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YMMV / Half in the Bag

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  • Animation Age Ghetto: During their video on the 2016 Oscars, both Mike and Jay act generally dismissive towards the Best Animated Feature category; in particular taking shots at the Shaun the Sheep movie, mocking it as being "kiddie". Needless to say, this attracted a bit of backlash from viewers. However, it's likely that this was just something that was poorly worded on their part, as much of the RLM team has taken the time to discuss and praise several of Disney and Pixar's films in some of the "Previously Recorded" livestream videos (Rich in particular has mentioned that WALL•E is one of his favorite movies of the 21st century so far). It later happened again when in their review of various Blumhouse movies, Jay suggests that they go see Onward, but Mike dismisses it as a "kid's movie".
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In their "review" of Movie 43, there's a brief moment where Jay is nowhere to be seen and Mike is talking to thin air, along with some creepy Background Music playing. This bit is completely disregarded in the next shot and is never given any explanation throughout the rest of the series. This has naturally led to a lot of fan theories that Jay never existed and is just a figment of Mike's imagination, or that Jay was alive at some point but later died in a tragic accident and a grieving Mike is living in a delusion that he's still alive and talking with him about movies. The joke is later used in Best of the Worst when Mike seems to be talking to an imaginary Colin and Jim.
  • Critical Dissonance: Discussed on occasion in the reviews for Hereditary and Gretel and Hansel, where Jay notes that atmospheric, mostly Jump Scare-free horror films like those two and The VVitch tend to either get rave reviews (mostly from critics) or scathing reviews (mostly from general audiences), with very little middle ground in-between. Even when he finds himself exactly in the middle of those two.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Genius Bonus:
    • Common rat poison is usually the anticoagulant strychnine, a substance that blocks the Vitamin K cycle and thus prevents blood from clotting and causes severe bleeding. Mike and Jay eat just that in their Grown Ups 2 review, which makes Mike have cerebral hemorrhaging and Jay puke blood.
    • In their review of The Grand Budapest Hotel they point out that the movie used the hashtag #GBH in social media. This seems innocuous unless you're familiar with chemistry and you know that the date rape drug's scientific name is gamma-hydrobutyrate, shortened to GHB, an unfortunate and unintentional similarity.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Explicitly discussed in their review of The Mummy (2017), where they pointed out the rash of low-quality blockbusters that do poorly in America but make back their money overseas. They suggested that the movie was aiming specifically for this - casting an actor controversial in America but well-liked in other countries, spreading the plot across multiple countries to avoid tying it to any culture, lots of voiceover narration that could easily be dubbed, and ditching the low-key Gothic Horror associated with Universal monster movies in favor of big effects-driven battles for the fate of the world. Whether or not this was intentional, they realize, it worked.
  • Growing the Beard: The Jack and Jill review, which is also generally regarded as their first truly great episode; they finally found a way to apply the incisiveness of the Plinkett Reviews to the Half in the Bag format (they weren't bad beforehand, just finding their feet).
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • In their Star Trek Into Darkness review, Mike jokes that Leonard Nimoy, being "89 years old", only agreed to cameo in the film so he could pay for a bigger headstone. Nimoy passed away less than two years later.
    • Their review for Money Plane opens with the area around the VCR Repair shop plagued by gunfire and fires started by rioters. Three days after the episode was posted, Jacob Blake was shot by police in Kenosha, WI. The Black Lives Matter protests/riots that erupted in response — one of which culminated in the deaths of two protesters — bear more than a passing resemblance to the episode's cold open, which is made all the more unsettling by RLM's home base in Milwaukee being less than 40 miles away from Kenosha.
    • Many aspects of "The Bruce Willis Fake Movie Factory" — such as mocking Bruce's truly terrible, stilted line deliveries, and the obvious earpiece that he's being fed those lines through — are less funny with the context that multiple former crew members provided in the video comments and elsewhere on Reddit: it's an open secret that, as of 2021, Bruce has more difficulty remembering his lines and following direction because he's getting older and is rumored to be suffering from dementia. A month after the video's release, Bruce's family confirmed that these rumors were true and that he would be retiring from acting due to his failing health. Furthermore, the episode "Pam and Tommy and Bruce Willis" discussed the rumors of his cognitive decline that emerged following the release of the previous episode, just ten days before the rumors were confirmed.
    • Justin Roiland's vocal cameo in Jayus Ex Mikeina happened mere weeks before all the allegations against him surfaced in January 2023. The crew end up lampshading this in Mr. Plinkett watches Night Court. Commenters on the video would also point out this was probably the last time he'd ever voice Rick and Morty.
  • He Panned It, Now He Sucks!:
    • Mike and Rich received a bit of backlash from viewers when in the Captain America: Civil War review, they both felt that the movie was merely just "okay". It got even worse when in their X-Men: Apocalypse review, Mike stated that he found the film more enjoyable than Civil War.
    • Mike, Jay, and Rich giving Ghostbusters (2016) a scathing review led to many negative reactions from the site's Twitter fanbase, with many people unfollowing RLM's Twitter as a result.
    • Their very negative Rogue One review is probably one of their most divisive yet with much intense criticism aimed at them for it, namely because they blasted it for being full of what they saw as obnoxious Star Wars fan service and pandering when Rogue One is usually considered to have avoided making such a pitfall and to be the most unique and inventive modern Star Wars filmnote . Their potshots at people for disagreeing haven't exactly helped.
    • Due to the show's general theme of slamming big-budget tentpole franchises, many fans become angered when they give a positive review to movies they don't like:
      • Mike's glowing review of Jurassic World shocked many fans as well as Jay himself. Mike references the backlash in the Halloween Ends review.
      • Mike and Jay both gave positive reviews for The Force Awakens, leading many fans of RLM's Star Wars prequel reviews, expecting an epic takedown of the film, to vocalize their outrage quite aggressively. That being said, the eventual full Plinkett review of The Force Awakens came long after the initial excitement had worn off and does point out several problems they have with the movie.
      • Mike stated that he loved the critically-panned Independence Day: Resurgence and considered it a vast improvement over the original. Once more, this led to a lot of negative fan response.
      • He lampshaded this with the Ghostbusters (2016) review, initially starting, "You're gonna hate me, but I loved it", but quickly proved to be a Bait-and-Switch Comment and admitted he despised it. He later repeated the same gag with The Mummy (2017).
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • In their review of A Good Day to Die Hard, Jay's Flop Predictor iPad app forecasts Man of Steel as "gayass". They later reviewed the film and didn't have any nice words to say about it.
    • In their review of Sinister, Mike states that Skype doesn't make anything scary. Later, they panned Unfriended, stating the Skype-oriented film wasn't scary.
    • In their review of Star Trek Into Darkness, Mike calls the film Star Trek: The Fast and the Furious. Star Trek Beyond was directed by Justin Lin, director of most of the films in the The Fast And The Furious series, and its first trailer has drawn comparisons to the franchise.
    • In the same review, Rich jokes that Khan's blood could have been exploited by the Federation and siphoned by the gallons after it was used to revive Kirk. Death Stranding makes it a plot point that Sam's blood and only his blood can be used to ward off the BTs in the game, and the United Cities of America requires gallons of his blood to be taken in order to do so.
    • During the Captain America: The Winter Soldier episode, Jay sarcastically refers to the movie as "The Avengers 1.5: Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier, Part 1". While it wasn't obvious at the time the review was made, two years later, it turned out that Captain America 3 really did follow up very directly on the Winter Soldier's story (something Mike and Rich end up criticizing), making Jay's prediction of The Winter Soldier as part one of a duology all the more prescient. Even better is that critics and fans have referred to the movie as Avengers 2.5 due to the high number of heroes in it.
    • In the Star Trek Beyond review (released in 2016), Mike excitedly speculates on the possibility of Star Trek: The Next Generation sequel series following the older TNG crew. In 2020, a full four years later, Star Trek: Picard was released and did follow up on TNG.
    • In the review for The Mummy, Jay advises that the Dark Universe franchise Universal tried to make would better benefit from going the low-budget horror route that Blumhouse Productions does. Come 2019, Blumhouse is announced as the production company behind The Invisible Man (2020) — and just as Jay predicted, it was a critical and commercial success.
    • Mike jokingly says Home Alone 2: Lost in New York "broke new ground" in their first summer catch-up episode. This was years before the phrase became a Running Gag and Meme among the fanbase as a result of Rogue One.
    • When Transformers: The Last Knight is brought up in the 2017 “Fuck You, It’s January” video, Jay begs for moviegoers to stop going to Transformers movies. As it turned out, The Last Knight became a high-profile Box Office Bomb and the Franchise Killer for Michael Bay’s Transformers films. For extra irony, Mike called out the continued Chinese box-office success of the franchise for allowing the series to continue, only for The Last Knight to underperform there as well.
    • The Summer Movie Catch Up and Things review features Palpatine who was left unemployed after Disney's purchase of Star Wars. He bitterly complains that he desperately needs money and will devote himself to panning the movies as soon as they come out. Six years later, Palpatine returns to big screen as the primary antagonist of The Rise of Skywalker.
    • During the 2016 review of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Mike says he's sure that "90 percent of the viewing audience" has no interest in seeing a solo Aquaman movie. Two years later, said film would not only go on to surpass the box office of Batman V Superman by a large margin, bringing in over $1.1 Billion worldwide, but also become the highest grossing movie based on a DC Comics character ever.
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Most Wonderful Sound:
    • "Half in the Baaaaaaaag!", which is done at the start of every episode with Mike's patented Mr. Plinkett voice.
    • Rich Evans laughing. Even when he fakes laughing, his buddies are still laughing.
  • Nausea Fuel:
    • The last three minutes of the Transformers: Dark of the Moon review. It involves Mr. Plinkett's used colostomy bag.
    • Mike and Jay bleeding profusely in their Grown Ups 2 review, complete with Jay puking up his liquidized guts.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
  • Spiritual Adaptation: Viewers jokingly noted that as scammers taking advantage of the wealthy and living in their home, it's a no-brainer why Mike and Jay liked Parasite (2019).
  • Tear Jerker:
    • The 2012 Recap included a section that honoured the actors that had passed on that year. Simple enough, but the segment was given the context that Plinkett had invited them all to his New Year's party, with him only learning that they had passed from Mike and Jay by 11 pm that very night.
    • Poor Mr. Plinkett blubbering and singing the Night Court theme song, in mourning for star Harry Anderson's passing.

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