Knights of Badassdom (2014)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Good concept, poorly executed.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

If you're looking for some good comedy with good jokes this isn't the movie to watch. Not that I didn't laughed at all because I did, but I only laughed because it was so cheesy and ridiculous at times. It's second degree humor, and there's nothing wrong with that if it is your kind of humor, but to me it was just not good enough. And even if you're into role playing I don't think Knights of Badassdom will be a reference for other people joining this kind of hobby. They mostly mock it, and those are in fact the only funny parts of the movie. The cast isn't bad without being great. There are some horror moments but again a lack of budget makes it more laughable than anything else. There are better movies in this genre if you ask me.

From the title and the cover art thumbnail on Netflix I dismissed this immediately as one of these low-budget, low-talent parodies of whatever the most recent popular film is. The kind spawned by the Scary Movie franchise.However when I actually looked at the cover properly and picked out faces I realised it was far from that. With actors from Game of Thrones, Community, Firefly and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia combined with heavy geek humour, metal and a medieval theme it seemed like it was actually made specifically for me.Unfortunately half of this big cast play little more than cameo roles with (spoilers...) Danny Pudi getting killed off without ever having his character properly established or speaking more than about three lines. Peter Dinklage plays a small role (no pun intended) at best and meets a similar fate without really doing much. Slightly disappointing to be honest as they are both great actors who could have done with a little more screen time before their grisly demise. In fact none of the characters are especially well established in either their real world or fantasy personas.Still the storyline was good and since I have always found the subject of LARP rather amusing it was entertaining. However having seen other reviews I think I largely found it funny because I actually know about LARP (without ever having done it) and have messed about in roleplaying servers of online games (which are frankly hilarious). Hence it was the subtleties of the LARP combined with the out of character stuff that made it funny without there needing to be big in your face jokes.For instance giving the car park some crazy fantasy name and pretending it is anything other than a car park when you... do in fact know it is a car park and literally just parked your car there. Just like in RP MMOs when players will pretend that moderators are some kind of god or demon... rather than just being a minimum wage employee sat behind a computer in a massive office. Everyone knows these things but they pretend anyway. It is that level of commitment and surrealness which makes it funny.I appreciate that those who know nothing about RP will probably not find any of that amusing though. It probably could have done with a lot more live action roleplay so people understand what it actually involves... prior to everyone dying. Those who do play LARP are probably going to find a lot of the content kind of offensive because it is just totally at their expense and they are ultimately the butt of every single joke.So given that this film seems to fit a niche specifically for those who understand what RP is but don't actually do it I can understand the bad reviews. I'd probably give it 8/10 in fairness but I feel inclined to be generous as I sincerely believe this film was made for me and me alone.My only complaint really was that the succubus didn't make sense. In pretty much all established lore a succubus is meant to be a demon that takes the form of a woman to seduce men and then ultimately kills or otherwise degrades them. The origins of this are fairly obviously a repressive Christian thing to scare men away from sexual temptation with a horror story. Yet in this film the succubus kills readily and without actually needing the seduction element. The gay guy she tried to kill should have been immune to her, as should Hung as he was seeing her for what she truly was due to the shrooms.As it stands her transforming into some giant demon thing served only to be aesthetic as she was already invulnerable to attack and a savage, superhuman killer. She should have only been able to kill those she seduced prior to the transformation otherwise she could have been a werewolf for all the difference it made.

LARP's on a lark get chewed up and spit out for laughs in "Knights of Badassdom" (BTW: a terrible title!). The elaborate medieval role players are nothing but gore fodder, the production values are surprisingly high (the costumes are brilliant) and one of my favorite actresses (Summer Glau) is a highlight as she vamps it up in a pretty-good bad movie. This movie is made to order for Riff Trax, or just gather your nerdiest friends for a night of (deliberately) cringe-worthy dialogue and as fine a rednecks vs. nerds battle as has ever been filmed.I would compare this movie to "Sharknado" in that both give the impression of being movies that were originally written as serious genre films (disaster and horror respectively) and someone had the sense to make them so over the top as to become entertaining camp.

This movie was not bad, but I would not call it good either. There were some laughs to be had at the expense of the nerdiness of the situation, but for the most part it not particularly funny. I did not like how it seemed to make fun of the LARPing community. I would have preferred to see a less patronizing portrayal of LARPers. The best thing about the movie is the cast is pretty engaging with the exception of Summer Glau which was half of the reason I watch this movie. I have not seen in her anything other than Firefly and a few episodes of the Sarah Connor Chronicles and I was not particularly impressed. The rest of the cast really got into it and it looked like they were having a lot of fun. It was over the top with the violence and chessiness at moments, but then tried to throw in some stupid love connection that never clicked for me. Not really worth watching unless you want to see some serious LARPing going on in the background.