Damned By Faint Praise / Web Videos

Damned by Faint Praise in Web Videos.

---

• The Angry Video Game Nerd:
  • He has only one good thing to say about Back to the Future: at least it fits in a toaster.
  • For even more horrendous games like Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, the closest he could get to complimenting it is to say it's almost half as bad as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (NES).
  • Even on Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde itself, the nicest thing he is able to say about it is that, for what it is, it's at least a finished and functional game, unlike unfinished "things" like Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and Hong Kong '97.
  • When he plays the LJN Toys adaptation of Alien3, in spite of all its flaws and who made it, he admits that it's at least playable, as much as the film is at least watchable. He then takes that to mean it's actually a good adaptation, as they perfectly captured the flawed mediocrity of the film they were adapting.
  • When reviewing CrazyBus, he praises as "the definitive Venezuelan bus game for the Venezuelan bus enthusiast."
    Nerd: Do you find any Venezuelan buses in Super Mario World? No!
  • When reviewing the butchered N64 port of Carmageddon, he declares that the only positive thing he can say about it in relation to other racing games is that the racers move, putting it above Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.
  • He similarly "praises" The Legend of Kage in this way. After slamming on the game's shortness, repetitive difficulty, bad graphics, and only one song, he gives the game this much credit: it has a pause button and doesn't have any game breaking bugs.
• Atop the Fourth Wall:
  • After watching Wonder Woman brutally take down a suspect and take his blood without the legal right to in the 2011 pilot, Linkara says, "At least she used a sterile needle."
  • In his review of "The Culling" arc, he notes that Rose Wilson and Caitlin Fairchild pass The Bechdel Test during their Designated Girl Fight. "So I guess there's another positive we can give to this idiotic story."
  • During his review of the first issue of Marville, Linkara admits that one thing he can give it compared to other terrible parody comics he's reviewed is that at least Marville was in colour.
    Yeah, because that was my problem with Bimbos in Time. If the dinosaur poop at the end had been in colour, I would've loved it!
• The Autobiography of Jane Eyre: When Jane asks Mr. Rochester's personal assistant Grace Poole about their boss, specifically what he is like and whether he is easy to work for or if he is generally liked, Grace starts talking about his company and family. She also says that he's... a man. Eventually, she manages to say he's great, but it doesn't sound too convincing. But one thing was really nice — Mr. Rochester is a dog-lover.
• A number of video games featured in Games Done Quick's Awful Games Block have been described as fun games to play...if you're speedrunning. In other words, playing the game completely differently from how it was intended to be played.
• Bishop Barron's Youtube review of Last Days In The Desert opens with him praising the movie for a massive accomplishment: managing to make the most captivating human in all of history, Jesus Christ, "colossally dull."
• CBS News online made a whole video doing this to Franklin Pierce. When the host asked a historian about the good things Pierce did in office, the historian broke down in laughter. Then it's mentioned that perforation was added to postage stamps during his administration and that farmers had access to guano. Another historian claims, when asked about whether Pierce was one of the worst presidents, that while Pierce will never be considered one of the best Presidents, he wasn't a terrible person (not saying anything about his actual competence). A similar one talking about James Buchanan has the narrator claiming that the people who now mind his estate have a more positive view of him than most... as in, one of them labels him as only the second worst President of all time.
• At the beginning of his retrospective on Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Chuggaaconroy admits that he doesn't like doing overtly negative videos, and so before he starts ranting about how much the game disappointed him, he wants to highlight the parts of it that he genuinely enjoyed. He can only think of five of them, and is audibly struggling to come up with anything nice to say by the last one.
  Emile: I like... um... how they redesigned the Koopas instead of exclusively flipping Thousand-Year Door art like they did for everything else. The Koopas looked pretty Off-Model with a dead-eyed stare in Thousand-Year Door, so good inititive! Legitimate improvement over the old games! It's... the only design improvement I can think of, but it's something! ...Yeah, this game sucks.
• The Cinema Snob has a moment after one of the many cheap Gorn scenes of Violent Shit III: Infantry of Doom:
  Snob: "Well, at least it's not CG gore..." [winces visibly] "What a fucking sad state we're in when modern-day computer-infested horror films could learn something from THE VIOLENT SHIT MOVIES!"
• Cinematic Excrement:
  • In his review of Kiara the Brave (a direct-to-video mockbuster of Brave), he states that the animation looks great... when compared to the animated sequence in UHF.
  • The Smeghead considers Poison Ivy to be the best villain in Batman & Robin...while also noting how her competition is an obnoxiously exaggerated Dumb Muscle character and a comically underdeveloped character with a penchant for horrible puns.
• Civvie 11 notes that Redneck Rampage Rides Again is the best sequel to a game made on the Build Engine... the competition being Duke Nukem Forever and Blood II: The Chosen. Still, the praise is fairly genuine (he describes it as a flawed-but-playable game that does a lot to fix the original), making it more of a Stealth Insult to the latter two that they couldn't beat the sequel to Redneck Rampage.
• In Counter Monkey episode "Shadowrun: The Code", Spoony begins to describe a break-in that goes horribly wrong thanks to Stupid Crooks shenanigans:
  Spoony: So they start off and— and thank God they went at night! At least they got one thing right.
• Critical Role: in the second campaign, Veth describes the villainous Lucien thusly:
  Veth: He's not all bad - he has good oral hygiene.
• The Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog song "So They Say" features numerous characters praising Captain Hammer and his relationship with Penny. When it's her turn to describe him, she says "I guess he's pretty okay."
• Dragon Ball Z Abridged has Future Trunks ask Gohan in his time what his father was like since Vegeta died with the other Z-Warriors when Trunks was a baby. Gohan stares into the distance for a moment:
  (Flashback of Vegeta holding a young Gohan by the hair and repeatedly punching him in the face)
  Vegeta: So what?! You think that just because you have a Super Saiyan for a father, that makes you better than me?! Huh?!
  Gohan: (Pleading) No!
  Vegeta: WRONG ANSWER!!!
  (Back to the present)
  Future Gohan: He had a lot to prove.
• In Part 7 of Dumb Lawyer Quotes IRL but in Ace Attorney, an attorney, played by Phoenix Wright, lists a defendant's many transgressions then sheepishly says, "On the positive side... he has a certificate for exemplary umpire duties in the softball league."
• Game Grumps:
  • When they are struggling to find one, just one nice thing to say about Zelda's Adventure, this is eventually what they come up with after 8 whole episodes:
    Arin: You know, I got to give this game credit. It fucking... it is.
    Danny: It is a game.
    Arin: It exists.
    Danny: It is real, and you can't take that away from it. Alright, you know what? Next time on Game Grumps!
    Arin: I'm gonna barf.
  • And to add to that, when Zelda's Adventure was so bad they decided to just give up and play extra Sonic Unleashed which Arin begins praising in comparison. While Dan feels he finds the game charming in spite of its flaws, the stuff Arin praises in comparison to Zelda's Adventure are the absolute rock-bottom most basic elements something needs to even be considered a video game (though he does admit he loves the way the beach stage they're on is beautiful):
    Arin: It's got gameplay, and goals, and feedback. There are clear motives and things are happening.
  • During their stream of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Hannah and Dan force Arin to say one nice thing about the game every time he complains about it. Most of his "nice" things are this, where he'll make a scathing critique about how he feels the controls are frustratingly broken, gimmicky, and unresponsive, and then praise some small or irrelevant aspect of the game like a nice texture, or liking how the cursor rotates.
• The Honest Trailers episode for Tenet accuses Christopher Nolan of three recurring problems in his films- 1) overbaked plots, 2) underdeveloped characters and 3) all-white leads. It then shows the black Protagonist, and says the this time, Nolan was able to solve one of those problems.
• I Hate Everything in his review of Cool Cat Saves the Kids said it was "the greatest thing he's ever seen."
  IHE: Notice how I called it a 'thing', though, because I'm not sure it can be classified as a movie.
• An episode of Lasagna Cat makes this into a Running Gag with the two live-action Garfield movies, by using selected quotes from various reviews of said movies, both by professional critics and random internet users, starting with backhanded compliments, then moving on to more bland statements, before finally going into ones that border on downright bizarre.
  "No one can accuse Garfield: The Movie of infidelity to its source: it faithfully conveys the [consistency] of Jim Davis's cartoon."
  — Ben Kenigsberg, Voice
  "Garfield is a cat who says funny things."
  — A.O. Scott, New York Times
  "I loved the garfield cartoons and now I see it if it was in real life !!! I cant wait to see!!!"
  — NowCDDude, Amazon.com
  "Runtime: 78 minutes"
  — IMDb.com
• Jimquisition:
  • Jim's second look at Digital Homicide's Deadly Profits has them pointing out the one or two extremely minor details that were changed for the better (such a boss fight having its exploitation fixed) and that the game itself was worth buying due to the $1 sale the developers were promoting.
  • "It's... fine." Jim's go-to phrase for "Jimpressions" when reviewing games that they consider average fare.
• When JonTron is playing various Barbie games and being thoroughly unimpressed by how shallow and vapid the gameplay is, the highest praise he's able to give the Super Nintendo Barbie game is "at least it's not about getting ready for a date with Ken"
• The Lizzie Bennet Diaries:
  • Lizzie isn't too pleased to hear that Darcy considers her "decent enough"... His lack of social skills and tact is really astounding, considering how witty and pretty Lizzie actually is.
  • Lizzie challenges her incredibly kind sister Jane to say something nice about Darcy. The only thing she can give? "He's so... ah. Eeh. He's um- no, no no... He's tall."
    Lizzie: Okay! For the record, when the nicest thing Jane Bennet has to say about you is "tall", you have personality problems.
  • It happens again when Caroline is trying to describe Darcy, also asked by Lizzie. And Caroline actually likes Darcy. Her struggle may not have been in finding something to praise about him, but in figuring out how to praise him without making it obvious she likes him. Either way, she never ends up spitting anything out, so the effect is the same.
• When Maple Leaf LetsPlays Metroid: Other M, he tells Olive Branch that "the game itself is fine. The game itself is fine" and "very acceptable." (The story, and the ways that the story interacts with the game, however...)
• Crossing over with Biting-the-Hand Humor, Move or Die developer Mental Checkpoint released a video criticising the predatory tactics free-to-play mobile games use to hook players in and fleece them out of their money... sponsored by the free-to-play mobile game Raid: Shadow Legends. The video features an Enforced Plug for the game which conspicuously avoids saying anything about the developers' business practices or monetisation strategies; considering the subject of the video, you'd expect he'd offer some praise for these things if they were in any way ethical, so the fact he doesn't tells you everything you need to know.
• An inverted version of this trope is discussed in The Legend of Hercules (2014) episode of Midnight Screenings, in which Brad and Brian overhear two men talking about the film after seeing it. The first man unfavorably compares the film to the show Spartacus: Blood and Sand, stating how "much better" the show is, before adding at the end that the movie was still "pretty fucking good, though."
  Brad: He liked it! He just had to shit on it first.
• In Moviebob's review of Rob Zombie's Halloween II (2009), he says that it's the best Halloween film since John Carpenter's original, though he admits that given the standards of all the Halloween movies released in between, that's not saying much. Subverted in that he enjoyed the film anyway in spite of its flaws.
• Movies with Mikey's analysis of The Rise of Skywalker concludes that it's not as bad as people make it out to be, and is a fun, harmless action flick...But it also shows how Star Wars has lost all artistic integrity, and retroactively undoes the artistic integrity it once had, to the point where Mikey firmly takes back when he said Star Wars was important to our culture, and that he has no intention of covering the franchise ever again (alongside the Marvel Cinematic Universe).
• The Nostalgia Chick:
  • The Nostalgia Chick labels Dragonheart the best of the "dragon" movies, and acknowledges that it isn't saying much.
  • While reviewing Men in Black II, she complains that It's the Same, Now It Sucks!, and says that Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen of all sequels tried something different.
    The Chick: ...I'm making a positive comparison to Transformers 2. That's like making a positive comparison to backne.
  • When rating the Disney sequels, she admits that she can't quite make a "best" list since, as "best implies 'good' or 'warrants existing.'" Instead, she makes a list of the "Least Awful." She does the same thing later when rating female superhero movies.^note This was made ca. 2014, before Wonder Woman (2017) gave us a legitimately good one.
  • Likewise in her review of The Lorax (2012) she calls Horton Hears a Who! (2008) the "least awful" Dr. Seuss movie, and notes that, like the best of Chris Meledandri's movies, it's "okay."
  • From her Sister Act review: "Well, 'funny' is a strong word, as neither movie [is] particularly funny. They're easy to watch. They will hold your gaze for ninety minutes." At the end, she sums things up by saying that "they're not funny, but they're fun!"
• From the TGWTG files: The Nostalgia Critic
  • From his review of Steel when describing the casting choice of Shaquille O'Neal:
    Critic: But give him some credit, though.... He's tall.
  • He does some lampshading of this during his review of Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen:
    Critic: Greatest adequately satisfying movie of all time! And I liked it, too.
  • In one that he even feels a bit ashamed: as much as he hates How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Jim Carrey's performance is better than Mike Myers in The Cat in the Hat.
  • In his review of Yogi Bear, he gives the film credit where it's due: "it's short."
  • Played for Laughs at the end of his review of Casper when the titular ghost has given up on his film being good or terrifying, and tries to settle for so bad that it's scary. The Critic rebukes this admitting that, while it's not good, it's certainly not god-awful and actually has some good qualities and genuine effort put into it. Casper doesn't take it well.
    Casper: Well. Wasn't so bad it was scary?
    Critic: Actually it wasn't even that. I mean, granted it is a bad movie, but it's nowhere near terrible. The sets are kind of creative, the CGI is fun. And even though it doesn't really work, you can tell that creators were at least trying to create something good. There was actual effort put onto it. It's kind of like the Ninja Turtles movie. It's not really good but could have been hell of a lot worse. Especially considering the subject matter. So, I have to give them credit for at least trying.
    Casper: That's it! I'm tired of leaving no lasting impact on the creative media. But I will leave a lasting impact on your balls!
• Outside Xbox has an episode in which host Luke is served a cocktail recreated from a recipe in Hitman (2016). His verdict on it was: "If you added poison to it, it wouldn't ruin the taste."
• C.T. Phipps and The United Federation of Charles more or less run on this. You can tell when he really hates a game by the almost-passive aggressive way he brings up the minor-minor details which he liked.
• Played for Laughs on Phelous's review of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories when he comments on how the game changes the personalities of its characters based on how you play, and follows with a number of alternate Phelouses who each have different opinions. One, the pretentious art critic version of him, has only this to say:
  In my expert opinion, Silent Hill Shattered Memories is a game.
  (Beat)
  That came out on the Wii.
  (Beat)
  In December of 2009.
• In Ross's Game Dungeon, Ross will often say of games that are merely tedious, mediocre, forgettable, and/or not awful to play that he'd play them if he was in prison with nothing better to do.
• Frequently used in Rank10YGO's archetype reviews, often combining it with Overly Narrow Superlative. An early one was "Well, it sure can give Shapesnatch Turbo a run for its money!" or handing The Empress the honorable title of "better than Magician", but one of the most common is some variant of "If you were playing this card in a rundown locals about five years ago against a six-year-old Genex player, then it should help you out."
• Scott The Woz uses this often:
  • His Shovelware Variety Hour videos involve this frequently, including acclaiming Carnival Games: Mini-Golf as "beyond playable", and referring to Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball as "the best pirate game on our list today" (it's one of two).
  • In New Super Mario Bros. | What's New Is Old, the last thing Scott had to say in the review was that "the New Super Mario Bros. series aren't bad games," followed by a half minute of silence.
  • His quick introduction of Sega for E3 2000:
    "Sega. You know, the company with the name?"
• Screen Rant Pitch Meetings makes frequent use of this in a couple of their Running Gags to dunk on movies or characters that are unimpressive:
  Well, that was definitely a movie!
  I remember him! He was in the first movie!
• Shad in his review of The Rise of Skywalker. One of his few positive comments is that the film "made [him] feel positive emotions… twice."
• Title Pending:
  • Bayden says their friends are neither funny, talented, subordinate, good-looking, friendly, have his back or want him around. But they are good friends regardless.
  • Caelan tells that he likes the most about Title Pending is himself appearing (just now) and the show pretty much existing. Caleb likes Bayden sitting at the desk, Cameron's (whose name he can't remember) humor, but dislikes everything else.
• Tobuscus' "2nd Hottest Girl" is a parody love song about Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The second most attractive girl on a web reality show. The joke, of course, is that the singer doesn't realize that he's insulting her.
• Todd in the Shadows:
  • His review of "Turn Up the Music" is actually 90% just a rant about how much Todd hates Chris Brown as a person. Partway through he remembers that he's supposed to be reviewing the song, and says that yeah, it's okay, before moving on to more hate.
  Todd: As a singer, Chris Brown is a really good dancer.
  • In "The Top 10 Songs About Mediocre Romance", Todd notes that while he loathes "The Piña Colada Song", he does concede that the couple's justification for continuing their relationship isn't quite as absurd as the one given in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something.
• Ultra Fast Pony: In the episode "The Pet Games", the caption writer comes up with a variety of subtitles for Rainbow Dash. These alternate between overt insults like "Professional Idiot", and more subtle insults like "Knows Her Own Name" and "Smartest Mare in Her Family" (in UFP, Dash is an only child and an orphan).
• At the end of The Unlucky Tug's Thomas and the Magic Railroad review, he says the best compliment he can give it is that it's not Misty Island Rescue.
• Vampire Reviews has a Top 10 Positive Things About Twilight video. Most of the examples fall under this trope, including things like "So Bad, It's Good" and "furries got a reprieve as the internet found someone else to make fun of."
• The "What Your Favorite Ship Says About You" videos by Eldena Doubleca5t tend to describe particularly unpopular straight ships with the words "You are heterosexual": the intended meaning being that the pairing in question has nothing else to appeal to people aside from being a straight ship in a queer-dominated fandom.

---