Rock Jocks (2012)

A group of dysfunctional government employees find themselves responsible for shooting down asteroids that are headed for earth.While I most enjoyed the exchanges between Jason Mewes and Robert Picardo, everyone here was funny. The first third was a bit slow, but once I warmed up to the jokes and excessive vulgarity, it was a real treat. The old man is especially funny.This may not be a film I ever watch again, but I enjoyed it just the same. In some ways, it reminded me of the profane humor of "Clerks" (another Mewes film), only this time with video game nerds rather than retail employees.

When this movie hits, it hits the funny bone right on. And on the balance there's a lot more hits than misses with this movie.The humor is often juvenile and obvious so don't watch this if you want subtle or wry. I think many females will enjoy this movie just as much as males will but the sexual humor makes it seem targeted to males of a certain demographic. What females will like is the female character portrayal gives as good as she gets. And the one liners are really funny.The cast for the most part is well chosen, and their character's quirks all bounce off each other nicely. The only miss in the cast department is the government watcher guy, not that he was bad but in a movie like this where everyone is basically insane you kind of need even the straight characters to be a little deeper. I really liked Alien Jesus also.This is a low budget movie, glaringly obvious, but at the same time it's basically dialog driven comedy so who cares really. It's just a fun movie, not a classic, but not bad.

It's not often that a low-budget movies manage to unironically entertain me, but Rock Jocks is the exception that proves the rule. I'll admit, I wanted to watch this because it looked cheesy, and on a few levels, it still is. There's one location, maybe about 7 people in the main cast, and the CGI isn't exactly Avatar, but this movie manages to use those limitations to its advantage. The movie takes place in an obsolete and underfunded secret bunker, and it's obvious that this overjoyed the production designer, who filled the room with all kinds of retro junk computers and panels. Since the characters never really leave the bunker, the cast size is actually perfect: everybody has their moment, and nobody is used too much. The makeup for the alien, Smoking Jesus, is amazing, and the guy who plays him is the guy who played all the monsters in Pan's Labrynth! This is how you make a low budget sci fi movie!

This movie is intended for a male audience, preferably between the ages of 14-30. The humor isn't great, but definitely funny if you like "immature" humor. The only female character is played by Felicia Day (Alison), who does have a minor impact on the story, but is not properly utilized intellectually, as is the case in many Sci-Fi, Comedy movies.Gerry Bednob, Andrew Bowen, Justin Chon and Kevin Wu help to develop the distinct characters needed for a misfit group. The acting itself is good, but hilarious writing helps to fuel this movie.While the premise of impending doom, small group having to save the planet, "The Man" always trying to make the job harder, and the deadbeat dad role are not original, they are developed and help to conduct the story in an interesting way.Doug Jones as Smoking Jesus, with continual exclamations of "Jesus" is definitely an upside, as well as quoting numerous movies throughout the movie.Hopefully a deeper look at the characters and speeches throughout the movie will prompt similar movies, because there are pretty well thought out speeches made by the characters in the film.The story itself is interesting to follow, peppered in with character conflicts that makes this an interesting movie, well worth a 85-91 minute viewing. Many people will not relate to it, and that's more than fair, but if you enjoy simplistic humor, good/great acting as well as some quality background imagery (scenes with Smoking Jesus), this might be worth a look.Without spoiling the movie, it is hard to develop a full review, but a fair rating for this movie is 6/10, with a wide range of ratings expected between 1-10 because there will be people to whom this movie does not appeal at all, or to the target audience which it might. There are a few editing issues (talking without mouth moving) but overall the movie seems to be pretty well done.