Can't really say much for Running Gags other than Your Mileage May Vary (but really convention people, the Bat Credit Card thing has been driven into the ground, stop it) but I've gotta say he can act really well. The latter half of Kickassia for example, as well as the first Commercials Special. And those are just off the top of my head.
"Can't really say much for Running Gags[...]but I've gotta say he can act really well. The latter half of Kickassia for example, as well as the first Commercials Special. And those are just off the top of my head."
I can't say anything about Kickassia- gave up on that about halfway through the first one, but the Commercials Special is one of the exact things I had in mind. The first two minutes where's sitting around lamenting, stuffing his face is pretty bad. It's not the classic "reading off a script" bad acting, but it's still bad.
They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?
The first two minutes where's sitting around lamenting, stuffing his face is pretty bad. It's not the classic "reading off a script" bad acting, but it's still bad.
Seen near the end where he's all like "there's nothing left for me anymore", slumping over and then coming back with a song? That was great.
"M. Bison" hasn't gotten old for me, and besides it's two seconds. I also quite like the running time, it's nice to be able to blow through a few when there's nothing good on TV. And I think he acts pretty well.
That aside, I agree with you on the running gags, but they don't really do much to my overall enjoyment of the series, so I just ignore them.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
I agree wholeheartedly with this review. Doug isn't bad, but a few irritating flaws that keep showing up are major problems of his videos.
I agree completely with the "he won't stop making a joke he likes" bit. Whenever a character in one of the movies is referred to by name (in a hammy way), Doug makes sure to say their name in that way for the rest of the review, no exception. It's bad when you can see it coming. During the Cop and a Half review, someone called the character Devon, but in a weird shout. I knew Critic would do that for the rest of the review and I was right. Same with "DARK HEAAAARTTT!"
Also same with the popcorn guy, and being Frozen Today, and so on. It's a bit funny in a hypocritical way when Doug makes fun of a movie for forcing the same joke a few times when he himself does that.
But he is still a good reviewer, I was just venting. He does much better now than I'd probably ever do if I was on that site.
"AXEL ON STAAAAGE!"
To the second comment: are you sure the "bad acting" wasn't rather intentional? The Critic is supposed to be a funny character; I don't think we're meant to take any of his sufferings very seriously. If Doug Walker seemed genuinely sad or depressed during that bit, the audience likely would end up being so as well, and the idea is to get them to laugh. The depression and man-child behavior is meant to be rather silly and pathetically humorous, so the expression of those emotions is going to fall somewhere under Bad Bad Acting.
Bad bad bad acting then? :D I can't really interject here * because I've got a different opinon of the NC but when he does 'funny' acting it can drive me up the wall. It's sometimes too over-the-top and not quite over-the-top in the funny way. TO be fair to him, even the biggest actors who go for that type of funny (Jim Carey, Robin Williams) are pretty darn divisive and they leave a whole lot of people with crushed careers in their wake. He's really good at one step down from there though, when he's narrating but making us aware that hes not overly-impressed with what he's narrating
He's not a bad entertainer, but as a reviewer, he isn't quite so good as he doesn't offer much analysis.
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Not Bad, But...
He's not all that bad a reviewer, and for the most part, his videos are pretty entertaining. The "but" comes in when he finds a joke he likes, and won't stop making it. For example- when Avatar came out, he did a Bum Review of it, occasionally comparing it to...all the movies similar to it. Fair enough, pretty funny. Then another reference to it in one of his Nostalgia Critic reviews. Then, when Video Game Confessions: Duke Nukem came out, the entire video was a means to take another shot at the movie.
Even within individual episodes, this can be a problem. For a more recent one, take Bum Reviews: Red Riding Hood. Yes, the movie looks a whole hell of a lot like Twilight, but that doesn't mean we need 4 jokes in a 5 minute video comparing this to it. One in the title sequence, one right after it's over, two more in the actual video.
At times, the running gags get a bit annoying as well. Things like Chuck Norris, Bison's Of Course, Casper's Timing, all those things— get pretty irritating when there's at least one in almost all his Nostalgia Critic reviews.
The other problems are pretty minor- his acting gets iffy at times, sometimes in tandem with annoying voices, and 20 minutes can be a bit long for a review, but on the whole, he's decent. For all I don't like about the running gags, so long as you don't watch too many reviews in a row, you probably won't notice it. 7/10.