Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a sci-fi flick from 2020. That movie is "Max Cloud".
I'm gonna tell you, guys, part of the reason why I bought this movie in the first place was because of the cover. It just looks incredibly 80's to me and I'm sort of a sucker for those sorts of covers. That said, there is another reason why I wanted to check this movie out, which would be it's premise. The premise is basically a gamer somehow opens a portal to her favorite video game and ends up trapped in the video game world. And to escape, she has to beat the game or she'll either remain a prisoner there or end up dead. I'm not totally sure which is accurate, but regardless, that premise alone intrigued me enough to warrant covering for this series.
Now of course, I am aware that just because a movie has a really cool premise doesn't always translate to a good movie. I have been let down by certain movies that have had awesome premises and most of them just wind up being either really disappointing or complete shit. Now I'm hoping that this movie is not gonna end up like that. I'm hoping for it to be really interesting, or perhaps even really good. I don't know. The only way I'm gonna know for sure is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Max Cloud".
7 minutes later
Well, guys, I can say so far that the soundtrack is already awesome. Why? Well, you can't hear it for obvious reasons, but the song that's playing right now is "Dare" from "Transformers: The Movie". I'm hoping that this is a good sign of things to come.
14 minutes later
OK, that's something new. I've never seen the remains of a ninja's dead body being used to cover up the patches of a hole before. I'm not totally sure how that works, but I feel like it would be a pointless question if I delved further into that. So, I may as well just accept it...for now, anyway.
1 minute later
OK, hold up a second here! So it's been established that our main character, Sarah, is in the video game world as another character in the game. And yet, she's also being seen right now as herself, physically, playing as...another character. Um...I'm sorry, but I find this a little bit hard to believe, considering the circumstances that are going on right now. I'm hoping, maybe, that I'll get use to this as the film goes on. But right now, it's just throwing me off slightly.
4 minutes later
So, you guys remembered earlier when I was praising the soundtrack of this movie? Well, I'm gonna have to rescind that a bit. Because right now, we're stuck with shitty techno music. I mean, granted, most techno music is shit in general, but this is only further proving why I despise it in the first place.
8 minutes later
OK, guys, I'm just gonna say this right now. The acting, at least coming from our villains anyway, is fucking terrible. I'm gonna get more into this later when I talk about the movie itself, but I just wanted to let you guys know now in advance. This kind of acting that they're spewing out is absolutely horrible.
7 minutes later
I believe I've found a problem with this movie, guys. The whole idea of being trapped in a video game as a video game character sounds sorta cool...until you actually watch it and realize that it's not. Again, I'll get more into this later when I eventually get to reviewing it, but I'll say this in more simplistic terms. The humor in this movie really kinda sucks.
7 minutes later
So...our main villain watches fitness videos on his CRT TV while working out. Well...at least that's kinda something. Mind you, it's really fucking stupid, but at least he keeps his health in check, I guess.
6 minutes later
OK, I have a question here, and I know it's a really stupid one, but I'm really curious about this. So we're being dumped with exposition about Revengor's backstory. Revengor, for those of you wondering, is the name of the our main villain. And we know about his backstory, because Sarah's friend, Cowboy, is reading off what's written in the strategy guide for the game, and Sarah's character is reciting it word for word to our game characters. Now setting aside the obvious video game character shtick and the strategy guide, how does Jake know all about this? I'm asking this because Jake, from what I've seen up to this point, is mostly a somewhat goofball character, and yet, somehow, he knows all about Revengor's backstory. Again, I know this will mostly be seen as trivial and stupid, but it's just something that I'm rather curious about, you know what I mean?
11 minutes later
Wait, wait, wait a fucking minute here...so, Sarah's father, despite scolding her for playing too much video games, is actually a gamer himself...? And he's not even the slightest bit freaked out that his daughter is trapped in a video game at all? I'm gonna be honest with you, guys, this is probably one of the stupidest fucking twists I have seen throughout this entire movie. But then again, this whole movie has been fucking stupid, so why should I ask for it to make sense at this point?
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Max Cloud". And we're closing out with the same awesome song "Dare". Actually...listening to more of it, it actually sounds like a remix of the song. A really cool remix, I should add. Again, I know you guys can't hear it for obvious reasons, but this remix of "Dare" is actually really good. Well...as much I'd like to listen to it more, I have to review the movie eventually. So I'm gonna go ahead and shut the movie off now...OK. Well...what to say about this movie?
I may as well start by saying this. I stated earlier that there are movies that I've seen before, both for this series and on my own time, that had really cool premises, but unfortunately wound up being really disappointing. And unfortunately, this movie is another one of those that falls right smack dab into that genre. This movie is really disappointing. Now I will clarify and state that this movie isn't truly awful or anything. At least, in terms of the disappointing movies I've seen beforehand. This one isn't nearly as bad as it could've been. But, just because it's not as bad doesn't mean that it isn't a bad movie. It's still a bad movie overall. And normally, when it comes to B movies, I have a huge fondness for those sort of films. This one, however, doesn't really have the same kind of charm as those movies do.
And to prove this, I'm first gonna start with the biggest problem that this movie has: the writing. The writing in this movie is kinda shit. And I first have to start off by talking about it's premise. As I mentioned earlier, the premise is that our main character, Sarah, gets trapped in her favorite video game as a character from the game itself. And the main gimmick of the whole movie is that she can't control herself. She can only be controlled by someone else playing as her, in which case it's her best friend, Cowboy, who's using a spare controller he brought with him after her Dad took hers away. So OK, that concept is sorta weird, but it could still be sorta interesting as we get to see itself play out, right? Well...no. Not really.
That brings me into talking about the film's humor. Now, I can see that this film is trying to be a sci-fi comedy. And bless it, it's really trying. In fact, this movie almost feels like it's trying to be a throwback to those family comedies from the 80's and 90's. But unfortunately, it just doesn't really work here. The dialogue here feels really corny, which I'm normally fine with that, but the problem here is that it just feels a little bit too forceful. At a couple of points, mostly towards the end of the film, they even try to do the whole "meta humor" angle, where they'll reference something about them feeling like they're in a video game. And I'm just gonna be straight-up with you guys, I mostly despise meta humor. Because, like I said, it feels really forced and unnecessary. The only ones I know that are able to get away with it is "Looney Tunes". And that's mainly because "Looney Tunes" has been doing it for decades and they're smart enough when to admit it without having it feeling forced. This movie, while, again, only does it at a couple of points, is still rather forced and cringy at best.
Speaking of which, I want to mention the gimmick about Sarah being controlled as a video game character again. Because, first off, they don't really do much with this sort of gimmick, in terms of humor. There's only one point I can think of that came off as incredibly cringy and somewhat forced. So, Sarah as Jake, is stuck walking into a wall. Why is that? Well, that's because she's stuck in her walking animation on the TV screen from the game. And the reason why she's even like that to begin with is because Cowboy was away from the controller at one point to take a whiz. And when he's away, that's when she's stuck in her walking animation. And the characters, in game, ask if he's alright or if there's something wrong with him. And that may sound funny, in concept, but like I mentioned way earlier, when you see it play itself out like that, the humor of the joke just doesn't work. Mainly because, her character in the game isn't even matching how she's walking on the TV screen as her pixel character. It would've been more funnier if she was actually matching that, but instead, her character Jake just runs his head into a pole and it just doesn't come as funny as it should.
So, on the humor side, it definitely misses more than it hits. And as for our characters, well, most of them aren't really that well developed. Sarah is a gamer who likes video games (duh). Cowboy is her best friend and doesn't have much of any personality to begin with. Same goes for her Dad, even with that stupid twist about him. Speaking of twists, there is one character that I'm going to mention briefly, and she comes from the "Max Cloud" game, who goes by the name of Rexy. Now, I was originally thinking about spoiling this, but for the sake of anyone having any interesting in watching this movie, I'm not gonna entirely spoil it here. I will say that there is a twist involving her character. However, by the time that it's resolved towards the end of the movie, it comes off as incredibly underwhelming. Because it's mentioned once throughout the film, and it doesn't get mentioned again until the very end. And like I already said, it's a very underwhelming result in regards to her character.
As for our main titled character, Max Cloud, he actually does have something resembling a backstory. You see, even though he likes to play the heroic space hero, it's not really what he wanted to be when he grew up. As a child, he wanted to become a pastry chef, much like his mother. And he would mention that he always wanted to help his mother out in the kitchen as much as he could. But by the time his mother died, his father forced him to become a space commander and, well, the rest is sort of history with him. I could also mention Revengor's backstory, but since his story was told through exposition, while Max Cloud actually got a scene of his backstory played out, Revengor just comes across as somewhat of a lame space alien that would honestly make the villains from the beginning seasons of "Power Rangers" feel ashamed to be around him.
So yeah, the writing here is not very good. And you're bound to ask a multitude of questions about it the moment you start to think about all of the logic issues the movie has, along with it's cringe-worthy humor being not very funny. However, there *is* one way that I could recommend this movie, but I'll get into that later once I reach my final verdict. For now, let's get into the acting. And, oh boy, the acting here is mostly terrible. The only one I can say that actually turns in a halfway decent showing is Scott Adkins as our main titled character. Even though he is stuck with a lot of cringe-worthy, corny dialogue, he does try to make it sound lovably bad, almost to a point where it's a little charming. So, I do have to give him some praise for actually trying in this thing.
As for the rest of the cast, well...they really sucked. I mentioned the acting from our space aliens sounding really horrible, and it didn't change whatsoever. Most of the acting from them sounds really gravelly, with the actor playing Revengor sounding the most terrible. He really tries to range his gravelly voice, but it just comes off as really off-putting. And since I referenced "Power Rangers" a moment ago, I'm gonna compare him to a villain that also had a gravelly voice. The one I'm referring to is Lord Zedd. The reason why Lord Zedd's voice worked was because he was voiced by the late Robert Axelrod. And Axelrod actually had a good range on when to either sound really menacing or silly, depending on the writing in those episodes that he was in. The actor playing Revengor almost tries to go for that kind of range, but it doesn't work because his gravelly voice almost makes him seems like he's just overacting. And it's not the good kind of overacting when he's trying to sound campy. It just sounds like he has a complicated case of throat cancer instead.
But surprisingly, as bad as his acting was, he's not the worst actor in this film. The worst actor, by far, would have to go to the guy playing Brock, the cowboy bounty hunter. His acting in this movie, I would say, ranges on sounding incredibly wooden and subdued. And the reason why I say it's subdued is because he has an accent that I *think* is suppose to be Scottish, but I can't tell because his acting is really quiet most of the time. And I have no idea if that's how he naturally sounds like when asked to act, or if it's the script he was given, or if he's just a really shitty actor that has either has a really thick Scottish accent or is he's just putting up an accent. Either way, his acting in this thing is just horrible across the board.
Special effects are probably where I'm gonna give the most praise here, because the special effects in this movie are great. For a low budget flick from a few years ago, this looks amazing. Everything involving the CG alien world looks really cool. You do feel like you're in another world here as it looks dark and barren, which is great to see. Our sets involving the ships also look really cool, too. Costuming here is great, as is the makeup effects on our aliens. The fight choreography here is decent as well. So, just about everything involving the special effects is great here.
Same thing goes for most of the technical stuff. Camerawork, lighting, and sound-mix are all perfectly fine. The music, however, is something that I'm really disappointed with. It starts off great with the inclusion of "Dare" from the animated Transformers movie, but then it starts to go downhill when they started to include techno music. Guys, techno music, at least to me, is mostly garbage, and this movie is no exception. All of the techno music that they include here is shit. And anything that's not garbage techno music is nothing memorable whatsoever. So yeah, outside of one good song and it's remix, the music here is mostly shit.
And when all is said and done, guys, am I able to recommend "Max Cloud"? Well, like I mentioned earlier, the only way I can actually recommend this movie to you guys is if you have your brain completely turned off and you try to enjoy it as a mindless popcorn flick. If you go into it with those standards set, then chances are that you'll really like it. However, if you're someone who has a bit of a higher standard when it comes to sci-fi films, then you're most likely gonna want to avoid this thing. This movie tries to be campy and cheesy as all hell. Which again, I would normally enjoy those sorts of movies, but this one is not exactly something I'm gonna be watching multiple times over, let alone a second time. This movie is just too disappointing for me to even enjoy watching, even if I did try to watch it with my brain completely shut off. It's not worth the effort, and I'm kinda sorry that I pissed away $13 bucks to get this movie on DVD. It's certainly not worth *that* much. If you seriously want to buy this movie on a physical format, wait for a price drop around $7 or $8. But other than that, I just can't find myself to fully recommend this movie to you guys, other than what I already stated. So now, I'm gonna go and watch a better sci-fi movie. And you know what? Seeing as this movie wanted to include my favorite song from the Transformers movie from the 80's, I'm gonna go and watch that next, because that song inspired me to go back and rewatch that awesome movie again.
So with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
