Pretty Good

Lack of good storyline.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

This "documentary" had the brilliant idea of quoting Ghandi while presenting the audience with nothing more than a disjointed commercial that had more montage than substance. If you're a gamer, this isn't even interesting. It's just as bad as World of Warcraft: Looking for Group.The movie uses a timeline graphic, but does not follow it. I don't mind non-linear stories, but it shows us a timeline! Then, the talking heads are trying to explain how important their work is. I love video games--so much--but the talking heads need to take themselves a little less seriously, making broad social commentary that is ill-informed and amateurish. I don't typically get this worked up, but man, this movie was so bad, I was insulted and embarrassed.

On the one hand, I love the film's concepts fine. Video games are an incredible medium (one that outshines even cinema) with such fascinating history behind them, and the evolution of the gaming business and community on screen is quite wonderful. It says something about what a great artform it is that it brings so many people from different walks of life together, and even goes so far as to create lasting friendships and marriages. We may not realize, but sometimes, those seemingly insignificant connections we have create all the difference in the world. However, that's the extant of the film's great qualities, and the overall film is not as interesting, or too engaging to the uninitiated. The film is built firmly on nostalgia and fond recognizability, especially during frequent and awkward montages, and something like that can't sustain an entire film. It wants to show us a comprehensive history of video gaming culture, but suffers from disjointed time jumps, and the fact that the film constantly throws interesting facts at us, yet seldom does it ever expand on them. It practically rushes through the crash of 1983 in maybe three minutes, and glosses over evolutions like the early rise of third-party developers and the indie gaming scene (Although, Indie Game: The Movie provides a much more expansive detailing of that very subject). There's so much potential in this film that it sadly never realizes. I realize there has to be a point where you have to make tough choices of what to show, but it really does just fall into an "Aren't video games great" showcase. If you're looking for a nostalgic kickback, you should enjoy yourself fine, but if you want a much more comprehensive rundown of video gaming history, you'd be better suited reading various books, or watching Machinima's "All Your History Are Belong To Us" series of YouTube videos.

"Video Games: The Movie" aims to educate and entertain audiences about how video games are made, marketed, and consumed by looking back at gaming history and culture through the eyes of game developers, publishers, and consumers.Immediately there are some concerns: the intro runs a bit too long (but the use of Queen is a good choice). And then we have the necessary interview of Wil Wheaton (who is less annoying than usual here), but also some nice unexpected gems like the creator of "Metal Gear Solid" and the president of Nintendo. And then there is Chris Hardwick, who comes across far more dorky than he does on television.There are some interesting statistics on ages, genders of those who play and purchase video games. As people generally know, the ages have been increasing and more women are getting into the gaming scene.The film goes somewhat into history, with Nolan Bushnell of Atari widely thought of as the father of video games. Yes, they tracked down Bushnell for an interview, and he in turn gives the "father" title to MIT scientists. We also get a nice description of pixels and "bits" for those not familiar. The history is, perhaps, too brief, with many systems getting no coverage at all, and much of it in no particular order.We have the legendary tale of the E.T. game made in five weeks in the fall of 1982, which helped launch the term shovelware, and indirectly killed off the Atari.If this was re-edited to be more in chronological order, it would be a stronger film, but it is not a bad one.

What is presented to us as a documentary is in fact a propaganda film that consists mostly in a series self satisfactory interviews of people of the industry who tries to convince you that video games is the greatest, most sophisticated, most advanced form of art. They will tell you that you can get married and form a family by playing world of warcraft, that if you are at the edge of death at the hospital, playing a Nintendo DS can save your life and that your kid will become the greatest artist if you let him play Candy Crush. I am exaggerating a little bit but not so much.In between, this moments of galactic void, a few uninteresting statistics and facts of common knowledge are quickly presented.Another controversial aspect of the movie, is the presentation of video game as the ultimate evolution in storytelling experience. In my personal experience, a story is almost never what makes a game interesting. I have played hundreds if not thousands of games in my life, and I can count less that 20 games with decent story-lines. One of the most still played and loved game in the world, Tetris, has no story at all.I think this really demonstrate the failure of the director to understand his subject and to really capture what separate video games from other forms of media.