Skippy review
Hmmm, not sure what to make of this. It's clearly very well written, and there is a strong grasp of plot, character and pace. It just, well, didn't grab me. I think because it's a comedy but it didn't make me laugh very much. There were some good lines, but it wasn't out and out funny.
The twists at the end came thick and fast and I didn't expect them, so that was good. I thought there would be a more moral aspect, a point to the whole movie. Perhaps this is too obvious and has been done too much, but not having one left me feeling a little underwhelmed - perhaps that's me because I've seen so many of this type of movie and they tend to have a message.
It was too long, you could easily lose 20 pages without missing anything, making it sharper and more focused. In particular the no. of flashbacks were too many. I got the point of them and liked the plot device, but thought it was a bit overdone.
A key plot weakness for me was with Splitfoot. As he was the all-powerful devil it wasn't realistic that Skippy could have caused his downfall, Splitfoot could have saved himself with magic.
Overall I guess I've seen these types of movies and didn't find this one bought anything different enough or funny enough to make it stand out.
My suggestion, and you probably don't want to do it as it will involve changing the whole movie, is to have Splitfoot as a human being. He's so rich and powerful he's bored, his only fun is in toying with people's lives. Skippy is his next victim, who he takes, makes famous again, ridicules etc, but when he tries to discard him Skippy is the one who gets away and gets revenge - so same movie but without the supernatural. Just an idea.
I know this has been pretty negative but as I said at the beginning, you clearly write very well and have a good grasp of screenwriting structures and plots. Good luck.
Other Reviews by OliRichards
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This is a very accomplished screenplay. The writing is very good, characters well developed, plot moves along nicely and it's a nice concept.
The big question for me is, is it funny enough? I'm not sure. There's some good comedy in there, but I think you need more - it's just not packed enough with laughs yet. There's plenty of potential to do this - the dwarfs, Scott...
This is a very accomplished screenplay. The writing is very good, characters well developed, plot moves along nicely and it's a nice concept.
The big question for me is, is it funny enough? I'm not sure. There's some good comedy in there, but I think you need more - it's just not packed enough with laughs yet. There's plenty of potential to do this - the dwarfs, Scott being uptight, Emily being uptight, Scott and Emily fancying each other without realizing and so on. Make the most of them.
I only had a couple of specific comments:
p.60 - 63
the turnaround from Emily telling Bill she hates him going into the theatre to admitting she is wrong soon after she came out is too quick without a strong reason for the change. It needs more of a trigger for her change to happen.
p.96
It is odd that her dad turned around so quickly - I think there needs to be a better reason for this as well.
Overall though, great writing, good luck with it.
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I like the premise of this movie - a gang that steal a lot of money, get robbed in turn, and then have to try and get it in order to return it to avoid worse trouble. It's a great plot and one that you could have a lot of fun with.
Regarding the characters, I thought the main ones all spoke with too similtar voices. When I covered over the name and just read the speech I...
I like the premise of this movie - a gang that steal a lot of money, get robbed in turn, and then have to try and get it in order to return it to avoid worse trouble. It's a great plot and one that you could have a lot of fun with.
Regarding the characters, I thought the main ones all spoke with too similtar voices. When I covered over the name and just read the speech I couldn't work out which characters were speaking.
The comedy wasn't that funny for me, but maybe that's just a different sense of humour.
I thought there was too much speech in some places. I would really have liked to have less talk and more plot twists and turns instead. It is the plot that makes this movie and you could make more out of it.
I think you could have made more of the relationship between Sonya and Profit. Sonya is clearly a strong character but plays only a bit part at the moment. It's a B plot that could be funny and interesting.
These were my thoughts, good luck with it.
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For me this was both really good and really frustrating. First the good stuff – you can write, you can build tension, you can conjure up great action sequences, you can do realistic sounding dialogue, you can sustain a story over the length of a movie. All really great stuff.
So why the frustration? There were a few things that I had a real problem with in this movie that...
For me this was both really good and really frustrating. First the good stuff – you can write, you can build tension, you can conjure up great action sequences, you can do realistic sounding dialogue, you can sustain a story over the length of a movie. All really great stuff.
So why the frustration? There were a few things that I had a real problem with in this movie that meant I just didn’t think it would work. I’ll run through them in what I consider to be most important to least important:
- There is no way Sean would have been chosen for this mission. This is the biggest top secret mission ever. They would have chosen people not just on their physical prowess but on their psychological attributes too – which includes the ability to follow orders, lack of emotional connection to harming others and not sabotaging a mission. I just find it completely unrealistic he would have been chosen. And for them to have picked two dud people who go AWOL – no chance.
- Tied in with the first point. I didn’t find Sean was set up as a character well enough – one training run, then he joins a group in which everyone seems to hate him, and then the main event which he rebels on. We’d need a bit more story on the group, him becoming part of it, maybe one or two successful missions, him and Kitty perhaps chatting about how it’s getting all too much as Duke seems happy to kill anyone in his path, women and children included etc etc. In other words build up to him going off mission and make it a proper story.
- Why on earth did Duke not order Jugs to execute Sean on p.47? Maybe I missed something but it seems incredible he didn’t.
- The shoot out that Sean and especially Kitty engage in at the end is way over the top. Rambo ridiculous in the number of people they kill and the number of bullets that happen to miss.
- Why did they put make-up on themselves? I know it’s meant to be top secret but their cover could have been blown by a security guard spotting they had a silly outfit on. Surely there would have been a process in place to ensure the disguises were perfect.
- Kitty hiding in the mattress – really neat idea, but she wouldn’t have been able to replace the sheets.
I think your main difficulty is that these kinds of movies have reached a high level of sophistication. Films like the Bourne series and MI series have the same great level of action you do, but better back stories, plots and conversation between highly clever people engaging in battles of wits rather than the swearing and cheap jibes that you write. That sounds incredibly negative and it’s not meant to be. You’re a very good writer, it’s just that the good movies out there in this genre, which I really like, have great writing. I think you could get there though. Good luck!
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