Review of Not Cool (2014) by Ahmed B — 27 Sep 2014

I like Shane Dawson, but more when he's just recording himself hanging out. He's a funny and sincere guy and be really does mean well, but when I heard that he was making a movie I was apprehensive.

It's unrealistic to expect sketch comedy-esque humor to work for 90 minutes, and it doesn't completely, but it's not terrible. Actually, it's far from it, and I'm kind of surprised, to be honest.

If you can get past the first five minutes or so (which are bad), there are a few quick lines of dialogue that aren't necessarily focused on, but they expect the audience to understand, and I like that.

There are also some nice pop culture references and self-deprecating humor which does help bring the film to more people that aren't Dawson's fans. The humor is understandably blue at times, and sometimes it works, but sometimes it just tries to be raunchy because it can.

Dawson definitely shouldn't have cast himself in the main role since it comes off as egotistical at times and he isn't an amazing actor, but he's better than I thought he would be (especially going by how he seemed in the trailers).

The unknown Cherami Leigh is rather good, giving off dry humor with a fair amount of energy, and Drew Monson and Michelle Veintimilla work well together, the former having actually good comedic delivery and timing while the latter has a nice reliability about her.

Dawson is the weak link here; even if he is funny, he just can't act (although he wasn't as bad as he was in Smiley, oh dear Lord, that movie). He should have stayed behind the camera, since he doesn't even mesh that well with Leigh, and their romantic tension more or less the main plot line.

Not Cool has some nice gags and cute in-jokes for his fans that they'll love, specifically a part in the third act resolution. It's episodic, but I hope that Dawson can get better at holding a feature length steadily as well as making A and B-stories more cohesive and related.

If he could drop the tired racial humor and scatological gags which don't work, he could actually do better in the future. You can tell that he cared about this, and that does come across to a small extent.

It's not a good movie, but it's entertaining, like an elongated YouTube video, but that does make it feel cheap as well. 6/10, okay, one thumb down, average, etc.