What's with internet critics doing all these lame skits?

[Drathnoxis]

Angry Video Game Nerd, Nostalgia Critic, Spoony, etc. are really funny when simply focusing on reviewing bad games/movies and yet they all insist on clogging up their videos with unfunny skits and embarrassing plot lines. What these people are best at is finding the inherent humour in a work and bringing it out so that everybody else can see it, not acting. The videos should really concentrate on the games and movies and everything should be closely related to what's happening on the screen, but the reviewers constantly try to pull the focus to themselves and their dumb skits. It just ruins what would have been an otherwise good episode for me.

So is anyone else sick of all of the self indulgent fluff that so many internet reviews contain?
Why do you think this problem (if you feel it is a problem) is so prevalent?
Does anyone find it ironic that the acting in the reviewers skits is much worse than the acting they mock in the movies they review?
What reviewers do you feel are particularly guilty of excessive tacked on plots and skits?

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Frankly, I think Doug Walker, at some point, became to full of himself. I always thought he was fairly talented but his problem is that over time he forgot that he's only as funny as the material he works with and started to these weird, overly long sketches that digress from the movie he's reviewing and the results are, in my opinion, pretty embarassing. I think the anniversary specials showed quite clearly that he's not a strong enough comedian to be entertaining without some bad movie to react to. When he's left to his own devices he tends to fall back on screaming, non sequiturs and referencial humour and you more or less just sit there and wait for him to finally get back to the movie.

It's a problem that obviously many entertainers with a similar background as him have. I guess it's just the inevetable result when a bunch of film-school-dropouts become to confident in their skills.

 

[Queen Michael]

Well, excuse them for expressing themselves and doing what they consider fun, we all know that as a person in the internet you are the most important being in the world and they should do everything just for your own viewing pleasure.

Come on, don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

Does anyone find it ironic that the acting in the reviewers skits is much worse than the acting they mock in the movies they review?

No, since the movies they mock are $100,000,000 affairs that cost money to watch, while the Internet reviewers make free-to-watch videos on a pocket-changed sized budget that doesn't allow them to hire professional actors.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Well, excuse them for expressing themselves and doing what they consider fun, we all know that as a person in the internet you are the most important being in the world and they should do everything just for your own viewing pleasure.

FINALLY, someone who understands!

 

[Nikolaz72]

They make what they want to make. These are people who loves movies and loves comedies, so obviously they want to try their hand at it themselves as a way of expressing their feelings.

The Reviews granted them a way to earn enough to realize their desires of trying to make something themselves, they put it on their websites with the reviews because it's their damn websites where else should they put it? They want others to see it.

I get their content for free, the last thing I'm going to do is complain when they show me something they made with love.

TGWG has some decent actors in their midst. Their 'first' anniversary, knights of something I think was pretty good. I didn't like any of the ones since, I 'do' miss the days when for anniversaries they just got together and did reviews together, but again- they do this for their sake just as much as they do it for ours, as is their right. Imagine you had to do a movie review every week for 500 or so weeks or something, I reckon you'd want to do something else for a change now and then. His fans didn't like the months upon months long breaks, so he simply decided to spice up the regular schedule into an irregular schedule where there at least Isn't more than a month between movie reviews.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, the net is full of rubbish like that, it's no surprise that their contributions are likewise.

 

[Eddie the head]

Well, excuse them for expressing themselves and doing what they consider fun, we all know that as a person in the internet you are the most important being in the world and they should do everything just for your own viewing pleasure.

Excuse him for having an opinion. Really the critics are free to do whatever they want, but this guy is just as free to say he doesn't like it. Although I guess you're free to dislike his opinion. The difference being he has a reason beyond just calling him selfish.

On topic. I mostly skip them if I get the chance. If not I mute them tell they get to the meat.

 

[Vault101]

Frankly, I think Doug Walker, at some point, became to full of himself. I always thought he was fairly talented but his problem is that over time he forgot that he's only as funny as the material he works with and started to these weird, overly long sketches that digress from the movie he's reviewing and the results are, in my opinion, pretty embarassing. I think the anniversary specials showed quite clearly that he's not a strong enough comedian to be entertaining without some bad movie to react to. When he's left to his own devices he tends to fall back on screaming, non sequiturs and referencial humour and you more or less just sit there and wait for him to finally get back to the movie.
s.

the funny thing is when he came back from his "hiatus" I actually enjoyed the sketches more than his actual "review" part...that said the skits were at least relevant to the subject at hand

OT: I think for me it depends on how much I like the reveiwer and if they don't start wallowing around in the "meta" ness of it all

I mean I think there is room for something like that. One of my absolute favorites is "freddy got fingered" By nostalga Chick (and her freind nella) the set up being fairly typical (oh this thing we are reviewing is awful) so then they palm it off to some other schmuck (Kyle who does artsy films) the execution and everything was hilarious and more to the point not overly self indulgent, also anything with Mara Wilson in it...

I remember people might have foudn the "dark nella" storyline too self indulgent/annoying and they seemed to drop that...

that said though I could wathc Lindsey and her freinds screw around so I might be biased in that regard...AND I honestly think she's is serveral cuts above most online personalitys

I can understand why people don't like it....especially to somone who isn't familiar with "internet' stuff it would be reeeeaally weird

 

[Mikeybb]

At first they were a charming little aside.
Now, they're vying with the review for screen time and importance.

As long as they're amusing though, it's fine really.

 

[Mahemium]

I more often than not find them amusing.

"Drop dat dookie girl"

 

[Lieju]

Like with anything, depends on the person. Even if the acting sucks, the props are made of cardboard and the fight-coreography is shit it can still win me over with the charm of people genuinely doing what they think is cool.

And I think the way Linkara does it is good; they are mostly at the start of the video and the end, so just skip them if you don't care.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The only ones I let get away with this type of behaviour is Red Letter Media. Their skits are at worst mediocre and at best borderline funny. Spoony's could be alright, but then he himself went off the deep end, and is now on a whole too obnoxious for me to watch at all.

Everything that bubbles up from that stagnant pitt that is TGWTG instantly gets muted and/or skipped. Right after Doug Walker came back to reviewing, the amount and length of the skits were fucking unbearable. The guy's fine when he's genuinely discussing a movie, but when he's trying to be funny, even when it's tied to the movie itself, it's just teeth-grittingly agonizing. High pitched screaming and squeeky voices aren't funny to anyone but 6-year olds, Doug.

I'm glad Two Best Friends remains free of this nonsense.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

I'm not the biggest fan of them. It's the one thing that's put me off watching the Nostalgia Critic these days since it seems every 5 minutes the review stops just to do a skit. Not to say that 'reviewer skits' can't be funny, but I much prefer it if they are either placed at the beginning/end of the review so they can be skipped/watched with the main bulk left relatively intact (e.g. Linkara) or if they're used to help emphasise a point (e.g. Angry Joe).

 

[Zontar]

Hey, say what you will about Nostalgia Critic, at least his skits aren't as bad as MovieBob's Game Overthinker. Once upon a time his videos where just the point (hell his first one was all about getting straight to the reason his video series even exists). Now though? Now his videos are more then not skits that no one is interested in (it killed the series' popularity and is only continued because Bob wants it too) that are completly interspersed in the start, middle and end of his videos (and it doesn't help that what he has to say which was the whole reason people even watched has also fallen like a rock in quality).

 

[L. Declis]

You think those skits are bad?

You should watch the Game Overthinker.

Seriously, start from episode 1, and watch all the way to now where his material goes from deep, academic and critical thought to ideological screaming, fanboyism and becoming everything he decries in his first 20 episodes, complete with amazing acting where he plays every role as Marty Sue, Everything Was Better In the Old Day Boy and Captain Strawman!

 

[Trinket to Ride]

I more often than not find them amusing.

"Drop dat dookie girl"

Yeah, I think we can all agree Angry Joe is a hell of a lot more hit and miss then The Guy With Glasses when it comes to skits.

True story. A lot of the time on Twitter, he talks about how a review is going to be delayed (or in some cases, canceled) because he needs to finish writing a skit or needs to wait for a costume to come in. No you don't, Joe. No you don't.

OT: That's one thing I like about Linkara. He puts all his weird storyline stuff and extended sketches at the end of the review, often after the credits roll, instead of weaving them into the review itself. I've seen dozens of his reviews, and know next to nothing about the storyline.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

While I don't "mind" the skits reviewers do it does get very annoying very quick if it's bad. I like Phelous but holy hell his "cameo's" he adds get very annoying. From Lupa saying something that boils down to "derp d do" and that one dude screaming "X DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY". And the worse part is these are the shit kind of cameos', just blatantly in your face going "HEY THIS IS A REVIEWER I KNOW LAUGH" (Kinda like the Stan Lee cameo from Guardian's of the Galaxy). As for Doug, I stopped watching after a few of his new TGWTG reviews because the skits he did in them were too long, unfunny, and stank of his failed series. And I wasn't going to give him any clicks anymore.

 

[Batou667]

Gaming, tech, and nerd culture are kind of engaged in an awkward love-triangle these days and it's making people do... silly things. Rooster Teeth's attempts at "diversifying" into comedy vines and candid camera pranks made me facepalm pretty damn hard, for example.