WebVideo One of My Favourite Reviewers
Let me first start off by saying that yes, Erod isn't perfect. He can be unnecessarily rude at times, and I don't feel the need to agree with every single thing he says.
However, on the whole, he's VERY knowledgeable about the material he reviews — far more so than most of the TGWTG reviewers (not that they're uninformed, mind you; it just seems that E Rod is far more invested in the stuff than they are). It's fascinating to hear him talk about the history of a particular franchise and how he encountered it.
And...he's just entertaining to watch. His expressions and reactions to what he sees are PRICELESS. It's a different brand of humour than the Nostalgia Critic's, to be sure, but it's still good.
On the whole, the Blockbuster Buster is an entertaining series — it's easily in my top 3 TGWTG series, along with Atop the Fourth Wall and the Nostalgia Critic. It's easily a 9/10.
WebVideo Lacks presentation.
While I do follow him most of the time, and I do like his honest reviews... Unfortunately, there's the rest, but let's start:
First of all, Unlike Linkara who does know that sometimes, he's just nitpicking for the hell of it, or the Nostalgia Critic who sometimes realises how much of a Jerk he is... The Blockbuster Buster does not in any way evolve. To be honest, I am mostly against storylines because if I'm here to see a review of something, I want... Well, the review. Not really helped by stuff like the Stephanie Meyer battle (I wish I wasn't serious), mid-episode sketches with his other Characters, his TALKING FIGURINES, etc...
Onto the review aspect: While I do hate his moaning,the fact that he uses a hammer to destroy a DVD, etc... I like the heart of the reviews. He's pretty knowledgeable about actors (mostly Voice actors) and comic books, and that's why I like his honest reviews. And to be fair, I actually like when he bashes YA bad movies.
Frankly, the best way to realise his flaws is to see his reviews of the movies already reviewed by the Nostaglia Critic. (Sorry for the comparisons, I'm really using those two because he keeps the core and some of the mimics of both of these shows, but fails at being unique)
Overall, if you really want to check it out, go see his honest reviews, they are tolerable. (at least to me)
WebVideo Eh, has his moments
I used to be a bigger fan of BB around the first time he came out. Sure the acting wasn't the best, the camera quality was subpar, and there was a lot of the faux-screaming that many young reviewers seem to utilize often, but that how all the greats started. He also had genuinely good criticisms and had a few funny jokes. I think the turning point for me was his Star Wars prequels. I am by no stretch a fan of the prequels, but he took forever to get to the review and had nothing new to say. "Oh, Jar Jar Binks is a bane on the whole Star Wars franchise? Join the club." And the whole arc leading up to and during the reviews fell flat for me; it was uninteresting, derivative, and went way longer than he should have. His actual reviews of the movies only lasted a little over a minute.
Unfortunately this introduced a new trend in his reviews, or at least one I just began to notice, overly long gags/skits and formulaic writing. Erod hates a movie, he wants to bust it, he can't use his hammer for whatever contrived reason, he grimaces and mugs, smug villain of the month appears, Erod defeats them, dramatically smashes the DVD, and catchphrase.
Many times during his reviews I want to yell, "Get on with it!" whenever he deviates from the review or explains the joke. Take his review of Inspector Gadget and the lunatic character, his shtick is that he's "crazy" and points out the obvious joke. Did he really need another character for this running gag; for that matter, did we even need this running gag? A joke that could have taken three seconds to make becomes a whole production. He also has this habit of being extremely fixed on a certain version of a character or franchise, see his Beastly rant.
For all my negativity I do like it when he shows his research and is knowledgable about the subject. He does nitpick, but I just consider that a part of his character. He's not horrible, but he's not great either. I've unfollowed him, but I do check on him once in awhile to see if he has reviewed anything interesting.
My advice: skip through the opening narration, the character interactions, and the skits.
WebVideo A Decent Show to Pass the Time
I gotta be honest here, I was a little iffy about the Blockbuster Buster show when I first come across it on That Guy with the Glasses/Channel Awesome website. But after a few episodes, I kinda like it. Sure, I have some disagreements on certain films that he reviewed but hey everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion right? Though in a way it can be a double-edged sword, especially on the internet. There are some aspects that he is similar to the Channel Awesome producers but I do love the transition of him growing into his own identity. Plus we provides the background info of certain media for both veteran and new fans alike. Even the casual fans. Plus, like Linkara, I'm interested in the story arc that came along with the reviewing. To me, he's alright.
WebVideo Irredeemable
Take the adolescent machismo of Angry Joe (he's to criticism what Rob Liefeld is the comics profession), mix with the camwhoring of Film Brain, and this is the result. He's one of the Spoony Experiment knock-offs who peddled his act on Youtube before getting absorbed into the TGWTG mothership... it was either that or Agony Booth. Never trust a critic with a costume.
The worst yet, avoid at all costs.
WebVideo Not for me
I really don't like this guy. I don't hate him as a person, I'm sure he's a nice guy but as a reviewer, I don't like him. A lot of people (including myself) like some of the movies he reviews, not the really big stinkers like The Last Airbender, but others like Shrek and Shrek 2 and I personally feel kind of insulted when he rags on a movie I like, it feels like an insult to me personally. You can tell he doesn't do that much looking up of the source material unlike Film Brain or The Unusual Suspect do and it can really hurt the review itself, as the Review Reviewer pointed out in his video on Erod's The Vampire's Assistant. Also, I don't think swearing is funny, but I get the feeling he thinks his lack of humor is made up for by him swearing and yelling all the time. It doesn't. He does have some good points on some things and being a reviewer myself, I do watch a few of his videos on movie I plan to do some day just to get an idea on what I'll be in store for. And another thing I will give him is he reviews the movies that not that many other well known people have touched, but the negative things I listed before can take away from the videos. He's just not that funny in my opinion. At the end of every video he destroys the DVD cover. 1: Why? What good does that do? It's just one cover out of the millions of covers out there. 2: Why not destroy the disc? I don't like his opening logo thing, seriously what's with the skull? It just looks stupid. And my last major nitpick, how long did it take him to think up that name (Blockbuster Buster) 2 seconds? If you like him, that's fine and I do watch some of his videos (rarely), I'd just rather watch Il Neige, Unusual, or the Review Reviewer.
WebVideo you kind of have to admire someone who puts so much effort to bring an episode every week that's SO mediocre
I won't mix words here, I absolutely hate this series The premise alone is incredibly stupid. He's supposed to be some personification of fanboy-rage? well, the thing about that is FANBOYS RAGE OVER THE DUMBEST SHIT
before him, I didn't EVER want to use adblocker, now it's the only way I can stomach through his videos. I just can't seem to do anything but cringe at the thought of him somehow gaining revenue from me watching the nicest possible way I can describe his series would be if they made a Linkara clone, took out the acting, video making, and comedic skills, and told him to try and be the Nostalgia Critic
but that doesn't even get to the worst parts of his show his characters getting past the character of E Rod, this supposed hero who wields a hammer where the joke is that it's Mjolnir? and apparently he's a small-name internet personality who thinks he's the sexiest beast alive and thinks that he's somehow accomplishing something by destroying DVD boxes at the end of his reviews. Even the AVGN doesn't do that for like every video
then we have his characters. some cartoon piss-ant who needs a serious erasing, a fedora wearing jackass who seems like the sole joke is that he does a voice for him, a nerd-stereotype that needs a SERIOUS kick to the balls, and the most annoying is this hispanic-american stereotype who basically has all the ego of E Rod and almost nothing else
other than that you have some side-characters that I honestly don't care about because whoever writes this shit doesn't know the first thing about writing characters that you can care about
then comes the absolute biggest offender of the series. the plots so far, from what I can tell he has two major plots the second one (I'll get to the first in a bit) is that he was captured into the shadow-realm or some shit and was tortured, so his characters took over his show (oh FUCKING joy)
the first, and the absolute worst, is that he has a villain of the week giving him a new video to review and keeping him from destroying the case. I don't know how many, but he just repeats this plot again and again the only other thing of note is that he tried setting himself up as Linkara's rival . . . he is NOTHING compared to Linkara
if you don't mind a series that involves repeating the same story over and over, watch I'd rather not waste my time
WebVideo Servicable
ERod's review show is entertaining enough in its own right with the exception of one detail that makes me really cringe while watching them. The premise is that he was given these weapons from "the fans of cinema" to "bust" movies he hates, which in itself isn't a bad concept, but in the videos they come off as contrived. I think the Nostalgia Critic reviews really spoiled me, as I think Doug has the best comedic acting out of any of the additional series' in Channel Awesome, but I see many of the same jokes being reused in the Blockbuster Buster, and he doesn't act as well. It doesn't look like he really means what he's saying, it looks like he's imitating a joke he saw earlier and is then praising himself in his head about how much of a great joke he just cracked.
He always destroys a movie at the end of his review, but... he only destroys the cover of the video/DVD he watched it on, and it's just one copy of every DVD of that movie in print, and after a while it gets very tiresome to see. If he hates those movies that much, why doesn't he actually do something more effective like write to the companies who made them? Oh right! Because he's just playing a ficticious character on a comedic review show with a limited budget! See the issue?
While this review only covers the issues I have with the series, I overall am entertained by them. They have enough material to keep me watching, so it's just a pretty good review show.
WebVideo The Main Series... meh. Everything else...
When E Rod first joined TGWTG, I got into his stuff, and enjoyed it well enough. I even went back and checked out his pre-TGWTG reviews on YouTube. However, as time went on, I slowly grew disinterested in his main Blockbuster Buster reviews. There really wasn't much to them to separate them from the work of other bad movie reviewers, and the films reviewed mainly felt pretty predictable and obvious after a while. I mean, having a huge series long build up to a review of Episode I couldn't end up as anything other than anticlimactic, with how widely criticized and picked over that film was. Also, I was never hugely into the large casts of characters in other review series so they did little for me here.
That being said, I've found almost all of his other videos outside of the BB series to be fun, entertaining, and informative. Be they Honest Reviews, Pros 'n' Cons, Casting Couch, or even simple vlog reviews of TV shows, I've found myself continuously tuning in and watching them. It's similar to how I feel about Nostalgia Critic these days. I couldn't care less about his main review show, but I often find the editorials to be more than worthwhile. E Rod's wide knowledge of the subjects he reviews are best demonstrated here, without the constraints of staying in character. All in all, these "secondary" videos are great, and the only downside being that the dropping of ad revenue and the ultimate fall of Blip.tv have forced E Rod to lock his vlogs up behind a paywall at Patreon. A permanent paywall, unlike the timed exclusivity other reviewers like Brad Jones practice. But hey, there's nothing that can be done about that.
So, while I find the Blockbuster Buster series to be mediocre on the whole, E Rod's other videos are very good, and worth watching at least once.