Last night my sweetie-wife and I went out for an evening film. Knights of Badassdom is not a movie you will find in general release, however if you search the TUGG website you may find showings in your area. Otherwise you will need to wait for video to see the film.
The premises is farcical and simple: LARPers, that’s Live Action Role Players for those of you not in the geek, on a weekend game in the woods accidentally summon up a real demon amidst the scores of players and their foam weapons. It falls upon these fantasy warriors and wizards to defeat the evil.
My feelings about the movies are decidedly mixed. There no doubt that the comedy worked and worked often. I laughed out loud repeatedly and I truly felt that the filmmakers were not grinding an axe about LARPers and gamers in general, but rather were celebratory in the geekiness of their characters. That’s several good base hits in my book, however they also whiffed at bat where is comes to mixing horror and comedy.
This film did not find the right mix and too often I found myself having to go from laughter to seriousness and far too short of a time frame. I have often said in the past that mixing horror and comedy is generally a bad idea.
Knights of Badassdom get fairly explicit in its violence and the violence is with real consequence, this plays against the well written and well delivered comedic aspects of the piece. During the film there is a moment – I will not spoil it so no details – but when that moments happened I felt the film lose the audience. This audience had been right there in the palm of the director’s hand. There were laughing, having fun, and thoroughly engrossed in the film. The Moment happens and you could sense the stunned emotion radiating from the seats. In my opinion the audience was never back in the zone are well after that moment, though they did return to having fun, and the filmmakers did try to make amends for the moment with the ending of their movie.
This film is very hard for me to recommend or not recommend because I think people are going to have very idiosyncratic responses to it. Certainly see it on video, provided moderate gore does not bother you.
Many times today my mind returned to why this movie did not work for me and why sometimes I have no issues with comedy and horror mixed up, after all I love The Cabin in the Woods and other times It just drives my away. I think I understand now. You can mix horror and comedy, but you have to pay particular attention to the kind of horror and comedy.
For example in the afore mentioned The Cabin in the Woods. There is certainly comedy, but it is not farcical. It is the type of comedy that crows out of naturalistic characters reacting as real people could react to an actual situation. Contrast that with Dead Alive (or as it is known down under Brain Dead) by Peter Jackson. That film has very broad characters, the kind that are found on farce, and the violence and gore is very broad as well. It’s not realistic at all to expect that a lawnmower will let you literally mow through a crowd of zombies, but in that film it works because it matches the style of the comedy. The Lost Boys does not work for me because it has farcical characters, The Frog brothers, the Grandfather, placed with naturalistic settings. When I watch farce I don’t get wound up about the dramatic troubles in the plot, there are there just to drive the plot. In Airplane! No one is on the edge of there seat about the landing, you just don’t take it as a serious danger. It is mixing the farcical with the seriously dramatic that grates on me the wrong way, and Knights of Badassdom did just that. The characters are farcical, and wonderful in that aspect, but the threat is too real, too certain and that breaks my disbelief.
Of course, your mileage may vary.
