Spent most of last night watching the DVD Comic Book: The Movie instead of The Grammys, and it's suprisingly enjoyable. I'm neither a comic book collector, nor a science fiction fan, but Mark Hamill has a fun little flick here, in the improv spirit of This Is Spinal Tap and Christopher Guest's series of films. The premise is, a small town teacher and comic shop owner takes on Hollywood when they try to change his favorite old time comic superhero into a modern day commercial action movie franchise. He filmed much of it at the San Diego Comicon convention last year, which leads an interesting authenticity to it. What really attracted me, being an animation buff, was seeing many of the best cartoon voice people in the industry actually taking the on screen acting roles here. You get Jess Harnell (Wakko on Animaniacs) as the perpetually stoned camera guy, Billy West (Ren And Stimpy) as the clueless grandson of the original comic book's creator, and Tom Kenney (Powerpuff Girls and Spongebob) as Hamill's sidekick with a long-suffering non-comic fan wife. In the process, real-life comic and film people are interviewed, such as Stan Lee, Kevin Smith, Hugh Hefner and Bruce Campbell. If the film weren't enough, the two disc set is filled with enough extras to keep you awake way past your bedtime. Worth the price of the disc all by itself is a long featurette with the cartoon voice talent from the film appearing at the Comicon, and being joined by even more voice talent who aren't in the film. Gary Owens, Rob Paulsen (Animaniacs) and my personal favorite, the great Maurice LaMarche (Pinky And The Brain) join the crew on the dias, and hearing the voices and anecdotes fly is a cartoon fan's treat. My favorite moment is LaMarche's version of Orson Welles' infamous frozen peas commercial recording session tape, with LaMarche doing both Welles and the much abused British director. I don't know how much play this one is getting out side of the comic/sci-fi set, but if you're a cartoon fan, or a fan of this type of improv movie, it's at least worth an evening's rental time.
Thanks for the review. I added this title to my rental list at Netflix last week, just out of curiosity. I used to collect comic book, so I know the mentality. Looks like one I'll enjoy.
Gotta disagree with the positives about this flick. I thought it was terribly amateurish and lame. It all came across as an attempt to do a Chris Guest flick but without the talent and cleverness necessary. I'll have a full review up on the site in a few days, but I thought I'd chime in with a general thumbs-down - Hamill and the others were totally out of their league and produced a bland and unfunny piece of monotony...
