McZee - The Man Behind The Movies

v3dmm sure is a nifty little program.

Mczee: The Man Behind the Movies, written by Tom Breed and Digital Taco and directed by Orcus, is a rather unusual film. Through the use of archive footage, interviews, testimony from a historian and of course the classic "pan across a photograph," the turbulent life of McZee is laid out in mockumentary form. It is very unlike anything ever done in 3dmm - indeed, most of is hardly recognizable as 3dmm at all. And it happens to be one of the funniest films ever produced by this community.

The photos of McZee which make up the bulk of the film are almost all extremely impressive Photoshop jobs. They remain inventive and varied enough throughout the film never to grow tiresome. But it is the other segments which are most effective. Scenes like a recording of McZee acting as a child in a Shakespearean play and later of him yelling at an actor backstage are delightful. The interviews themselves, with McZee, one of his actors, and a "McZee historian," are great as well. The various segments blend into each other perfectly - I feel like Orcus could send this as an audition tape to Ken Burns.

The real charm of the movie is its constant incorporation of 3dmm-specific humor and references. The clips from and discussion of default McZee movies were of course the most blatant examples, but everything from default speech samples to Melanie's roller blades were worked in beautifully.

Voice acting makes or breaks a movie like this, and it was great across the board. Russ as McZee, Dustin Guest as the narrator, Tom Breed as the historian, Pizza as Charlie Blackman and Chippy as the interviewer could themselves have reasonably been the whole slate of nominees for best voice actor this year. It did seem like some dialogue, especially Dustin's, included some "background hum," but the quality was generally very good and as far as delivery goes it was excellent.

It's hard to review a movie like this, because it's really hardly a 3dmm movie at all. As someone else pointed out, this could probably have been done in Flash or some other medium more easily. But just taken as a piece of entertainment, it's absolutely fantastic. The humor is pretty subtle in places, and you're unlikely to catch everything on the first viewing. I only laughed out loud once or twice; mostly I just sat there in dumbstruck awe of the genius that went into this.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the funniest movie this community has produced since Sgt. Steve. Truly amazing work.

[Aaron Haynes]

Good review. I remember appreciating the concept more than I actually liked the result. It's really committed to the documentary format, to the point where it ended up feeling exactly like watching a VH1 doc on McZee. My brain didn't know where to put that.

I need to watch it again and actually review it this time.

[Bown]

I agree with Haynes. There were certain times when I would just drift off, but there was usually something great around the corner.

[Pizza The Hut]

I kinda agree. Thinking back on the movie, the idea as a whole, referencing "McZee Historian", stuff like that, makes me laugh. But watching the actual film is not as funny...more just brilliant. Kinda weird. Still amazing though.

Thanks for the voice compliment btw, and I agree all the voices were great.

[Dustin Guest]

Yeah, I recorded my lines before I learned how to fix the background hum on my mic.

[Orcus]

Sorry to come in a month late but thanks for the review! I'm glad you really appreciated the work that went into it.

One of the things I really wish that could've been done was to incorporate a fair bit more of 3DMM references within the gang/drug angle but Breed didn't want to change the script around without Taco. Working with what we had I really like the results.

thanks so much