Killing Ramza Brave

Killing Ramza Brave
Directed by Thomas Bown and Doughboy

I was actually kind of conflicted when the movie ended, because while watching it, I was split between two horrible, frightening realizations: That Killing Ramza Brave was an awful movie in almost every sense of the word, and that I was actually enjoying parts of it. Through all of the painfully simple scene construction, choppy animation, terrible dialogue and voice acting, retarded plot and premise, and the braindead way it clumsily grinds along, there's a distinct note of self-parody here, indicating that Bown and Doughboy knew how lame it was when they were piecing it together, and probably laughing in anticipation of the response it would receive. It's bad in a bad, bad way, and something about that just made me grin. At the same time, of course, I wanted to bash my head against a brick wall for forty-five minutes straight.

Does KRB work, then? The best part of the movie, as far as I was concerned, was the unrelated slapstick humor and sight gags. Ramza running down the sidewalk in the wrong direction got a smirk. The newbie explaining his film and hearing him murdered in the outer hall shot was well-timed. But aside from a few specific moments, most of them completely throwaway, any attempt at self-awareness or parody humor falls flat on its face. I admit that I half-enjoyed it while watching, but five minutes afterwards all I could remember was how horribly, horribly stupid it was. The best aspects of the premise were presented in all the worst ways, the tone of the self-parody was totally wrong, and even when it knows it's being stupid, it forgets to be entertaining. And as seen from its near-legendary negative reception, it has a way of inspiring almost violent hatred and annoyance from viewers, this one included. Something about it just made me want to kill someone.

What can you really say about KRB that hasn't already been said? It sucks, pretty much unquestionably. It's a hate movie dumber than most hate movies, drawn out to play like an epic, and collapses under the reqiurements of both. We open with a spoofed 15-second preview of one of Ramza's new projects; the premise for Alabama something-or-other isn't explained and leaves no real impression, but I still found it more interesting than KRB's entire plot. Our heroes, Bown and Doughboy, are outraged that their own fake Ramza teaser works better than their entire film and decide that Ramza must be killed. Someone, PLEASE make the hurting stop.

Honestly, though, the direction isn't half-bad at times. There's a way some sequences of shots keep your attention, even if the premise is so clumsy and moronic that almost nothing would redeem it. It's standard "loading clips into I'''` gun" faire and "cool" angles in ugly brown rooms, but it indicates that at least they have a sense of what they're doing. The occasional great-looking angle perks up every once in a while, and the general construction and animation skill of the movie was a great deal higher than I'd anticipated, but these are not things that will redeem the experience for you. They're simply brief flashes of something that might have been good, in a film other than this one.

Let's take a look at the hate movie checklist to see how KRB goes through the motions.

1. Main characters played up to be badass. Check. Bown and Doughboy take a few stabs at themselves to let us know that they aren't as lame as this film, but it doesn't quite gel. They're still doing stupid things in a stupid, stupid movie. And the check here is for the attempt only; the badass vibe did not work for even a second, and their characters are at least as dumb as they try to make Ramza seem.

2. Target portrayed as an unstable, homosexual mongoloid retard. Ramza flounders around in his room, complete with purples and pinks and an N'Sync poster on the wall, speaks in a horrible screeching broken voice, and frequently falls down or gets lost. Check.

3. Ridiculous, unnecessary, and ridiculously unnecessary car chases and gunfights. Big, big check. Unlike a lot of hate movies which have the target running in fear (which this does), KRB added a whole extra sequence of Ramza's 'newbie army', the irony of which has already been pointed out, and while I'm actually pretty sure Bown and Doughboy understood why it was ironic, it still doesn't work very well. And the action scenes are just awful, the pacing is shot to hell and it was physically painful to watch.

4. Anticlimactic punchline death of the target. Super mega ultra check. The comic timing of Ramza's death actually isn't bad, but I'd already lost patience for the movie by this point.

Minor achievements in the movie indicate promise in Bown and Doughboy's careers, and Bown and Doughboy themselves have certainly matured since this came out, but the film itself is bloated, broken, and painfully pointless. As a hate movie, it's too long and too stupid (weird thing to say, I know). As a 'community joke movie', there's no punchline and no target. And as anything else, well....there's not much to enjoy. Sorry, guys, but this didn't work, and it's unlikely that it ever could have. I applaud the effort, I suppose, but certainly not the product.

Critical Score: 45/100.
Personal Score: 50/100.