Noobz Doesn’t Even Deserve A Pun

by on May 2nd, 2013 at 7:50 am

Last night fellow Schmamer Patrick and I watched Noobz, the movie about ‘competitive gaming’ starring Jason Mewes of Jay and Silent Bob fame. And how awful it was. There is a compelling movie to be made about competitive gaming, as competitions inherently make for, if not good, at least compelling stories. We’ve seen it with every sports movie out there, even though a movie about competitive gaming would probably appeal to a smaller audience it could still work. Unforunately, Noobz isn’t actually about competitive gaming. And that’s why the whole movie falls apart.

Noobz follows clan ‘Reign’, or as their shirts say ‘riegn’ because Jason Mewes can’t spell ah ha ha stoner gamer is bad at spelling get it?, on their journey to some stupidly named tournament in Los Angeles. Each of the four characters has a name, but instead let’s talk about them in the way that the movie presents them to us because these characters are little more than walking cliches.

There’s Asshole Gamer, who is an irredeemable, whiny, self-centered, arrogant piece of shit who exemplifies the “lazy male gamer doesn’t wanna work” stereotype, who gets dumped by his wife because, like, omg video games are so teh gay! (Yes, she actually does call him gay for playing games and not fucking her.)

Then there’s walking White Knight, the man who it turns out largely wants to go to the tournament to try and hookup with a girl he’s had a crush on since she was 10. But the movie makes sure to let us know it’s cool now “because she can drink.” Right. A 30 something guy hooking up with a 21 year old he’s wanted to fuck since she was 10 is super cool. And can we take a moment real quick to talk about something else? What the fuck is it with pedophilia jokes? There’s actually a decent moment in the movie where the main character talks to a 12~ year old girl and the girl gives him advice about his situation and everything seems better. Then he asks her for a hug. UH-OH this clearly means pedophilia is coming! It’s just lazy, cheap, and stupid.

This is the main character’s wife. She does not, in fact, “heart” gamers.

Anyway, our third character is The Nice One Who Everyone Thinks is Gay. Not that the movie tries to pull its punches with getting us to think he’s gay; he dresses in pink, has pink luggage, wears lipstick, you see where I’m going with this. In the whole movie, outside of the gaming scene, I don’t think the characters had a single interaction with him that didn’t involve making fun of his supposed sexuality. Goody.

Our last character is Generic Disabled Boy. Oh man, as if ripping on gays, perpetuating pedophilia, and having asshole characters around wasn’t enough we get a generic disabled boy! Because all anyone who is disabled needs is a bunch of able bodied people to take him around and show him what it’s like to live. Right?

There are other characters, but fuck them. Zelda Williams, Robin Williams’ daughter, does do a good job with what she’s given, to her credit.

So clan Reign go on a road trip to get Generic Disabled Boy and to make it to the tourney in LA. This goes on for almost an hour and ten minutes of an hour and a half long movie. The movie that is supposedly all about competitive gaming features competitive gaming for maybe twenty minutes. Maybe. And the road trip is filled with all the usual bullshit, people getting into trouble, running from cops, making gay jokes, nearly killing the disabled boy. It’s just awful. And has nothing to do with competitive gaming. Believe me, I’ve travelled far and wide to play in competitions, this movie isn’t even close to representing any of that.

So at the end of the movie, gaming! Yay! Finally! Except there is no tension whatsoever because of how poorly the in game action is shown. I’ve played a lot of Gears of War and I know what it looks like to be played well, and even then I still had no idea what was going on. How bad must it have been for people who didn’t know that game? Of course, Reign ends up playing White Knight’s crush’s team, and of course he lets her have the victory because he’s the man and the man wants to let her win. Aww. So touching.

Oh, and the announcer is saying “Don’t let that booty get to your head!” because, you know, tits and ass apparently have the magical ability to cause you to stop playing a video game. Remember that, women! And after White Knight throws the final game, his team beats the shit out of him. Huzzah.

Until this point I was ready to just walk away with calling this a shitty movie.

But then.

See. She’s there. In the back. But it’s pretty easy to confuse her for a white woman, right?

After clan Pixies (because they’re women, you see, so they must wear pink and be named Pixies) win the announcer says “And hot ass white girls here too!” [Emphasis mine]. Except. For the fucking fact. That there is clearly a black woman on the fucking team! Yes, that’s right, they put a token black woman on the all female gaming team and the black announcer (of course he’s black) completely ignores her! Why the fuck couldn’t it have been “And hot ass girls here too!” I mean, yeah, it’s still sexist as fuck to reduce a team of women who just beat every other high level Gears of War clan on the planet to “hot ass women” but we apparently had to dehumanize the only non-white woman in the move too!

This movie is shit. Pure shit. Somehow I’m not surprised at this, though, because this is how so many people in the gaming community present themselves. We don’t deserve a better movie being made about us, but hopefully this will show people just how bad the public perception of us is. Because this is what people think of us.

Comments: