J.C. Maçek III The World's Greatest Critic!!! We live in a world where MTV no longer shows music videos but Cartoon Network does feature Live Action programming and The Weather Channel now shows movies. It's enough to make one wonder... what the hell is next? CNN should soon have Soap Operas. Country Music Television should have an ALL METAL program. BET should air documentaries about Native Americans in the 15th century. The Family Channel? Erotica, maybe? Oh, Dudes, Dudes, Dudes!!! C-SPAN SITCOMS!!!! Brilliant! Sometimes I even amaze MYSELF, man! Yeah, these all may be stupid ideas but they're no stupider than the programming on these increasingly misnamed TV channels. So what's anybody doing about it? Well, luckily some guys are making their own shows (distributed via the internet) and even creating full length movies to occupy our time as the television slowly but surely morphs into a series of identical channels regardless of the name. Enter one such film known as Arrgh! A Pirate Story! The director of the film touted it as a film shot with a $0 budget by three high school friends on weekends and after school during their senior year. The dude went on to point out just how long it had been since I've done an "Indie Interlude" and promised to send me some naked pictures (hopefully not of him and his friends, but he didn't specify). In that he pleaded so politely and that his name actually is Tyler Ask... how could I refuse? Note... he still hasn't sent me any naked pictures... but depending on the subject matter, maybe that's a blessing. The subject matter of his film, however, is a bit hit and miss, both laudable because it was done on the cheap by high school buddies and not quite ready for the top of the heap of every film festival in the world. Then again... that isn't exactly the goal here. Ask and company bring forth an insane hodgepodge of the absurd mixed with the unlikely blended with the tongue-in-cheek, rinsed, repeated, shaken, baked and rewarmed the next day when it's got all the other smells from the fridge mixed in with it for a suppsed better taste. The little movie centers around two life-long best buddies, long-haired Ted Wilson (Landon Sheetz) and the always-"on" George Washington (Joey Loboda) who, inexplicably, talks and dresses like a Halloween Pirate. The slacker dudes live together in the home of their mutual (alleged) musical genius friend Peter Shaffer (Mark Schulte) who extends this tennancy due to the fact that he almost made road pizza of them one day. The "almost" part is due to the intervention of a regular joe they didn't like named Wang Smith (played by Tyler James Ask himself). And one day one of their many, many, many hair-brained ideas (this time to start a rock band) catches the attention of their shared brain and they slowly, surreally and sardonically limp toward this reality. I'd like to tell you that the plot of this film is packed with laughs and excitement as they approach this goal... but, in all honesty, there is no real plot here. Arrgh! is more of a series of vignettes that surrounds these two teenagers (and a small portion of their friends) acting silly. Very Silly. As silly as they possibly can. Often times this works well as Ask and those he asks big favors from can be really quite clever. But more often what makes it to the screen feels like a series of in-jokes told by good buddies and family members that we, the extended circle, only occasionally have enough knowledge to "get". There is a constant feel that if we really knew these guys, how they are, what they're like, we'd be laughing our asses off. However, while a lot of these bits are enough to sustain a long series of YouTube videos (many of which would be well worth watching in doses that you can choose for yourself) they aren't quite enough to sustain a full length feature film... and Arrgh! A Pirate Story clocks in at almost two full hours! Yeah, even at its most clever, it's safe to say that this film asks a bit much of the audience and overstays its welcome just a bit. On the other hand, it's hard to nitpick this film too much... and not only because it was made by high school seniors. In truth, Ask and company set out to make a Farce and that is precisely what they've come up with. It's an experiment in the absurd from roll to close... and that could be worse. And while "We meant to do that!" can be a horribly annoying excuse when a bad movie has been made I can honestly tell you that Ask (who wrote the film with Sheetz and produced it with both Sheetz and Loboda) truly did mean to make this film intentionally bad in a lot of areas! But this is always with that air of surreality and metafictional control... never because they didn't care or gave up. This very fact shows a serious lack of pretention on the part of the cast and crew. Even during the film's too-long runtime there are multiple times when our post-reality protagonists enter into scenarios that are too big for even their wild imaginations (or lack of reason) can twist into real successes for them. This self-aware inside comedy is a hell of a microcosm, commentary and thesis statement for the entire film. Nor do the movie makers display any self-conscious indignance to mockery here. They almost reclaim this by mocking themselves and inviting the viewer to share in their many self-referential jokes and to have a good time (even when those jokes might not be quite as funny on the outside as they are to the guys making them). Before it seems like I'm setting up excuses for a series of filmic failures here, let me point out that Arrgh! is not really a bad thing, even if it is more of an establishment of potential than a final product. This film alone shows a serious vision on the part of Tyler Ask and it's clear that he has a narrative capability here, even if he should prune some of his ideas into a stronger few branches. Occasionally the movie can be quite funny and, when timed right, the laughs are there. Further the actors are all pretty good and feel natural when delivering their dialogue. That's not to say you'll see them next year at Cannes, mon, but I wouldn't rule it out at some point in time. Further, Tyler Ask himself has proven to be a pretty darned good editor here in most of his scenes. It isn't easy to put together something like this, even with modern computerized editing tools. I can honestly say that the lighting is rarely at issue and the sound is almost always on the quality side. Meanwhile the editing alone makes this film a veritable urging for independent filmmakers (aspiring or otherwise) to get off of their too-too-sallied cans, get out there and make that movie. The only editing critique I have here is that Tyler Ask may be a little too close to his own film and couldn't allow himself to let go of enough scenes to really streamline the movie into a stronger piece. The many comic asides generally work better than the central story, yes, and perhaps that's part of the reason why so much of this feels like a patchwork (intentional or not). However when the main tale feels more like filler material than the actual side skits and the overarching story feels more like connective tissue between these peaks, perhaps another look at the flow might be in order. Still, even when it gets just a bit tiresome, it's easy to note that Arrgh! A Pirate Story is still better than so many of the lame-ass latter-day farces that are squeezed out to smear the silver screen every few months. There is more than a lot of "wouldn't it be cool if" idea-harvesting here and I can't help but feel like I would have gotten a better thrill out of this film if I knew the dudes who made it personally, but it's also clear that the gang worked hard on this project and had a great time making their debut feature. And the final product is fun enough to earn something like Two and One Half Stars out of Five... and that's compared to the bigger-budgeted films that still fall short of this mark. No, this isn't a perfect film, but how many out there can say that they've made a movie at all? Further, this film shows a hell of a lot of potential in Tyler Ask and his friends. With more time and a bit more strengthening and streamlining, it's clear that the guys at Papaya Productions have some good (and even, potentially, great) movies in their future. See you, and them, in the Next Reel!