Continuing my kick of comic book related movies comes Comic Book: The Movie, a mockumentary about the world of comic books and their evolving into movies. Written and directed by the Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, the movie is a poor attempt at portraying how Hollywood bastardizes the comic book genre for the sake of money.
In traditional documentary fashion, Comic Book: The Movie, follows the exploits of Don Swan, played by Mark Hamill, a comic book fan and historian who’s been hired by a film studio to film footage to be used for the eventual DVD release of a yet to be created movie based on the Golden Age comic book, Commander Courage. Problem for Swan is that the studio has updated Commander Courage to Codename Courage, an Al-Qaeda fighting hero that takes no prisoners and kills everyone in his path. Swan is stuck on the old school Commander, the Nazi-fighting version of the character from World War II, instead of the remake that the studio has marketed him as.
The movie follows Swan’s exploits as he travels to the San Diego ComiCon, the largest comic book convention in the world, to spread knowledge of Commander Courage to the public and help sway the studio to make the film about the old-school Commander. Along the way Swan interviews leading comic creators and celebrities like Kevin Smith, Stan Lee and Peter David, all in an attempt to try to lend some comic book cred with the viewer.
From the opening scenes I knew I was in trouble, it looked worse than any documentary I’ve ever seen before. As if someone took out a camcorder and started filming, it had that cheap C rated movie look. The acting varied from person to person with some doing a good job, like Hamill, while others looked as if it was their first time ever standing in front of a camera. While you’d expect some form of camp from the movie, it went over the top and was a bit of a distraction. The only thing going for it was its use of ComicCon for its surroundings, and unfortunately that couldn’t help it either.
This movie was absolutely atrocious, from the acting to the production values. It seemed like a cheap B movie making fun of an even cheaper C movie. I have never been so disappointed in a move as I was with this one. It’s definitely one to stay away from.