Web Video / Midnight Screenings

Yeah, sometimes they need a freaking smoke when doing this.

"I hate movies now."

— Dave, after seeing Moms' Night Out

Midnight Screenings is a collection of v-log reviews of movies that Brad Jones and his friends (dubbed "Team Snob") have just seen, usually filmed in their cars. The latter is often done after seeing midnight premieres of major films, hence the series name. In its original format, the series ran from 2011 (starting with Thor) and temporarily ended in 2019 with Pet Sematary. The Overcomer review, posted in August 2019, was done in the original format, and the original format returned the next month, though it has since become increasingly intermittent.

Throughout the series' run, the cast (dubbed "Team Snob") remained largely static, though a few cast members were added or left throughout the years. Aside from Brad himself, the main cast has included:

Team Snob (Springfield Run)

• Sarah Gobble (2011-2019)
• Dave Gobble (2011-2019)
• Brian Irving (2011-2019)
• Geno Reynolds (2016-2019^* guest appearance in 2013)
• Ryan Mitchelle (2013-2015, Midnight Screenings LA, 2018-^* guest appearances in 2012/2016/2017)
• Laura Luke-Jones (2018-2019)
• AJ Young (Midnight Screenings LA)
• Brian Lewis (2011-2018)
• Allison Pregler (2014-2018)
• Violet Rinorea (2015-2016)
• Jillian Zurawski (2011-2014, 2015)
• Jake Norvell (2011-2015)
• Jerrid Foiles (2011-2013^* guest appearances in 2016/2017)

Team Snob (Chicago Run)

• Jerrid Foiles
• Laura Luke-Jones^* has not made any appearances since 2020
• Doug Walker^* previously made guest appearances during the Springfield run
• Rob Walker^* previously made guest appearances during the Springfield run

Over time, the show evolved from the whole group in one car in summertime only (and actually at midnight showings) to a more generalized "current movie review" show with only 2-3 reviewers per episode. In addition to Team Snob, the show did feature occasional guests, such as other Channel Awesome-affiliated reviewers; Brad's mother, Leslie; Brad's out-of-state friends; and uniquely, comic artist Tim Bradstreet in the Why Him? review. The show is mainly just the gang talking about the movie, or other subjects that come up, with a bit of improvisation (in that what isn't them being genuine is them acting off the cuff).

*light goes out in the car, opens and shuts door to reset timer*

The real fun from the show comes from their reactions, especially if they think it's a bad movie. Not only will some of them just act in absolute rage at what they saw, those with them—who saw another movie—will often just laugh at their pain (even if they also saw a bad movie, or even the same bad movie).

Starting in 2017, Brad began livestreaming the reviews via YouTube's streaming feature. In 2018, the series briefly received a Spin-Off, Midnight Screenings LA, focused on indie content that doesn't make it to Springfield. Hosted by Ryan Mitchelle and Jesus, Bro! cinematographer AJ Young, it came to an end after Ryan moved back to Illinois.

In April 2019, the show was dramatically retooled by Brad and Laura in response to the continuing changes in the lives of Team Snob's members, most of whom were in very different places in their lives at the end of the decade than they were at the start. Now titled Friday Night Movies, the new show took place indoors, was livestreamed consistently at 5pm or 7pm CT on Fridays (albeit with additional reviews throughout the week as needed), discussed multiple films, featured clips of the films being reviewed, and during it Brad responded to SuperChat questions from fans. During the show's run in Springfield, most of the remaining Midnight Screenings cast made appearances on retooled series.^* The exception being Sarah, who was occupied with her and Dave's newborn child; Dave made one appearance, but he hadn't actually seen the films in question

With the advent of Brad and Laura's move to Chicago in September 2019, the show returned to the original name and format, seemingly out of convenience's sake while the pair settle in to their new home. Rob Walker, Doug Walker, and Jerrid Foiles have taken over for Team Snob alongside Brad and Laura. However, the number of reviews done in the traditional Midnight Screenings format has declined in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic, with Brad opting to do an increasing percentage of movie reviews as short videos by himself.

Videos can be found here.

---

So, should we talk about the tropes on this show?

Tropes #-M

• Accentuate the Negative: Especially if it's done with Rule of Funny, and implying that Suckiness Is Painful. Brad can be a rough critic when push comes to shove. However, he does acknowledge there is a difference between a movie not being good and a movie just not being his taste.
• Actually Pretty Funny: A lot of reviews of terrible films will have the filmgoers mention at least one or two parts they liked.
  • The one laugh that Jake and Irving got from The Smurfs was Gargamel's reaction to seeing a woman's mother - "I feel sorry for you in twenty years". They still thought it was bad.
  • Brad's reaction to Pain & Gain, which he absolutely loved. It's a complete 180 from his reaction to Transformers: Dark of the Moon. He also felt the fourth Transformers made its humor work (for the most part) by saying the lines straight.
  • When talking about The Internship, Jake points out a grand total of two moments in the movie that he laughed at, and he stresses that they were actually genuinely funny moments. The rest of the movie, however...
  • According to Brad, Terry Crews and Cocoa Brown were the only good parts of Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club.
  • In the 75 minutes total that made up Planes: Fire and Rescue, the one part Brad and Jake found funny was a parody of CHiPS, called CHoPS about Erik Estrada as a police helicopter, which they commented that that short clip alone was a better movie than what it was in, and demanded that at the very least CHoPS get made into a short film.
  • They point out that of all people, Larry the Cable Guy is the best part of A Madea Christmas because he downplays the "Larry" persona and actually comes across as likeable.
  • Trace Adkins in Mom's Night Out was the only legitimately good part, at least according to Brad.
  • Brad frequently points out that while he generally hates Pure Flix movies, he does enjoy the performances of David A. R. White (who co-founded Pure Flix) in them.
  • Despite absolutely hating Terrence Malick, Brad concedes that the director has an incredible eye for cinematography.
• Anything but That!:
  • A running gag is comparing which movie one of them would rather watch. Jake says that as shitty as The Smurfs 2 is to him, he'd watch a 48 hour loop of the film before watching That's My Boy again.
  • Usually one film per year will be the bar to pass, becoming a catchphrase itself of "So, better than X?". When they started doing midnights, Priest, only the second movie seen in the series, was the bad movie standard for two years running.
• Artifact Title: The local cinemas stopped showing movies at midnight after the first year or so, but the title stuck.
• The Artifact: Sometimes Brad and co. will be in the car even if they were watching at the comfort of their homes - i.e. streaming releases - when that was the original setting because they had just left the screening and were going home.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Professional critic Geno Reynolds had made appearances on the show as early as 2013 (for Riddick) and became a semi-regular guest in 2016. By mid-2017, he was appearing at least as often as some members of Team Snob and is, for all intents and purposes, a series regular.
  • Laura Luke Jones (without the latter surname at the time) was first referenced in late 2016 and was an Offscreen Leddie-esque presence throughout 2017. She made her series debut shortly after her and Brad's marriage, replacing Brian Lewis (who was ill at the time and would soon retire from the series) for the Maze Runner: The Death Cure review. She quickly became a series regular.
  • After the change to Friday Night Movies, Geno and Ryan began appearing more frequently than in the past.
• AstroTurf: Brad suspects that someone involved in the making of The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure (possibly its creator Kenn Viselman) has been setting up thousands of fake accounts on IMDb in order to bump the site's rating of the film up to a respectable level.
  • Mentioned at the end of Brian and Sarah's review of Saving Christmas, in which they discuss how Kirk Cameron was asking his fans to give positive user reviews of the film on various movie sites in order to offset the negative critical reviews. Brian even reads off a few of them.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: invokedBrad and Irving's discussion on the film Valley of Bones, a movie that even after seeing they had a hard time believing was real, touches on this.
  Irving: "You know, everybody wants a movie about a North Dakota meth-head who gets trapped into paying the Mexican cartel, so he's forced to dig up a dinosaur, {starts laughing} so that he can pay off the cartel with the dinosaur bones!"
  Brad: "That's the movie we just saw."
  Irving: "I wish I was joking."
• Bad Boss: Brad acts as this to his friends. He essentially pays his friends to watch horrible horrible movies so he can record their pain and get views from it. Although he subjects the same thing to himself.
• The Bear/Big Fun: Geno, who started showing up in late 2016 episodes.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: During their review of Shut In, they point out that Stephen, (played by Charlie Heaton) is remarkably good looking for someone who was in a head on collision with a semi truck.
• Berserk Button:
  • Angry Jake hated bad puns.
  • The writing style of Ehren Kruger which Brad really hates, going as far to blasting Transformers: Dark of The Moon in a giant Cluster F-Bomb rant during that segment (the exception is the fourth film, where he felt the actors made the script work).
  • Another one of Brad's is the so-called "War on Christmas".
  • Sarah, while not really having a "berserk" setting (she's pretty chill overall), does become irate when women in movies are written or used as props and 2-dimensional, even moreso when the female is just a love attachment to the male character, who otherwise might've been interesting had they just tried. She also doesn't like comedy movies where embarrassing things happen to people and "stress movies"/movies where people are stuck out in space or underwater, etc, although she did like Gravity, although she didn't expect to. She talks about what kinds of horror movies she doesn't like here.
  • As Dave is an atheist, pushing a religious view or personal morals onto the audience, especially with thin strawman arguments and misrepresentation of the other side, is the fastest way to make him curse up a storm.
  • Everyone loathes Adam Sandler, Tyler Perry and as of late Melissa McCarthy, and treats their movies with a mixture of dread and seething hatred.
  • Since Allison usually showed up to review kids' movies, she made it clear that she hated Toilet Humor and fart jokes in kids' movies.
  • Brad and Allison seemed to dislike comedy movies that leave in vast amounts of riffing/line-o-rama.invoked
  • Brad is disturbed by the nonchalance with which Moms' Night Out treats the main character's obvious anxiety disorder issues.
• Better by a Different Name: Brad liked The Sitter back when it was called Adventures in Babysitting.
• Bile Fascination: invoked
  • Despite giving it an extremely negative review, Brad and Jake both recommended seeing The Identical in theaters, by sheer virtue of the fact that people would have an opportunity to see one of the worst movies that anyone could possibly make.
  • Brad also recommended Winter's Tale as well, though more for its So Bad, It's Good aspects.
  • Brad and Dave's reaction to Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas was that it was so bizarrely bad that other members of Team Snob just had to see it for themselves. A review of the film by Jake and Irving, and then another by Brian and Sarah, followed soon after.
  • Subverted when it comes to Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party. It's the first film that Brad and Dave ever walked out on and both of them stated to avoid the film as it wasn't an enjoyably bad film like Saving Christmas was. When two others went to see it, they sat through the whole film, and told people who'd want to watch the film to just pirate it.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: Film Brain's "Symbolism!" is borrowed for Gravity. Seen again with Endless Love only this time, Jillian suggested that they should've called Matthew to say his catchphrase.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Brad and Mister X discuss how 10 Cloverfield Lane was originally a standalone film before becoming a Cloverfield sequel, much like the Die Hard films. Die Hard 2 was based on a novel, Die Hard with a Vengeance was originally a Lethal Weapon sequel and according to Mister X, A Good Day to Die Hard was based on "a floater that somebody found in a Russian toilet from what I heard".
• Breakout Character: Angry Jake. Heck, when Jake was considering no longer doing videos after seeing That's My Boy, fans begged him to see Brave just so he'd see a good movie and stay.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Jerrid returned in 2016 to do the Warcraft review, and appeared in a couple 2017 episodes as well. When Brad moved to Chicago, Jerrid became one of the primary reviewers once again, appearing in nearly every two-person car review during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
  • Ryan Mitchelle mostly disappeared from the series in 2015 after moving to California, except for a brief appearance to review By the Sea when Brad visited later that year. In mid-2018, he briefly helmed the spinoff series Midnight Screenings LA with collaborator AJ Young; by November, however, he had become a regular for the core series once again after moving back to Illinois.
• Butt-Monkey: Jerrid, Jake, and occasionally Dave.
• Call-Back:
  • Brad and Jake tend to do this quite a bit when they review movies together.
  • In one episode of DVD-R Hell, Brad takes a look at the short-lived series The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, about a black butler in the White House during the Lincoln administration. When Dave goes to the midnight screening of Peeples, he mentions a trailer for a movie called The Butler, an Oscar Bait feature...about a black butler at the White House. At least one "Classic Pfeiffer!" reference is made.
  • At the end of the Transformers: Age of Extinction review, Brian, Irving, and Brad spend about ten minutes fondly remembering some of Jerrid's epic moments of stupidity, namely his hilarious confusion to what "Assburgers" was and Brad and Brian's horrified shared expression when they realized that he wasn't joking (Glee 3D), and Irving's dawning realization that Jerrid, who expressed a want for Vernians to also have the option to be called "Jules-es", had no idea that Jules Verne was a singular person (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island).
  • In the Black Panther (2018) review, Brad asks Irving what how he would have reacted if, in The Force Awakens, the end twist was that Luke Skywalker was on Earth All Along, which he had joked with Dave about in the review of that film over two years earlier.
• The Cameo/Crossover: Allison Pregler, Phelan Porteous, Nash Bozard, Lewis Lovhaug and Doug Walker (The Nostalgia Critic) have joined Team Snob for certain episodes.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: invoked Brad and Sarah say that the twist ending of Morgan was this.
• Catchphrase:
  • "Should we talk about the trailers?" or "Trailers?"
  • Brad's is either "I really dug this movie" or "What the fuck was that"?
  • "You know, it would be one thing if the movie was funny. It's not!"
  • *after going off on a tangent* "Oh, right, we saw a movie."
    • Or, conversely, "And that's our review of [whatever they were rambling about that wasn't the movie]"
  • "Now stay with me here..." *goes into absurd description of event or thought*
  • "This felt like a fucking sitcom!" is Brad's when describing movies with overly broad humor and cheap production values.
  • "It's an easy sit." or "You won't have a miserable time." are the go-to lines when they're recommending mediocre children's movies to parents, sometimes adding "It's not [recent terrible kid's movie] bad." afterwards.
  • "Boo! Zero stars!"
  • "Solid X" Is Dave's when describe why a movie worked, or how it could've worked. A favorite is "Solid screenplay".
  • Brad tends to say "any way, shape, or form" a lot.
  • Brad: Right on!
  • *Sarah mentions a trailer they got and Brad thinks the movie looks awful* Brad: Fuck that (shit)!
  • *Sarah mentions a trailer they got and Brad is not sure if it will be good or not* Brad: That could go either way.
  • Sarah: Stone cold bummer.
  • "All right, see ya." or "Later."
  • "Don't give a shit/fuck"
  • Brad loves using the phrase "CGI splooge" in reference to bad CGI or CGI used when practical effects could have done just as well (if not much better).
  • Rob and Brad will frequently use "problematic" in an extremely exaggerated voice to mock potential politically correct takes on a film.
• Caustic Critic: Everyone has their moments, but Angry Jake topped them all, as his standard in-character mode was xenomorph-blood levels of caustic.
• Character Development: As the series goes on and the Team sees more movies, they become less shouty and more analytical on how a movie works. Dave lampshades this in The Gunman video.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: When a team member leaves, there is never an in-show explanation to their departure. This first happened when Jerrid left all of Brad's productions due to a falling out (although they quickly reconciled, Jerrid did not return to the show until 2016). Jillian stopped doing the show because she didn't enjoy doing them anymore; Jake left because he also had a falling out with Brad; Violet left because she and Brad broke up; Allison and Brian stopped showing up due to the #ChangeTheChannel controversy. Sarah, Dave, Ryan, and Irving stopped being in the show after Brad and Laura moved to Chicago. Laura hasn't been seen since the Soul review, with no explanation given for her absence.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Brad, Dave, and (formerly) Jake are most prone to these.
• Comical Overreacting:
  • Most of the gang is prone to this, but in the That's My Boy video, Jake admits that he plays up the "Angry Jake" mood for laughs. Although the movie in question left him so actually angry, he spent the first half of the video in Tranquil Fury mode until he calmed enough to play up the angry again.
  • Had he planned ahead, during Paranormal Activity 3 Jake explained a plan to get a large (and free refillable) popcorn, just so he could Comically Overreact to every jump scare and throw his popcorn everywhere, then go get a refill and wait for the next one.
• The Comically Serious: Brad felt this was why the humour in Transformers: Age of Extinction worked more than the previous films, as jokes were told straight instead of doing everything short of mugging for the camera.
• Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: When Brad his mom watched a re-release of Saturday Night Fever, Brad noted how people who haven't seen the film think it's just a frothy dance movie like Grease.
• Contemplate Our Navels: When talking about the grand leaps in logic in Kirk Cameron's beliefs in the Saving Christmas review, Jake & Irving get into an unexpectedly deep conversation about religion, its abuses, its place in the world today and how it at least tries to give answers to the unknown that frightens or fascinates us all. Lampshaded, of course.
  Jake: "Wow, this conversation got really deep."
• Covers Always Lie: Brad and Dave deliberately do this for the thumbnail for their review of Moonlight (2016). They both really like it, but do a "still" of Brad looking confused and Dave sulking.
  Brad: That's the stillshot, right there.
  • Done again with Justice League (2017), where Brad makes an absurdly angry face for the thumbnail. He thought the movie was okay.
• Damned by Faint Praise: During his rant on Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Brad felt that the only one to escape from the film with their dignity intact was Patrick Dempsey, whom Brad is not a fan of.
• Deconstruction: The premise of the show is deconstructed in the Nothing! video. Due to The Pyramid being Screwed by the Network and consequently having such a neutered release that it didn't come to Springfield, Brad & Jake spend the video talking about whatever comes to mind. Lampshaded by Brad by saying that it's going to be a "tangent episode."
• Department of Redundancy Department: In the Fifty Shades of Black review, Sarah says, "spoof parodies".
• Digital Piracy Is Okay: Irving says in the Saving Christmas review that if you absolutely have to see the movie, you should torrent it for the express purpose of screwing Kirk Cameron over.
• Disproportionate Retribution: During the 2012 "End of Summer Best/Worst" video, Jake offered this to Jillian when she insinuated he hadn't seen any bad movies that summer.
  Jillian: Magic Mike was way worse than anything Jake's had to see
  Jake: *turns to look at Jillian* I snuck into Brian's house when him and his girlfriend were sleeping, so I could prank them-
  Brian: There were pictures of the Pope everywhere!
  Jake: -I will sneak into your house, and slit your throat.
  Brad: Oh my god... that got dark!
• Draco in Leather Pants:invoked While discussing the Suicide Squad previews for The Man From UNCLE and Batman v. Superman, Dave says the fans ruined Harley Quinn, She's a murderous psychopath, not a strong independent woman.
• Drinking Game: Jillian suggested that during The Smurfs, they could take a shot every time Smurfing was done, but Irving shouted that they would die of alcohol poisoning by the first five minutes.
• Driven to Suicide: Scary Movie 5 came very close to pushing Dave to his limits:
  "The shittiest part of this whole fucking movie is that it's like two o'clock in the afternoon and I still have to go to work, and I still got most of my day ahead of me, and now all I wanna do is open a fucking vein."
• Dude, Not Funny!:
  • In-Universe, the group as a whole intensely dislike when any movie downplays or disregards mental disabilities for laughs, or unnecessary cruelty/abuse towards animals or kids.
  • Jake was pretty pissed at the pedophilia jokes made in the opening scene of That's My Boy.
  • Out of all the things Brad and Jake hated about Epic (2013), what sets them off the most is how the movie has MK's father be a neglectful, emotionally abusive asshole and plays it for laughs.
  • In 2014's Moms' Night Out, Sarah and Brad (Brad especially) hated how a main character's serious depression was played off as "aw, you just need a fun weekend, and God" instead of helping her seek treatment or just taking it seriously.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Geno Reynolds appeared in the review for Riddick, three years before he became a regular reviewer for the show from 2016 to 2019.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Early episodes refer to Irving as "Virtual Boyd" and Dave as "Max Force". Also, Dave had longer hair and a hat.
  • In the first few episodes, the car was in motion during the filming so the camera was held by someone in the team, often Brad. Even after the car remained parked in front of the theatre, the camera was still held by hand, leading to amusing shots. Eventually they figured setting the camera on the dashboard was for the best.
  • Many of the early episodes were more skit-focused. For instance, the Twilight: Breaking Dawn reviews consisted of Jillian improvising a Twilight fangirl (the first has her sitting on the couch and getting pelted with food from off-camera; the second has her annoying Jake in the car). Also, there were many more character-based running gags, such as "Slaver Brian". Over time the sketch comedy-esque aspects were dropped, and the reviews became more focused and analytical (although still comedic and improvised).
  • The show was initially focused only on summer movies and didn't become a year-round affair until early 2013.
  • The 2011 and 2012 episodes tended to involve most or all of Team Snob in one car. This changed to have two or three people per film as the format became more streamlined.
• Earth All Along: In one of the The Force Awakens reviews, Brad asks Dave how he would have felt if the final scene zoomed out and the Earth-like planet actually turned out to be Earth. Dave says he would have been mad, but also laughing. Gets a Call-Back in the Black Panther (2018) review, where Brad asks Irving the same question.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Jake occasionally called Jerrid "Baldy McGiggles."
  • In their review of Tree of Life, Jake angrily referred to Jerrid as "Mister Potatohead".
  • Then of course there's ol' Slaver Brian.
• Epic Fail: Brad describes seeing the 2014 Ninja Turtles movie as one of the worst theater experiences of his life. The 2D version was accidentally sent to the 3D showing, which wasn't fixed until more than half an hour of the film had screened, after which the management decided to start the film over again. Plus, the annoying kids all around him. And of course, the film itself really didn't help.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales was also plagued with 3D projector problems (due to them going to a theater that had just installed a new IMAX screen one day prior) that resulted in the film being rewound by 30 minutes... twice.
• Everyone Has Standards: Notice how in 2011, there wasn't a Midnight Screenings of Jack and Jill? Well, Brad said that he couldn't in good conscience send anyone to that movie.
• Executive Meddling: In-Universe. Jake speculates that the reason Walking with Dinosaurs had voice acting when the trailers promised only the narrator was going to speak was due to this. He wasn't that far off.
• Exiled to the Couch:
  • Brad opening his mouth to give Jillian his impression of Twilight — Smash Cut to Brad getting kicked out of the house. This happens twice.
  • The third time, Brad pushes his luck a bit too far.
  Brad: Heh! What are you gonna do? Make me sleep at Jerrid's again?
  Jillian: ..... [shoots him in the head]
• Fangirl:
  • Jillian improvs a girl who is a total fan of Twilight. Some fans genuinely thought she liked the series, but that was proven false when both she and Jake corpsed at the very end of the Breaking Dawn Part 2 review when the absurdity of what they were saying finally hit them.
    • The character is mentioned while Jillian and Brad are discussing the trailer for Fifty Shades of Grey.
    Jillian: And Twilight Girl is dead! I don't have to worry about that one.
    Brad: *laughs* Yeah, now we have S&M Girl.
    Jillian: That's not me, is it?
• Fan Hater:invoked Generally their attitude is "We didn't like this movie but if you did, we're glad you enjoyed it", but once Brad referred to the other people in his showing of Transformers: Dark of the Moon as "some of the dumbest motherfuckers in this town" specifically because they enjoyed the movie.
  • Discussed by (and ultimately averted with) Jake in the Turbo review. He states that while he does give some angry and visceral reactions to a lot of the movies that he reviews, at the end of the day he'd never get mad at someone for enjoying a film that he didn't.
  • Dave, while not hating the fans, has no problem telling anyone to fuck off when they get mad at him for having his own opinion (namely Man of Steel and his hatred of it).
• Fanservice:
  • When discussing Oz the Great and Powerful, Jake had quite a few cracks about the outfits Mila Kunis wore, including the "green titties" from her cleavage after she becomes the Wicked Witch of the West.
  Jake: I know exactly why she wears [tight pants]! It's so I can masturbate to a kids movie!
  • During one review, Brad was actually holding the camera (back before they started just setting it on the dashboard) and not paying attention to where it was aimed, so there's a full minute or so of the review where the camera is just locked in on Jillian's cleavage. It's commented the following week that that review got a lot of hits.
  • The triple shirtless guys review of The Smurfs 2 tracked on blip for six months, as Brad noted in a later video.
• Felony Misdemeanor: When Brad re-reviewed Prometheus, he was shocked and insulted when he noticed that one of the cast spoke one of her lines like a question rather than a statement.
  • Once in a while someone will point out a minor nitpick in a film, and (usually) Brad will sarcastically say "Boo! Zero stars!".
• Follow the Leader: Mentioned a few times In-Universe.
  • Brad, Jake, and Allison suspect that the otherwise direct-to-DVD quality Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return was released in movie theaters to ride on the coat tails of both Oz the Great and Powerful (in the The Wizard of Oz adaptation sense) and Frozen (in the Animated Musical sense). In the latter case, while they're sure that the film was already in heavy production when Frozen came out, they believe that Dorothy's Return wouldn't have needed too much time and money to alter due to the low quality animation.
  • When Brad says that the series will now include older films that some of them never got to see as a kid, he and Laura joked that now they were a blatant ripoff of Tamara's Never Seen.
• Foreshadowing: When discussing how the projector went out during The November Man, Brad and Dave explicitly point out that this happened really far into it. How far? They ultimately reveal that when the projector was fixed and the film was cued up to where it stopped... there were two minutes left.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • The episode on Sharknado 2: The Second One is just Brad interviewing Ryan Mitchelle, a friend of his who had a cameo in it.
  • Brian, Jake and Irving's review of Big Hero 6 features them talking about nearly everything except the movie.
  • There were no midnight screenings for new movies released in Springfield on the weekend of December 5-7, 2014, so Brad and Jake decide to make a video on nothing in particular and just talk about whatever comes to mind.
• Fridge Horror: Invoked by Brad and Dave in the Do You Believe? review. Brian Bosworth's character is a terminally ill convict out on compassion leave, and at the end of the movie his cancer is miraculously cured...so does that mean he has to go back to prison?
• From Bad to Worse:
  • In his Worst Movies of 2013 vlog Dave mentioned that Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas was not only the worst film of the year, but also possibly the worst film that he'd ever seen. Then in 2014 he went to see Think Like a Man Too, and had to admit that it was even worse than Madea Christmas.
  • Brad and Sarah had this happen at the Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle screening — at the same theater that in the past has subjected them to projector issues (Dead Men Tell No Tales) and even the wrong movie being sent out (Mother!). The first theater they go into for Jumanji, the projector breaks and starts looping the trailers. So everyone's escorted to the smallest theater in the complex, where the movie has already started but been paused — only for them to jump back to the trailers again. Then, a week later, Brad and Irving go to see Just Getting Started at the same theater... where they have to evacute halfway through due to a gas leak.
• Funny Foreground Event: In Jillian's review of Eclipse, Lloyd suddenly pokes his head up right in front of the camera.

*light goes out in the car, opens and shuts door to reset timer*

• Fun T-Shirt:
  • Fans used to send Jake shirts with stupid puns on them.
  • Witch and Famous, which drove Jake into an instant rage. He hates even being in the car when they're given to other people (Sarah received a Harry Potter/dog pun shirt, and he immediately threatened violence to those outside the car).
  • Brad gave Irving a t-shirt (mainly because it didn't fit himself) that read "African-American Urbanites from the College of Street", which Dave and Irving proceeded to break down as to whether it was intended as a joke or not, concluding it wasn't as the back had listed almost all legitimate prestigious black colleges in the nation.
  • For the Alex Cross review, Brian handmade a t-shirt saying "I Crossed Alex Cross" with a white shirt and a Sharpie, making fun of the ridiculous tagline for the movie.
    • Later, Dave also made a shirt; "Property of Slaver Brian"
    "God... damn it... I didn't own slaves"
  • Brad wears a joke Drumpf T-shirt in the Hillary's America review.
• The Gadfly: Irving will occasionally make politically incorrect comments during a review - not because he himself is prejudiced, but because he likes to make his co-reviewers uncomfortable. Brad, Jake, Brian, and Sarah have all acknowledged that because of this, commenters tend to give Irving a pass for saying things that would get the other reviewers in serious trouble.
  Brian: *points at Irving* This guy. This guy. See, if I said something like that I'd be in a lot of trouble. For you, it's like "Irving just insulted an entire country of people!" *Sarcastic Clapping*
  Irving: Ah, yes. It's wonderful. *laughs*
  • Brad is often this. He says comments that rib his friends a little, and he gets a laugh from their reaction before they move on to something else.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: While reviewing Atomic Blonde, Sara points out that a love scene between Charlize Theron and Sofia Boutella is not really done for audience titilation.
  Sara: They were obviously into each other. Not like, "Ooh, come and join us, Invisible Third Man Character!"
  • Brad jokes in another episode that his mother being a lesbian kinda killed lesbian porn for him.
• Happy Place: Singing the DuckTales theme in his head used to work for Jake, but after he shared it in the R.I.P.D. review, it no longer helped.
  • "Shirtless Jacob...shirtless Jacob...shirtless Jacob..." Poor Jillian.
• Harpo Does Something Funny:invoked In the review of Sisters, Brad says how the filmmakers letting Tina Fey and Amy Poehler improvise led to wasting a perfectly good plot. Also Discussed when he and Allison review The House and how Will Ferrell and Poehler go overboard improvising: they make it clear that improvisation isn't bad, since movies like Beverly Hills Cop and Ghostbusters had great improvising, but filmmakers shouldn't structure a whole movie around the actors ad-libbing "because they were in better movies."
• Hatedom: In-Universe, Angry Jake has this for the site.
  Jake: Man, I'm tried of this. I'm so fucking- aarrrg. I leaned over to Brad during the movie, looked him square in the eye and said, "I hate you, I hate the website, I hate the fans, I hate every single of them that enjoys this kind of bullshit"- I'm done. I'm done, son. This is ridiculous. This movie was absolutely ridiculous.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Adam Sandler and his films causes this for the reviewers. Jake and Sarah got hit with That's My Boy while Irving and Brian had to watch Grown Ups 2.
  • Brad was spared this when he saw Blended, only because the latest adaptation of Endless Love already put him in one, and the Sandler movie was tame to him after that.
  • Of a different sort, Brian and Irving went and saw 12 Years a Slave, and had the tamest review ever. The movie hit them so hard they couldn't even try to make jokes about it, Irving straight up saying he would not, and could not, joke about this film.
• Hostile Show Takeover:
  • In his review of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. It starts with Jillian giving a positive review, only for Brad to hijack the audio and give his thoughts.
  • Jake threatens one, when they joke about booby-trapping his house to make him think it's haunted after watching Paranormal Activity.
  Brad: Wasn't us, man. It was a ghost.. I've got way too much porn to watch to be doing that shit.
  Jake: If my house becomes booby-trapped, do not be mad at me if I seek vengeance. I won't be all spooky, like the ghost. I'll shoot you in the fucking head. It's no longer the Cinema Snob, it's now the Cinema Jake website.. to Hell with you, I'm taking it over.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Discussed at length for The Accountant (2016) regarding Ben Affleck and Anna Kendrick. Brian says how Affleck, who is already tall, still has his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice muscles, so each of his arms is the size of Anna Kendrick.
• Hypocrisy Nod: When Ryan complained about a film using on-the-nose music, Brad pointed out how the films they made were just as guilty.
• Hypocritical Humor: While reviewing Project Almanac, Brian points out in Found Footage movies how a character will shut off the camera by reaching straight for the lens. "Who does that?" he asks. At the end of the review, Brian decides to shut off the camera and reaches straight for the lens.
• Identical Stranger: Brad in his Road Chip video says that if Jason Lee put on flannel and a baseball cap, he'd be a dead ringer for Luke Danes.
• I Gave My Word: In-universe, Brad promised both Dave and Irving that he'd give them a break from reviewing Tyler Perry films and children's films (respectively) in 2014, and instead see them himself. Within the first fifteen minutes of Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club he began to seriously consider walking out, but knew that if he broke his promise then Dave and Brian (who saw three Tyler Perry movies in 2012 and 2013) would murder him.
• Improv: Literally the only set-up is going to the theater and bringing the camera, everything else is improvised.
• I Think You Broke Him: Happens in the Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas review after Dave calls a character "Cunty McMomface":
  Leddie: (laughs uncontrollably)
  Dave: I think I broke her.
  Brian: Leddie's a fan of "Cunty McMomface".
• It Makes Sense in Context: Jake's wish (denied by the city of Springfield, IL) to give his old car a proper Viking funeral (ie, floating into the middle of a lake and setting it on fire).
• Joke and Receive: In the review for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Brian mentions his confusion over Barbossa having a peg-leg, to which Brad suggests he go to the Pirates Wiki, jokingly saying it probably has its own page. It does.
• Jump Cut: The Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse review has one. Halfway through the review, someone decides to park next to Brad and Violet and blare loud rap music, so they shut off the camera and jump-cut to in front of Brad's house, where they then finish the review.
• Kill It with Fire: The Internship pissed Jake off so much, the opening shot of the review was him setting the ticket stub on fire, then stomping it to death.
• Kubrick Stare: Jake pulls off a few in the Breaking Dawn: Part Two video.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Angry Jake practically flies into a rage when given too many puns (real Jake just takes puns with some sighing and eye rolling). Despite this, he liked the extremely pun filled Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies, because at a certain point he can enjoy them because they're just so quick and intentional that he can't help himself.
• Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: Brad compares Tonto as a "wax" figure in The Lone Ranger to a skit on The Chevy Chase Show, to Brian's amusement.
  Brian: "No, I've got no problem with it... I don't know if I'd really call that a pop culture reference..."
  Brad: *laughs* "You know, it's probably not the most obscure reference I've ever made."
• Later-Installment Weirdness: The late-2018 format change: instead of sitting in the car and reviewing immediately after seeing the movie, the two hosts of each video (usually Brad and one other) sit in Brad's house. This also allows them to cover multiple recent movies per video, while also showing clips and answering the superchat questions. It became less frequent once Brad moved to Chicago, returning to more car reviews aside from Brad-only reviews he did at home.
• Like Brother and Sister: Brad and Sarah have this type of relationship.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: When Jake and Jerrid went to see Mr. Popper's Penguins, Jake was more entertained by a couple having sex in the back row than the actual film. Brad would later claim that Jake made almost the entire story up, with the only true parts being that a couple sat in the back and made out.
• Malaproper: In her midnight review of '"Crazy, Stupid Love'', Jillian calls it a "romantical comedy" and says that "hilarity pursues".
• Mind Screw: In-Universe. Brad regards Winter's Tale and Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas as accidental versions of this trope.
• Mis-blamed: invokedWhen Irving blamed Michael Bay for the Transformers movies, Brad pointed out it was as much the fault of the studio and especially the writers.
• Mistaken for Racist: In the review for Green Room, Brad joked that he was glad he wore his hat to see the movie, otherwise he might have been mistaken for a Neo-Nazi.
• Men Don't Cry: Spoofed when Brad and Jake were talking about sad moments in How to Train Your Dragon 2.
  Jake: "Oh, come on, Man! This movie's stupid! Let's fast forward through this part!"
  Brad: (sniffling and wiping his eyes) "This movie's pretty gay, Bro!"
  Jake: (also wiping his eyes) "This movie's really gay, Bro!"
• MSTing: It's apparent they sometimes do this in the theater, if only by laughing at the Narm. It's particularly prevalent in Christploitation movies, with them even saying other patrons give mean looks.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: When describing The Expendables:
  Brad: A movie that contains the legendary action heroes of our youth, along with the best action heroes of current cinema. And Steve Austin.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After sending Dave and Brian to see three Tyler Perry movies in 2012 and 2013, this was Brad's reaction after seeing Tyler Perry's The Single Moms Club (2014).
  Brad: This is what I've been asking them to see? Oh my god, I'm a monster!

Tropes N-Z

• N-Word Privileges: Discussed in the Free State of Jones review.
• Narm: In-Universe, they often find things funny instead of dramatic.
  • Jake and Sarah got quite a few laughs from James Franco in Oz the Great and Powerful, where they found Franco's grin face utterly hilarious in the context of the film.
    Jake: "I'm your wizard!"
• Never Heard That One Before: Jake is sick of everyone saying "Like Jake from State Farm?" or "Like Jake, the big turkey from Free Birds?" when he tells them his name.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • Brad and Jake thought that the trailer for Epic (2013) looked cool, but the actual movie turned out to be anything but.
  • On the flip side, they were less than enthused by the trailers for Frozen, and Jake even got furious discussing the film's second trailer, but they both ended up enjoying the movie. Brad has brought up the film (as well as Epic) in later videos when discussing this trope.
    (seeing the trailer)
    Jake: "Frozen looks stupid, really fucking stupid. Not looking forward to that."
    (seeing the movie)
    Brad: "You know, this movie's actually really, really, really good."
    Jake: {nods} "It sure is."
  • Dead Man Down went on Brian's Worst of 2013 list because the trailer for the movie was so different than the actual movie. He and Brad even go into detail about how they would want to see the movie that the trailer was advertising.
  • Brad and Brian both enjoyed Brett Ratner's Hercules film because it wasn't at all like the trailer - while they thought the trailer was fine, most of it only showed the first few minutes of the film.
  • Brad really enjoys the trailer for Acrimony and praises Taraji P. Henson's performance in the trailer. But he had his doubts the movie will be as good, since it is directed by Tyler Perry. Sure enough, it wasn’t, but he did find it wildly entertaining (and well-shot for a Perry feature).
• Nightmare Fuel: invokedThey were pretty freaked out by one of the human deaths in Transformers: Age of Extinction, and how the film lingered on his body for a short time. Brian compared it to the nightmare scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
• No Pregger Sex: Discussed. Sarah was annoyed at how Fifty Shades Freed had Anastasia engage in bondage while pregnant. Sarah, clearly speaking from experience, turns to the camera and says, "Yes, pregnant women have sex".
• Noodle Incident:
  • Jake missed out on reviewing Zookeeper because he had to go beat up someone who was threatening a child.
  • As revenge for an unknown incident, Jake snuck into Brian's house, while he and girlfriend were asleep, and put a 4'×6' poster of the Pope over Brian's bed (as well as many other pictures scattered around the house).
• Nostalgia Filter: Sharply averted in Brad and Dave's review of the 20th-anniversary rerelease of Space Jam, where they go out of their way to say that the movie has not aged well in their eyes.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Said repeatedly during the review for Winters Tale due to how bizarre the film is.
• Obvious Second Choice: In The Oogieloves review, Dave and Brad speculated that the actors in the film were all playing characters with certain personality types that seemed to have been written for other specific actors that the filmmakers couldn't get to be in the movie.
  Brad: Chazz Palminteri is playing Dice.
  Dave: A cross between Dice and Scatman Crothers, really.
  Brad: And Cary Elwes is playing a mixture of Diedrich Bader, Crispin Glover, a child molester...
  Dave: *laughs* And Nick Nolte.
  Brad: ...and Gary Busey thrown in there.
• Oh, Crap!: During the review of The Internship, Dave mentions the audience's reaction to show just how terrible the movie was:
  Dave: And not one of them made a fucking noise! It was so quiet in there, that halfway through the movie they brought the fucking house lights up.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten:
  • Jake said that he will always be "The Madagascar guy" at their local movie theater.
  • Brian doesn't own slaves... anymore.
  • "But was it worse than Priest?"
  • While admitting he is a good actor when appropriately cast, Brad tends to refer to Billy Magnussen as “Steve from Birth of the Dragon”, where Magnussen was questionably cast as the White Male Lead in a film supposedly about Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man (and which Brad hated).
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Brad has two friends named Brian in "Team Snob", so one of them is referred to by his last name, Irving.
  • The Vaxxed and The Conjuring 2 reviews had appearances from Sara, not to be confused with Sarah Gobble.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Jake was absolutely serious about his rage after seeing That's My Boy.
  • Brian and Irving told almost no jokes when discussing 12 Years a Slave.
  • Brad seemed absolutely broken after watching the 2014 remake of Endless Love. He even admits that if Jillian wasn't there to see it with him, it would probably be the most depressing review that he'd ever done.
• Oscar Bait: Brad normally thinks the term is overused, but he found the trailer for the film of The Book Thief to be very much this.
• Periphery Demographic: Discussed In-Universe when Brad and Jake did their worst of 2013 video. Both have young kids as fans. Jake kind of understood, given he does the kiddie movies, but his Cluster F-Bomb is not something he thinks kids should be watching. Then Brad said he met a kid at a con who is a fan of Snob, and said "I love E.T. The Porno!".
• Pluralses: Sarah says "synopsises" in the "Worst Films of 2018" video.
• The Problem with Pen Island: Every now and then, Brad will post a truncated sign that produces an amusing result (Beauty and The Beast, Going in Style, Office Christmas Party, The Disappointments). There might even be a reference to it in the video itself (The Finest Hours wasn't, to Brad and Nash's disappointment, "The Finest Ho"; in Ghost in the Shell (2017), Brad notes "I wish it was Ghost In 3D!").
  • One sign has the movie Detroit listed as "Detroit AD."^note  "AD" stands for "Audio description". Brad jokes it is a sci-fi movie.
• Random Events Plot: According to Brad, Penguins of Madagascar is all the better for being one of these.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Brad's hat in some of the Midnight Screenings has two long pink tassels.
• Resigned to the Call: The members always have one or more genres they're for the most part sent to cover regardless of quality:
  • Brad (Originally action, horror, and Christian movies, but now appears in nearly all reviews)
  • Sarah (YA Adaptations, teen movies)
  • Dave (religious films, smaller/"indie" films, "Black" movies)
  • Irving (Melissa McCarthy films)
  • Brian (horror films, Fathom Event screenings)
  • Laura (Jack of All Trades)^* Following her enraged reaction to Hunter Killer, Brad jokes that he should make sure Laura sees every submarine thriller released from there on out, much to her distress.
  • Rob (bad kids' films)
  • Doug (horror films)
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: During their review of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, Brad & Brian watch a skunk walk in the grassy part of the parking lot.
• Rooting for the Empire:invoked While reviewing a special re-release of Purple Rain, Alison says that the Time is a very good band for being The Rival to The Revolution. Also, Morris Day and Jerome Benton are very funny together.
• Rotating Cast:
  • Each review usually features two or three different members of Team Snob discussing the film that they've seen, though occasionally the entire team will show up for a film (usually for the bigger summer blockbusters) and every so often Brad will review a film by himself (if he can't get anyone to go with him).
  • In addition, some reviewers have their own "niche" or genre that they are almost always sent to cover.
  • The main cast is mentioned at the top, but less frequent reviewers to the series in the past included Ryan, Allison, Nick, Leah, Alex, Carrie, and Brad's mom Leslie.
• Rule of Funny: During Brad and Allison's review of Neighbors, Brad stated that he would have excused the Plot Holes if the film had been funnier.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Brad doesn't think this excuses the disturbing content of A Serbian Film.
  If you want to make a movie complaining about a government, do it. Don't film two Brazilian girls eating shit and say it's an analogy to the apartheid.
  • The biggest reason Brad and Jake find Terrence Malick's work pretentious and overwrought.
• Running Gag: Just a few:
  • Slaver Brian
  • Jake shouting at puns.
  • Jake shouting about the movie he just watched.
  • Team Snob casually slamming Priest (2011) during the 2011 Summer Midnight Screenings. Ultimately results in Jake praising it as a cinematic masterpiece after having to sit through both The Smurfs and Spy Kids 4.
  • Brian's "praise" for the film ATM.
  • Members of Team Snob describing AMC Theatres' increasingly surreal and bizarre pre-film ads involving "the little red dot people".
  • One or more members getting a trailer for the same movie over and over again (Dave with Prisoners and Brad with Lone Survivor) and their growing annoyance turning into sheer and open disdain.
  • Whenever a Blue Sky Studios movie tries to paint one character in the right and another in the wrong, Brad and Jake will always contest the movie's choice of who's "right" and who's "wrong". See their views on MK's father and Jewel.
  • If it's a review with Dave and Irving, expect them to snap their fingers, dance and/or sing to whatever's on the radio.
  • Team Snob making fun of the trailer for When the Game Stands Tall, noting that it manages to combine invokedNarm, Serious Business and Disproportionate Retribution.
  • Calling a bad movie the "best friend of a mediocre or just less bad movie".
  • Each year, there happens to be a group of horrible, worst-of-the-year level movies that have a shared theme, and the following year Brad promises that he'll help bear the load by seeing those movies. 2012 was kids' movies, 2013 was Madea movies, and 2014 was religious movies. However, Brad was at the vast majority of 2014's religious movies, to the point where more than half of his Top 10 Worst Movies of 2014 were either religious films or had religious elements crammed into them (such as Mom's Night Out).
    • To add an addendum to this fact (as well as insult to injury), even when Brad tries to take the bullet for his friends, it usually backfires in his favor. He enjoyed ParaNorman and Frozen (both of which Irving couldn't go to see), as well as many of the big 2014 animated films such as The LEGO Movie and How to Train Your Dragon 2, while admitting that even some of the "bad" animated 2014 films like The Nut Job were still better than they could have been. And while he promised to take on the Tyler Perry load from Dave and Brian, there was only one Tyler Perry movie in 2014.
  • Whenever someone is planned to see a bad movie with someone else but at the last minute is ditched and forced to watch it solo, that person was "Peeples'd".
  • After a long tangent about subjects other than the movie at hand, they'll wrap up by saying "And that's our review of [whatever they were rambling about]".
• The Scrappy:
  • invoked They've found characters in-universe that are not only annoying but also end up completely bringing a movie down for them, most famously the slugs from Epic (2013).
  • Subverted with Olaf the snowman in Frozen who Brad and Jake thought was going to be this trope, but wasn't.
  • When discussing the trailer for Mr. Peabody & Sherman with Irving, Jake admitted that he could never get into Rocky and His Friends as a kid because he found Bullwinkle too annoying.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Defied. Given their extensive experience with bad movies, the team simply refuses to leave the theater during a bad movie because they don't want to give that movie the satisfaction of making them quit. There have been close calls, though.
  • Finally played straight when Brad and Dave walked out halfway into Hillary's America, due to its attempts to paint the modern Democratic party as racist based on events that happened 150 years ago, while ignoring the Republicans' ongoing problems with diversity.

*light goes out in the car, opens and shuts door to reset timer*

• Seinfeldian Conversation: They sometimes get a little off track in their reviews and talk about other stuff to varying degrees of hilarity. In their review of Big Hero 6, they don't even bother talking that much about the movie. They even have a review on nothing which essentially is just them rambling on about stuff.
• Sequel Escalation: This was Brad's main problem with Muppets Most Wanted, particularly in regards to the musical numbers and cameos.
  Jillian: The Jason Segel one didn't have enough [musical numbers], so they were making up for it.
  Brad: That's my thing about this movie, is that it takes stuff that was pretty good in the reboot and multiplied it by so much, to the point to where it was just a little excessive. [...] It got to a point where I was just like "All right, enough!"
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: invokedWhile they felt God's Not Dead was The Moral Substitute of Crash, they said that Do You Believe? essentially was Crash.
• She Who Must Not Be Seen: Leddie is almost never seen, although sometimes she speaks while hiding behind the seats. Brad's girlfriend Laura also lies on the backseat whenever she went along... until 2018, when Laura (now Brad's wife) started appearing on occasion. Avengers: Infinity War even has Laura starting in her hiding place, but then she rises up once Brad mentions her.
• Shirtless Scene: When Jake, Brad and Irving saw The Smurfs 2, Jake took off his jacket that had the movie's logo on it but didn't have a shirt on underneath (it was summer and hot). Brad made a joke and took his shirt off as well, and they both then goaded Irving into joining in shortly after. The scene lasted for about a quarter of the video, and their review ended up trending on the Blip.tv homepage for five months.
  Brad: (to Irving) "Come on, Dude. You're making us look gay, Bro!"
  Jake: "The man with his shirt on is making us look gay? That was what was making us look gay?"
• Shout-Out / Reference Overdosed:
  • In the review of Vampire Academy, Sarah's best comparison for the vampires being skilled in schools of magic is Clan Tremere, much to Irving's distress.
  • While reviewing Pitch Perfect 3, Brad and Brian say they were the oldest people in the audience. The "How do you do, fellow teenagers?" meme from '30 Rock'' is referenced.
• Shovel Strike: Brad mentions in The LEGO Movie review a story about him getting smacked in the face with a shovel by his cousin.
  Brad: I was the only kid in the fourth grade who had to get rhinoplasty!
• invoked Signature Scene: Sarah nicknames Me Before You "Wheelchair Suicide" after its most infamously memorable scene and exclusively refers to it as such.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Brad and Jake joke about this in their "Worst of 2013" list when discussing their fan base of eight year olds.
  • In real life, it turned out not to be as much of a joke on Jake's part. As mentioned above, behind the scenes Jake's status as the base breaker and Ensemble Dark Horse of the series fed his ego, and he would gloat to others about how the site wouldn't last without him. Brad disputed this after Jake was fired, saying that Jake's Midnight Screenings videos only accounted for about 5% of the site's overall revenue.
• The Smurfette Principle: Brad joked that Earth to Echo had a girl just so the "bros" in the audience wouldn't think the movie was a gay sausage fest.
• So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe, they will talk about how they enjoyed some bad movies.
  • After Brad was nearly ruined by the 2014 version of Endless Love, he found Winter's Tale to be pretty refreshing in being just silly-bad instead of ruining one of his favorite books.
  • Saving Christmas and The Identical all got recommendations from Team Snob for being entertainingly awful, with Brad stressing in both reviews that both films must be seen to witness how amazingly bad they are.
  • Brad is downright amused by Tyler Perry's Acrimony, pointing out that Tyler's dramas tend to be funnier than his comedies.
• So Okay, It's Average: In-Universe, Brad and co. often find movies that are just "meh". One of the more common examples is when the gang finds a Christian movie that is merely attempting to tell an uplifting story without pushing a point or demonizing opposing views, such as I Can Only Imagine. (Subverted by Dave in the same review, who lamented that the more recent Christian movies he had seen were merely okay, instead of giving him something either entertainingly bad, or so wrong-headed in its message as to give him a platform to pick it apart.)
• Special Guest: Usually fellow reviewers:
  • Allison Pregler nearly achieved regular status, sometimes bringing Phelous along.
  • Lewis Lovhaug did CHiPs and Power Rangers the same day.
  • A Christmas Story Live saw Brad joined by the Walker brothers and Chris Stuckmann.
  • Why Him? had comic book artist Tim Bradstreet.
  • Mathew Buck AKA Film Brain joined him for Masterminds (2016), The Girl On A Train, and The Birth of a Nation (2016).
  • Nash Bozard joined him for Kung Fu Panda 3 and The Finest Hours.
  • Mike Robinson aka Mister X of Geek Juice Media joined Brad to review 10 Cloverfield Lane (which they both enjoyed) and The Perfect Match (which they didn't).
• Spiders Are Scary: Both Dave and Jake are noted spider-haters.
  • Jake, in the DBZ:BoG review, upon realizing there might be a spider on the windshield, got his ass out of that car and asked Jillian to kill it (it wasn't a spider).
  • Jillian then poked the bear, suggesting Brad might ask him to go see Arachnophobia should it ever be rereleased to theaters. Jake did not appreciate the insinuation.
• Space Whale Aesop: From the Love the Coopers review: "Never stick a broach in your mouth on Christmas Eve, or Anthony Mackie will drive you around for twelve hours in a car."
• Spit Take: When discussing the trailer for Tammy, Brian made a crack that made Brad nearly spit out his soda.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Early on it was Jake.
  • Around 2013, Dave started showing up in more videos.
  • Since 2015, we've seen Ryan make more frequent appearances.
  • By necessity, Violet, as she doesn't live in the same area as Team Snob and so any time Brad reviews movies with her he's not in a position to do so with any of the regulars.
• Suckiness Is Painful: Truly bad movies show this to be true. Just see Brad describe how it was watching Old Fashioned.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel:invoked Members of Team Snob have stated that some of the sequel movies they've seen have been improvements on their predecessors:
  • Brad felt that Transformers: Age of Extinction was a major improvement over the others, but didn't claim the film was outright good. He stated that the things that annoyed him in the other films (aside from the still present Padding) were either done right or greatly reduced. Even Irving merely had extremely mixed feelings about it instead of being pissed off.
  • During the review of Ouija: Origin of Evil, Brad describes it as going to a sequel to a poor horror movie and getting The Shining.
  • Brad felt that the third God's Not Dead movie was an improvement on the predecessors, as he found it considerably less hateful and one-sided, with a more realistic storyline and more fleshed-out characters. He also praised the chemistry between David A. R. White and John Corbett.
• Take Our Word for It: Brad shows he went to Hillary's America with a Donald Drumpf shirt, but says that actually has a pun at the bottom... but without actually making said joke appear on-screen!
• Take That!: Brad calls Jake "shit for brains" in the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales review.
• Take That, Audience!:
  • To mock the haters of Prometheus, Brad and friends made a fake re-review and nitpick the hell out of the movie, bashing it for having a character says a line that ends ungrammatically, David's hair being half an inch shorter than Peter O'Toole's in Lawrence of Arabia, and so on.
  • When fans complain that the gang liked or disliked a movie they shouldn't have, Brad sometimes makes a video mocking the fans, directly or indirectly, for their Opinion Myopia.invoked
• Testosterone Poisoning: Brad and Jake spoof macho attitudes when they put on gruff voices and use "Bro" as a Verbal Tic.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Mocked In-Universe when Brad and Jake were gushing about How to Train Your Dragon 2, and Jake was feeling really good about the neck pillow he won in a crane machine. Brad then pretended to be a fan who was pissed that Jake was no longer "Angry Jake".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In-Universe one of his many complaints about Eclipse is that the backstories of the minor characters, like the vampire who fought in The American Civil War, would be far more interesting than the actual story.
  • When talking about The Asylum's Titanic II, Brad starts talking about how a glacier melting was the catalyst for the ship sinking. At this point, he realizes that was how Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus started, so the films could take place in the same universe. He immediately laments that they should have had the shark sink the Titanic II.
  • Brad also has this complaint about The Nut Job, as he thinks that the general plot line could have worked, but the movie executed it poorly (including bad characterization, Hurricane of Puns, and the inclusion of "Gangnam Style").
  • Discussed at length for the review of Sisters. Brad says how Tina Fey and Amy Poehler improvised too much and made the movie too long.
  • The Resurrection Of Gavin Stone would have worked better as a Fish out of Water comedy, maybe made in the 1990s with Johnny Knoxville.
• This Explains So Much: Irving's reaction during the review of Journey 2: The Mysterious Island 3D when Jerrid says that he just got that Jules Verne was just one person, having always thought this to be the last names of two separate people.
• This Is Gonna Suck: When any one of them realize they have to go a film they really don't want to see. Subverted of course when they see a movie that pleasantly surprises them.
  • Usually used to poke at whoever goes to certain genres and something horrible is coming up; everyone teased Jake about Oogieloves, while at the same time hoping they wouldn't also be called to see it. Brad, before 2014, constantly reminded Dave and Brian about whatever Tyler Perry movie was scheduled for the year.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Brad and Dave have seen plenty of bad movies throughout the entire series. Hillary's America was the first one, not just for the show, but in their life, that they chose to walk out on.
• Top Ten List: Often ends the year with a list of best and worst films. The Cinema Snob occasionally pops up to complain about certain films Brad likes.

  "It's a remake? Zero stars."

  • Jake did a list of worst films of 2012, but since he basically saw 10 films that year, Brave was on the list by default, even though he only had one complaint about the film (that Merida's issues were "first world problems"), and overall he really liked it.
  • At first, the top ten best and worst films of the year was done only by Brad. In 2011, Jake became a co-host for the top ten worst after seeing his share of horrible movies. And then in 2013, both Dave and Brian were given their own segment to showcase their opinions given the volume of bad movies they endured in addition to a Brad and Jake segment. By huge contrast, the top ten best are still only done by Brad.
• Tranquil Fury: There's no other way to describe Jake during the That's My Boy review. We've seen him over-the-top mad (Smurfs, Chipmunks), but this was something beyond all of that.
  "Don't you fucking dare wave to me! I- I swear to god, if you come within my arms' reach, I will strangle each and every mother fucking one of you in front of the god damn camera, and they can take me to jail for all I care, you filthy sons of bitches, I hope you all die of HERPES! Do you understand, you can't even ''die'' from herpes, and I HOPE YOU DO!"
• Two Girls to a Team: Under the original lineup, Sarah and Jillian.
• Unfortunate Implications:invoked
  • Discussed with every Tyler Perry movie the gang sees, and after seeing Moms' Night Out.
  • When talking about the implications of what being a RV dealer in the world of Cars/Planes would be in the Planes 2 review, both Jake and Brad dive into what "Slaver Brian" would be like as a southern RV plantation owner.
  • Sara (not to be confused with Sarah Gobble) and Brad were both unnerved at the implications of how one of the interviewees from Vaxxed paints her autistic son's twin sister as perfect right in front of him.
  • Brad and Sarah had a lot of fun talking about all the implications in Overboard.
• Watch It Stoned: Sometimes they recommend watching a movie drunk or high, but it's rare. More often they will talk about how they enjoy watching some movies when high, such as The Wizard of Oz (even though Brad likes it even when sober). Brad then realized two minutes into Jupiter Ascending that he should have got high before he went to the theater.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Violet only appeared in a few episodes before she and Brad broke up.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • Jake against everyone else after Brad found out a girl that both of them were interested in had started dating Jake. Brad alleged that Jake had stolen her off him, but Rayn and Jake both claim she never dated Brad. Either way, everyone in the group stopped hanging out with them, with Brad mentioning that the last he heard Jake had taken a job at a meat-packing factory. Somewhat mitigated in that Brad has said that they're both quite happy with their lives these days, and there's no point holding a decade-long grudge over what ended up being a minor falling out in the grand scheme of things.
  • Allison (and Pheolus) against Brad and Laura after Change the Channel, because the Jones's blame Allison for someone allegedly calling police to Laura's father's funeral with a false report of Brad committing suicide.
  • Brian Lewis (and Leddie) left due to unspecified burnout with the series, but then cut contact with Brad after the above story got out.
• Wham Line: Brad is trying to make a point about Django Unchained, and, stalling for time, turns to Brian:
  Brad: Brian, help me out here, you used to own slaves.
• What Could Have Been:invoked In-Universe. Whenever Dave has to go see an Underwhelming-to-Bad movie, he'll discuss how the movie could've worked, with his comments usually being: "A few more rewrites." and "Solid director.".
  • In the Worst Films of 2013 video, Brad and Jake talk about their aborted parody film Raging BS. Planned for Jake's film class, the film would've focused on a Rocky fan and a Raging Bull fan (the latter to be played by Jake) agreeing to a match. The Rocky fan would actually train, with for example a piece of bacon tied to a string filling in for the meat locker scene, while the Raging Bull fan would have all his scenes shot in Black & White, play Punch-Out!!, get fat and beat his wife. When the time came for the match, fans from a third boxing movie chase the fighters down the street with Jake's character being trampled. ^note  Brad's script's direction for Jake is simply "He looks dead." At the end, Ryan reads a random psalm from The Bible that just happened to correspond with the events of the film. The saddest part: Brad and his friends shot for one day, then gave up.

*light goes out in the car, opens and shuts door to reset timer*

• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:
  • invoked Generally averted when discussing films aimed at children, but Brad and Brian were both pretty shocked at the level of gore that The Lone Ranger had for a PG-13 Disney/Bruckheimer family adventure movie, even saying that it was more graphic than A Good Day to Die Hard.
  • They had this reaction to Legends Of Oz: Dorothy's Return as well, though more in an Accidental Nightmare Fuel sense.
  Brad: Oh, a lot of things about this movie are unnecessarily fucking creepy.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?:invoked Brad and Jake note that kids watch their videos and are fans, despite Jake swearing all the time and Brad reviewing porn and exploitation films.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Over the course of the reviews, several reviewers have revealed their personal phobias.
  • Brad is scared of flying and would rather find land-based if longer alternatives to travel.
  • Jake and Dave are both scared of spiders.
  • Brian implies that he is either scared of snakes or at the least repulsed by them.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Jake shouts this about Rise of the Planet of the Apes (because he was still that pissed about The Smurfs). Just shoot the monkeys already.
• The Woobie: Leddie is this In-Universe. Even the other members of Team Snob feel awful about her going to so many terrible movies, and more than once wonder why she lets Brian get away with it.
• Questionable Casting: invoked The review of The 15:17 to Paris mentions how the three main characters are playing themselves, Alison saying it makes the movie more interesting. But Brad and Alison are surprised comedic actors are playing parents and teachers in flashbacks. Including Jenna Fischer, Judy Greer, Jaleel White, Tony Hale and Thomas Lennon. And Brad is angry the professional actors aren't doing a good job.
  Brad: The professional actors are just as bad as the non-professional actors!...The only legitimately good performance is from Steve Urkel!

---