Internet Famous (2016)

Number Rolled: 4

Movie Name/Year: Internet Famous (2016)

Tagline: Love them. Hate them. Follow them.

Genre: Comedy

Length: 87 minutes

Rating: TV-14

Production Companies: Cinemand, Entertainment 360, Maker Studios, Off The Dock

Producer: Michael J. Gallagher, Steve Greene, Ryan Kirby, Mark Korshak, Marc Reid, Adam Riback, Ross Siegel, Evan Silverberg, Jana Winternitz, Michael Wormser

Director: Michael J. Gallagher

Writer: Michael J. Gallagher, Steve Greene

Actors: Shane Dawson, Steve Greene, Wendy McColm, Amanda Cerny, Richard Ryan, Christian Delgrosso, John Michael Higgins, Roger Bart, Missi Pyle, Adam Busch, Jason Horton, Tay Zonday

Blurb from Netflix: Five viral internet celebrities travel to a competition that will award one of them their own television series in this ensemble comedy.

Selina’s Point of View:

I went into this movie with some bias. I not only wanted it to be good, but I was ready to forgive a hell of a lot.

I’ll give you some context, I believe that YouTubers are capable of putting out better quality content than the regurgitated plots we get on most of our TV shows. There are exceptions, of course, but most of our daily entertainment intake is made by the few people in Hollywood that anyone will listen to. YouTube offers creative people the chance to be heard by a mass audience – without bending to the lowest common denominator.

Markiplier, for instance, put out a few videos recently that have been incredible. You had his interactive A Date With Markiplier (2017). Not only were the plots decent, but that ‘choose your own path’ method of storytelling is basically reinventing the wheel that is visual entertainment.

Following that, he put out Who Killed Markiplier? (2017), which was a who-dun-it murder mystery with some dark humor and an origin story for his alter-egos. He followed that up with Wilford ‘MOTHERLOVING’ Warfstache (2018), which continued on that story, in a way.

Granted, the quality of the aforementioned works isn’t on the level of Game of Thrones (2011-), but it’s like watching a pilot. It’s an introduction to his ideas, which are engrossing and different from what we’re used to seeing.

That’s just an example, but we’ve seen others. There have even been movies created by YouTubers that are very good. Like Riley Rewind (2013) and Eighth Grade (2018) – among others.

It’s these small glimpses of proof that there’s still good new ideas out there that force me to keep my eye squarely focused on YouTube.

Whenever a new movie comes along that includes, or is fully made by, YouTubers – I’m on it. I’m all about supporting it. Especially since the mainstream media trashes them every single change they get.

So, I went into this movie, excited and ready.

I’m so angry.

I’m not just bored or grumpy because I watched a bad movie, I’m angry.

The media latches onto every bullshit piece of YouTube that it can. It latches onto the Logan Pauls and the Daddy of Fives. Each of the articles written about the creators on YouTube focus on the worst of the worst… and it greatly affects the way people look at the entire platform.

I thought, “Hey, Shane Dawson’s a big name. He’s involved in this. It’s gonna show a much broader perspective of things and really get people to pay attention.” Holy hell, I hope no one paid attention.

Yes, I understand that this movie was meant to be a parody, but it comes off as a condemnation of the platform. You see each cookie cutter dark spot of YouTube hailed as the best. In fact, Shane Dawson himself plays a Logan Paul-esk character.

You can’t parody something before it gets respect. It just undermines that attempt at getting respect in the first place.

There was one likeable character, played by Wendy McColm. If the story had solely followed her and concentrated on that semi-redemption arc that explains how important some of these creators are to people and then juxtaposed her against the Pauls of the platform, there could have been something important there. And it still could have been over-exaggerated enough to make it a caricature-type film.

Instead, they decided to throw all of YouTube under the bus.

Fuck you, Internet Famous.

Cat’s Point of View:

This movie was atrocious.

I really do try to find something positive to say about everything that we watch. Sadly, there’s very little involved with this particular film that I could even remotely find positive. I recognized a few of the actors – 4 to be precise – but that doesn’t really count.

It seems like the filmmakers tried to pull off some sort of spoof or parody about internet fame. It ended up coming across as one big joke at the expense of those that make a living via social media and the internet. The movie crosses into borderline offensive territory for me. It was just that bad. I almost felt like they just handed a bully a camera and told them to go find people to make fun of from the internet.

I suppose that my positive note could be that at least it wasn’t a long movie. My recommendation? Skip this one. There are better internet related movies out there.

Languages

Speech Available: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish

Subtitles Available: English, French, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – None

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 40%

Metascore - None

Metacritic User Score – None

IMDB Score – 3.6/10

Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 0/5

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 0/5

Movie Trailer: