Reviews WebVideo / Kickassia

Surprisingly high-quality!

And I don't mean that title as a slight against the typical Channel Awesome fare, but Kickassia is astonishingly high-quality. For a bunch of bored snarky people in the location of a micronation in Nevada, I'm surprised this turned out so well. It feels like the faux-epic they were going for, and I commend them for pulling it off so well.

First of all, the acting. It is wonderful. The comedy is near-perfectly timed, the Narm Charm hamminess IS! NARM! CHARM! HAMMY!!, and everyone is delightfully insane. The script of the thing is good too. Being the type of metafiction it is, I felt the references were well played, and not just there, and the treatment of the tropes was done with care, as they were played straight, lampshaded, inverted, subverted, averted et. al. in a way I feel can't be done in any other type of fiction besides comedic metafiction. The sound effects were just okay, really, but the orchestration is well done, and ties the piece together with its faux-epic swells and motions.

However, I feel the best part of Kickassia was the directing work. Rob Walker, you are an *awesome* director. With such an admittedly boring location, and the large cast of characters, Rob did a teriffic job with it. The Dutch Angles, Hitler Cam, Gilligan Cuts, DescriptionCuts, lighting, and everything was well done. The special effects were highly functionable, and looked good considering the shoestring budget compared to hollywood movies. I was impressed personally by how well the explosions and gunshots worked added in, and the quasi-force lightning in natural lighting was especially good looking.

I loved Kickassia, and I feel it is the best Channel Awesome production I've consumed thus far. Indeed, I believe it exemplifies the comedic metafiction genre, with the fictitiousness of the authority of micronations contributing greatly to the piece. This work is definitely worth 90+ minutes of your time.