Awesome / Half in the Bag

• The 2-part review of Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill. A vicious and thorough dissecting on the running themes in Sandler movies, whether it's the blatant Product Placement or Sandler shoe-horning in his friends from Saturday Night Live, and that was just the beginning. They then go on to explain how Sandler is the biggest (alleged) scam artist in Hollywood. Ending it all with what can be described as "Jack and Jill in a nutshell" when Mr. Plinkett's twin sister (Plinkett in a wig) comes to visit while Mike and Jay purposely shove products in front of the camera. The review was an important milestone for RedLetterMedia in proving they weren't one-trick ponies when it came to Star Wars reviews or were only capable of withering analysis and criticism through the filter of the Mr. Plinkett character, which were both frequent accusations leveled at them back in 2011.
  • The awesomeness was enough for Roger Ebert's editor Jim Emerson to do a follow-up article to the Half in the Bag review.
• The review of Paranormal Activity 4 is an excellent explanation of what makes found footage movies like the The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield scary; that they aren't so much about the occasional 'jump scares' as the psychological breakdown of the characters when under threat. Mike compares the Paranormal Activity movies to haunted house rides since there is nothing happening except for the scares. Jay compares the movies unfavourably to The Fast and the Furious series, saying that while some of those movies may be corny at least he can understand why people would want to go and see them. In the end they both conclude that Paranormal Activity 4 makes Jack and Jill (see above) look like a masterpiece of effort.
• The reviews of Red Tails and The People Vs. George Lucas make good serious counterparts to the Plinkett Star Wars reviews, and at times are practically a film school analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of George Lucas, including a pretty intellectual discussion over the morality of Executive Meddling and whether or not Lucas has become a Trolling Creator.
• They call out the homophobic jokes in A Haunted House as bullying.
• Mike and Jay ripping apart A Million Ways to Die in the West and repeatedly taking Seth MacFarlane to task for his huge ego and glaring sense of self-adoration, especially when weighed against the overall quality of the works that fuel them both. In particular they notice the movie's blatant irony-free adherence to the Ugly Guy, Hot Wife trope especially given the leading man's severe lack of charm ("Oh he has to choose between Charlize Theron and Amanda Seafood... fuck you"), and how the reliance on modern pop-culture reference jokes and lowbrow stoner jokes doesn't work so well in a period setting. On the flip side though they are complimentary about the cinematography, costuming and sets, saying it's just a shame all the craft behind the scenes is wasted on a lazy script.
• Watching the first three Transformers films at the same time really shows how formulaic the films actually are. The same scenes happen all at the same exact time in each film.
• Their discussion of the rom-com What's Your Number?, where Mike and Jay are joined by Gillian, a stand-up comedian who enjoys romantic comedies as cinematic "fast food". Mike spends most of the episode ripping the entire romantic comedy genre to shreds in his usual deadpan, caustic style, Gillian responds in a composed and elegant fashion, stating that, while Mike's criticisms are mostly valid, calling an entire group of people (including herself) dumb just for making the choice to enjoy escapist fantasy and having different opinions than he does is pointlessly aggressive. Jay's maintained silent Oh, Crap! face throughout the episode as he waits for a conflict to break out only adds to the awesomeness of Gillian's levelheaded response.
• Mr. Plinkett storming in and gruesomely murdering Jack and Rich at the end of their Pixels review.
• For their 100th episode they can only watch The Force Awakens on VHS with the VCR they destroyed in episode 99. They actually focus on working on the VCR and repair it at warp speed.
• Whenever Mike makes a running joke of a proposal for a good movie with a similar concept to the bad movie they're reviewing. The best are probably "Silent Screams", a found-footage silent movie shot by one of Thomas Edison's directors in the early 1900s. Also "The Inside", which featured a creepy old neighbor named Red Herring.
• The Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance review in general, but specifically the part where Jay and Mike note that all of the batshit-insane scenes in the trailer that were obviously trailer-bait were actually in the movie.
• Their Take That! to Transformers: The Last Knight: they get two different actors (Colin and Jim of BotW fame) to sit in for them, take one look at the 15% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, say "Fuck that" and spend two minutes drinking beer while Transformers sound-effects play. Then they leave 18 minutes of a black screen for the rest of the video. If Michael Bay and company aren't going to put in a decent effort after all this time, why should they? Talk about guts.
• Their calling out of Warner Bros. in their Annabelle: Creation "contest" for essentially offering $50 to filmmakers to own their two minute horror short for three years with no other compensation — and the right to back out any time they like with no penalty.
  • They also called out Warner Bros. for manipulating Rotten Tomatoes by giving a "special screening" to select critics so it would have 100% for a week on the aggregate site before other reviewers started posting their negative reviews of the film.

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