perpetuating secular left extremism. Seriously!

Let's get this straight: this is a severely bigoted parody of Catholicism, namely a what-if sci-fi tale where the brain of Jesus gets cloned from parts of his brain found in an archaeological dig (a far-fetched proposition by religious and scientific standards; how is anyone certain they found Jesus's DNA in the first place, let alone an intact brain after over two thousand years?). It is inserted into the skull of a deceased pope reconstituted into a cybernetic hodgepodge whose behavior should offend the daylights out of anybody in active recovery from severe or persistent mental illness. To then hire a speech writer who's an atheist with an agenda to despoil what he considers a greater sham, only to have it backfire after an explicitly useless confrontation with a paladin with an agenda all his own... yeah, you get the picture: this is absolute bullshit.

This reminds me so much of Dan Brown if Dan Brown wanted to write and draw comic books. This stuff misquotes and misrepresents the faith in such a heinous fashion but dresses itself up in comic flair--a parody, so as to be considered fair use--that it just falls in on itself. Not that the jokes cannot be gotten--they're just unfunny. Paired with the fact that this is the same man behind Fisthead, a superhero parody that is actually worth our time for its sheer gratuity, and you leave the cartoon feeling let down and even wincing. This is just another one of those cartoons that decides to be extreme by misrepresenting everything to the extent that it's bigotry, pure and simple. There is a good chance that this garbage will persevere at Newgrounds because it's fictional, but in all seriousness, it's a hateful diatribe that could only come from a university campus, where this sort of double standard tends to breed.

As for the technical garbage, yeah, it's a fluid animation. The caricatures are expressive, classic stereotypes of clergy who do not practice what they preach (including one guy who spews on himself after mowing down chicken leg after chicken leg), and the absurdity and irreverence is constant. Yet, it doesn't have what Fisthead has in spades: love. This was a cartoon engineered out of hatred of the subject matter, while Fisthead has its insanity within a more respectable context and was over-the-top with a supreme appreciation of what they were picking on. Not here. This is where attitude towards source material affects the outcome of a piece in a negative light. Can you say with any confidence that this sort of insufferable garbage could be performed if it where aimed at Jews, Buddhists, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestants, Shintoists, Evangelicals, Islam, Hindu, Coptic, Unitarians, or any other faith or denomination thereof? No. No faith has a bigger bulls-eye than Catholicism does. To tell the truth, this is a barb against all religions as well because it oversimplifies the whole issue over faith and dismisses everything as passe superstition.

Lord Spew is a talented, skilled cartoonist and animator who should focus all his future attentions upon Fisthead and do us all a favor by dodging and not provoking controversy, because "Megapope" is proof positive that, if he picked any other subject, his approach would be utterly and clinically fatal to his standing. We would get a cheap laugh all right, but that's all we would remember him for: a cheap laugh. Like those Comedy Central comics who whip out the Catholic card when they're dying out there in the audience. And seriously, that has got to stop. Even Lord Spew is above "Megapope". So why was it ever made?

Because it was a final at a university. That's why.

LordSpew responds:

hHAHAHAH First of all if you need a disclaimer to tell you that this is fiction your a fucking nutcase ahhaha. You are trying to make scientific sense out of a cartoon you fucking nutbag. This is a "what if" scenario not a true story. Also, a university has nothing to do with my subject matter. I did fisthead at a university too you fucking simpleton. Even if it provides a negative light on Catholicism (a hypothetical one) at the end Ned realizes Megapope is a good guy even if he is crazy. So Jesus, in this make believe cartoon is still a good guy worth respecting in some capacity. MEGAPOPE IS THE GOOD GUY YOU IDIOT. The three cardinals could have just as well been the heads of any large company that is trying to keep face. I don't have a problem with religion. In fact, all the arguments against religion in this are so ridiculous that they wouldn't be taken seriously. You are a very impressionable (whatever age you are person). And the fact that you gave this 8 minute cartoon with "fluid" animation and developed story a zero compared to some of the garbage that is on here is a true example of how bigotted YOU are. A real christian would turn the other cheek and give me a five. you stinky piece of high-horse garbage.

You responded to this video with a whole page worth of paragraph and "fluff" to make you sound intelligent. Instead of doing that, how about having an intelligent argument.. It had that much impact on you that you will remember this video even if it is a "cheap laugh." And that is cool by my me. The only thing you have done is make people more interested in this piece because you made such a big deal out of it.

Maybe I should put a disclaimer at the front of fisthead so the police don't try to arrest him! He is killing all these people and cartoons are real!

[The Chronicles of F-kun]

And you, sir, are an asshole. >.>

Hulaloo has an amazing talent and a toilet for humor. Too bad they go together like peas and carrots around Newgrounds (anywhere else it's like nuts and gum). Anyway, "The Chronicles of F-kun" (Faggot-kun, to be precise) is a melodramatic suicide sequence where a poor soul gives into his depression over... wait, what's this thing about again?

Okay, so we have a guy staring into a computer screen and looking around, seeing pictures and parents and posters and filaments of his life around the place, but nothing seems to add up to his climactic end. Then we're treated with (SPOILER WARNING) a flashing, screaming message saying "You are Faggot-kun!" (SEIZURE WARNING).

Yeah, okay. This isn't quite what I expect out of the typical Newgrounds animator. Yet, Hulaloo is far from typical and he's known for this stuff. But there are days when his brand of trolling can grate on the nerves rather than make one laugh. This is one of those moments. Figure he'd get over this stuff, but there are twelve year old kids to insult and everyday values to derail.

In short, I didn't find this particularly amusing or funny, not just because it's a standard troll with standard troll techniques and tactics, but that it fails to elucidate why we must call F-kun "Faggot-kun", to whoever doesn't care enough to know who F-kun is or why he is somehow relevant. Is this a flame on every twelve year-old, or just a haphazard in-joke from which only insiders could get a kick out of?

The irony makes this worse: the artwork is up to par with Hulaloo, and he has evolved over years to get proportion and detail in balance with animating. This is one of those moments. There isn't a great deal of animation, but the artwork is sound and the soundtrack fits the melodramatic tone. In other words, it's as well-done as possible, and below 2MB, almost unheard of in this day and age.

Long story short, if someone fails to get the joke, then this is just another project where half a language gets wasted trying to insult somebody who we don't even know or care about. The underpinnings are even worse: if someone has the time to orchestrate a decent-produced animation orchestrated specifically to insult one person, then really, it's just a ridiculous waste of everybody's time, time better spent on something far more productive. "The Chronicles of F-kun" demonstrate the kind of juvenile excess that goes with realizing your personal greatness and then producing material that will amuse yourself well before it is ever able to amuse anybody else. That sort of self-indulgence is the classic mistake of the rank amateur, and it implies that we have to go to the forums or Google the term "faggot-kun" and search around for fifteen minutes when we have better things to do. To be quite honest, I figured Hulaloo was above this sort of mawkish hackwork by now.

[Epiclepsy]

What a way to kick off Mental Health Awareness Month.

"Epiclepsy" is about a man with a seizure-inducing neurological disorder who is mistaken for a world-class heroic secret agent capable of unraveling a mad doctor's volatile schemes. The joke is that he is totally unaware that his spasms cause this stuff to happen. When he finally comes to, he is a world-class hero without recollection as to how or why.

This is how a "First-Time Flash Cartoon" should turn out: littered with bugs, but actually complete with good demonstration of knowledge and technique. It's not a perfect-polish piece by any means though: sound effects are absent and, if you insist, you should have at least one solid lady voice-over, because we can tell the difference, and having a guy make an attempt is miserably counter-funny. The art design uses painted backgrounds to generate a true television cartoon feel circa 1990s and earlier, while the simplistic design keeps animating characters a reasonable affair.

Perhaps in a bad way, the protagonist suffers from epilepsy, which causes seizures and conscious black-outs. It's interesting to see a character with a known type of neurological or psychiatric illness get billed as one who will save the world. It's refreshing since most depictions of mental illness are often very negative, especially among the Newgrounds community. Even so, the depiction is not terribly flattering: his buddies decide to haul him to the dance floor and draw attention from the ladies, and virtually everybody is oblivious to him having a condition. Granted, that's one of the running gags, but to be perfectly honest, it's often an insult since the condition is invisible to outsiders until a noticeable symptom arises. It's called being stigmatized or, for a more approachable term, discriminated against.

Despite these concerns, the biggest mess would be the crudity of the design paired with the atrocious file size. Is this really a Flash or some other data file? There are techniques and procedures that help reduce the size of a file. It sounds like nitpicking--maybe it is--but one of the first things one must learn is that there are ways to keep that stuff down to a trickle. Just because technology has improved doesn't mean we can get away with submitting dozens of MB just for a few minutes of product.

Oh, and get a pop filter. Some people have been complaining.

Overall, this is impressive for a first effort. It's depiction of a debilitating disorder is, at times, questionable, but the intent is all in good fun, perhaps to elevate the illness from being a disability or simply to raise awareness of it. It couldn't have happened at a better time, so despite nagging technical issues across the board, I'll give it an additional star.