Why I’m Disappointed with the Lonely Island Guys
About 3 years ago, one of my friends eagerly showed me a few sketches he found on Channel 101, a large gathering of poor quality webisodes pretending to be “television shows” made by wannabe filmmakers whose dreams consist of having their own show on Adult Swim or being invited to act or write for “Saturday Night Live.” My friend, who probably has the same dreams as the wannabe filmmakers, found the content on this site so hilarious, he was falling out of his seat while he was showing me the sketches. He particularly loved one show, called “The ‘Bu,” made by three guys who refer to themselves as The Lonely Island, and I was forced to watch a handful of this particular “show.”
At the time, I wasn’t very amused by the show. My film knowledge kept kicking in, and I kept thinking about how the execution looked poor, how simple tweaks here and there could have made it not only more professional but funnier, and how these guys were trying to use the poor quality to their benefit by poking fun at crappy movies in general. Sure, you can intentionally use poor cinematography, editing, and cheap tricks to get laughs, but something about “The ‘Bu” just didn’t sit right with me. After the third or fifth episode, I was annoyed by the fact that over an hour of my life was wasted to watching crappily executed, low-bandwidth low-brow low-quality no-laughs comedy shorts pretending to be hi-larious quality ha-ha’s. I figured, perhaps it just wasn’t my kind of humor. After I was allowed to free my eyes of the horrid shorts, I put Channel 101 on my “Never Visit These Sites Again” list and didn’t think much more about it or The Lonely Island guys and their so-called show.Until in late 2005, when I find out that those Lonely Island guys had been invited to write and act on “Saturday Night Live.” At this point, “Saturday Night Live” was on my “Not Worth Remembering When This Shit Is On TV” list, but since I had been a big fan of “SNL” when it used to be funny, I decided maybe I’ll give these Lonely Island guys another chance to show that they’re funny. I then went to their official website and watched a few more shorts, which turned out to be just as agonizing as the first time I saw their stuff. Well, this is before they have access to bigger budgets, I thought, maybe the fact that they’ll be on actual TV now may put them on another level of comedy and quality.
But something else happened instead, they got on “SNL” and their large crowd of internet groupies followed them to the “SNL” website, making the “SNL” website more popular than the actual show. This made it so that Lorne Michaels couldn’t help but bump them up from featured to full members of the “SNL” team. Hearing this news, I decided to see what the new “SNL” hype was all about. And yet again, I was disappointed. “SNL” hadn’t changed the Lonely Island guys’ comedy and quality, they made “SNL” change to their comedy and quality, to be shittier and more ill-conceived than it was even in the shitty quagmire of Jimmy Fallon as star, trying to be Adam Sandler and laughing at how funny things were in every sketch, all while being horribly embarrassingly not funny (Hint: Suggesting that you and the audience have a “special” relationship where you can laugh at your own jokes doesn’t make you America’s sweetheart, it makes you the only one laughing.)
How did we get to this? Now “SNL” has all these shitty-looking shorts littered with headache-inducing shaky hand-held camera, crappy costumes, and piss-poor visual effects that look bad even for “haha, this is so bad.” In the good old days, “SNL” didn’t have the greatest quality stuff around, but they did have something different and fresh and inventive, and often they even had a few things per show that got big gigantic laughs. It didn’t matter that their budgets weren’t high, because they were abundant with messages dressed up in elaborate comedy sketches. Comedy that didn’t just show you a funny character or concept, but that also poked fun at some issue or idea that wasn’t being mentioned anywhere else. It didn’t make you think that hard about the issue, but you remember those sketches clearly because it hit some chord and brought to light some truth that went beyond the initial laugh. But nowadays, when I recall a sketch from “SNL” that’s been done by the Lonely Island guys (which is all the “SNL” Digital Shorts, and even some of the regular sketches), all I remember is shitty execution and wondering why I have brain space devoted to remembering Laser Cats. Come on, this is funny for the first 10 seconds, then they need to cut back to Lorne Michaels’ face, which is actually the funniest part of the whole sketch. The fact is, the “OMFG this is so shitty” laugh that they’re apparently trying to get isn’t even in itself that well done, and it’s all basically a poor version of the awesome Official Ninja Movie, a much better attempt at that style.
But even then I decided not to blame the Lonely Island guys for the lack of quality in “SNL.” The show had been slipping for years. And it’s a bit much to think that three new kids on the block would be able to drastically alter “SNL” to suddenly become like it used to be a decade or more ago. They’d have to be comedic geniuses to do that, and it was fine with me that they weren’t, even though I secretly wished that someone would take “SNL” back into a better direction. Whatever, I thought, those guys will probably eventually mature their comedy and get a show of their own or get a movie deal in a few years, and hopefully it’ll be something I’ll want to watch.
And then it happened, they got a movie deal. You’ve probably heard of it, Hot Rod. Did I go watch it? No. I saw the trailer, looked at the movie poster and website, and I knew what to expect — the same old stuff I’ve already been disappointed/annoyed with. And plus, they made a movie called Hot Rod which didn’t feature a hot rod car. Apparently, reader, you didn’t watch it either, because it bombed. Perhaps if they didn’t insist on five year olds doing their production design all the time, it would be clearer that the movie name is about a guy named Rod that’s supposedly “hot,” and not about a cool car, which it isn’t about. Regardless of the apparent marketing brainfart, I knew this wasn’t one of those movies where perhaps the marketing was misleading. The marketing did its job, and I got a taste of exactly what I’ve been getting from these guys from the very beginning, complete mediocrity.
And now I’m fully qualified to say I’m disappointed with the Lonely Island guys. They’ve been given an opportunity that most people can only dream about, they were given carte blanche to make anything their large web/”SNL” audience might go see, and this is what they come up with? The same warmed over “OMFG this is so shitty/bad/misinformed” comedy that they’ve been stumbling through for years now. They probably got a few million dollars to make this movie, which meant their quality could sky-rocket compared to the stuff they did before. But, as I’m sure most of us are well aware of now, even if a bunch of money is thrown at a movie, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to suck balls. Sure, I thought to myself, the visual quality is much better than their Channel 101 days, but it still looks like an amateur is learning how to shoot a movie while shooting it, and on top of that the content still sucks. It has the exact same story as another shitty dead-on-arrival comedy called The Ringer that came out two years ago (the only difference is that in The Ringer, the main character is a normal guy pretending to be a retard, whereas in Hot Rod, the main characters are retards pretending to be normal people.)
And that’s when I realized what it was that bothered me that day 3 years ago when I first watched “The ‘Bu.” The problem with this stuff isn’t the execution quality, it’s the content. It’s not the shaky camera and shitty lighting, it’s the fact that it’s mildly funny at best, never hilarious, and usually has a feeling of very barely giving any effort. Never in all the stuff I’ve seen of these guys, have I found myself laughing out loud. I would smile at some stuff, a haha may come out of me every once in a while, but I was never fully laughing. And despite what resources these guys are given, they haven’t improved their stuff. They very well might be funny talented people, but the execution of their video/film content needs to come up dramatically. Case and point, their greatest achievement so far (their movie) isn’t funny and bombed at the box office despite getting a similar marketing treatment from the same people who pushed Transformers.
America seems to agree, as shown by their box office numbers. (BTW, in case you don’t know, a $5 million opening box office is considered a horrible opening for a comedy opening in 2,000+ theaters.) And if you look here, based on box office numbers, it seems that theater goers liked Dana Carvey’s The Master of Disguise better than Hot Rod. And if you don’t remember, Master of Disguise was a pretty horrible movie, and this coming from me, a diehard Dana Carvey fan. The difference is, with Dana Carvey, he’s earned the ability to fuck up, and after years of being absolutely hilarious on TV and cinema, we can forgive him. But the Lonely Island guys have yet to prove themselves, everyone looks at their stuff and goes “these guys have potential, they should do a feature or a tv show,” and when they get a chance, they suck.
Maybe they”ll get better with time, and simply because they were a bunch of no-name underdogs getting a chance to hit Hollywood by storm, I was rooting for them. But what they’ve done with their storm is nothing new to Hollywood, reheating old comedy standards with the misinformed hope that a string of gags can replace a well-written story. If you get a chance to hit Hollywood, why not make the most of your talent and skills and make a dent, freak out and do something new and fresh for people? Why waste it on continuing the same thing you were doing when you had no money and were making stuff out of your garage? The world’s had its fix of that shit.
The Lonely Island, I’m disappointed with you. If you’re reading this, Akiva, Andy, or Jorma, sorry guys. I was rooting for you, and maybe you can still do it, but the plan of attack needs to change. Maybe try something a little more efficient, and a little more awesome.
September 11th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I remember that guy who loved lonely island three years ago. He died about a year ago, tragic really.