Release: July 29, 2014
Film: The Purge
Tagline: Don’t you DARE question it! It just works!
This review contains examples of:
- The Cameo: Rob Paulsen and Maurice La Marche, as the crowner to the Pinky and The Brain Running Gag.
- Crossover: Film Brain appears as a parody of the film's "polite" villain. And he threatens to blow up The Critic's office with him in it if he doesn't makes a crossover – which the Critic doesn't wish to do, because he's already done one with his previous BloodRayne review.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Film Brain threatens to blow up the Critic's building if the Critic doesn't agree to do a crossover review with him.
- Foreshadowing: "Goodbye, characters we're only meeting now so they can obviously come back in the climax! Woven like a quilt."
- Hollywood Silencer: Inverted. One of the guns that go off clearly has a silencer on, yet it makes a loud noise like it would without it.
- Medium Blending: The punchline of the joke the whole review builds up to appears in the form of Pinky and the Brain animated in Adobe Flash by an animator NC fan!
- Narm Charm: Invoked; One of the few bright spots for the Critic is "Henry's"note over-the-top creepiness, saying that it'd be hilarious to see him reading books to children.
- Not With the Safety On, You Won't: A one-man version: Film Brain's decision to blow up the Critic's home is stopped temporarily by him not noticing he had put the safety to his cell phone's keyboard.
- One-Steve Limit: In the commentary, Doug defends calling The Polite Leader "Henry" when in actuality that's the name of the boyfriend by saying that the film would be more realistic of two people shared the same name.
- Please Put Some Pants On: Critic!Walter White. He won't do it unless he cameos on Better Call Saul.
- Reliably Unreliable Guns: When the Critic takes the guns away from Malcolm and Tamara, one of the guns goes off and kills a duck.
- Running Gag: The "Pinky and the Brain" split-up law and Malcolm and Tamara running around with mouse ears (and dakka).
- "It just works".
- Casper appears again to continue the "timing!" gag. The Critic punches him out.
- Shout-Out:
- When one of the guns accidentally goes off, it brings down a duck and Tamara brings it up to the screen a la Duck Hunt.
- When The Critic talks about how all violent people needed to control themselves was one night of cutting loose, the review cuts to a Breaking Bad skit with Critic as Walter White and Malcolm as Gus Fring, and "Gus" recommending to "Walter" to beat down a pillow – which actually defuses all of his crazy and makes him want to open a puppy farm.
- Part of the payoff to the "Pinky and the Brain" Running Gag has the Critic reading a news article on his cellphone referring to President Boo, who "some say is just a giant chicken."
- The Rule of Three "great presidential speeches" gag (with the "Fear Itself" speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the "ask now what your country can do for you…" from John F. Kennedy and The Critic (as a New Founding Father) saying "just kill some people" to roaring applause) is similar to an old David Letterman Once an Episode gag during the Bush administration.Critic: "Sooo… this world is like BioShock Infinite? Except with none of the cool stuff and double the hypocrisy?"
- The Arc Words "Release The Beast" are pointed out to have appeared on a Jagermeister commercial way earlier.
- Lena Headey reminds her neighbor that a Lannister pays her debts.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: An In-Universe Enforced Trope by The Critic, who crowns the Running Gag of Pinky and the Brain splitting up by getting Rob Paulsen and Maurice La Marche to voice a skit of Brain reaching a Rage Breaking Point after years of with Pinky's stupidity.
- Show, Don't Tell: Or more like "show more and tell more": the Critic points out repeatedly that we are not given much in the way of explanation about why The Purge works, except for some vague handwaving about how it is a
Catharsis Factor and that because of that it just works. - Take That!: The moment The Critic sees that Michael Bay is one of the producers, he says that everything about the plot being crap makes sense.
- There Should Be a Law: It's the fear of this that starts the review – a law to split "Pinky And The Brain". The Critic is quick to point it's stupid to Malcolm/Tamara (who have gotten armed to repel it), and compares it to the titular "Purge".
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In-universe opinion of the Critic, who thinks the film's premise might work if it were used in a satire or comedy, and that it suffers from taking itself too seriously.
Because it works.
