To Boldly Flee (2012 Video) User Reviews (16)

It...had its moments?

[ericstevenson · 6/10 · 12 March 2021]

Well, this is the longest narrative film on the entire Internet (not including movies) that I've ever seen and it worked a lot better when I saw it in eight separate parts. This was the fourth anniversary of Channel Awesome (third and last feature film altogether) and it features the cast going into space to find out what happened to Ma-Ti and dealing with the literal plot hole he got into. When I rewatched this movie all at once, it was indeed too long. What everyone remembers is how poorly the cast was treated in this film, but it wasn't until six years later that everyone confessed that they went through Hell working on it and all left the website. The worst part was how Justin Carmichael (Jew Wario) was accused of sexual assault and some people working on it covered up evidence. I don't know if Doug Walker personally covered up the abuse, but no doubt people were mad at him.

I actually think this has the most funny moments of any movie ever on TVTropes and it was great to see them be added. On YouTube however, this became one of the most disliked projects Channel Awesome ever made. Luckily, we all agreed it was at least better than the Critic's review of "The Wall". Make whatever joke you want, with how the elephant in the room should have appeared. If this counts as a movie, it's the longest one the Nostalgia Critic reviewed. I would recommend seeing this in separate parts, not all at once.

It's still nice to see all these talented people together in one place, even if none of them enjoyed it. Guru Larry wasn't in this, so that might be why he chose to remain on Channel Awesome. Well, that and spite. The characters do get to play roles and they know to play off of each other, even if the chemistry could be better. I'd recommend seeing all the Critic's commercial specials together at once over this. They knew this could never be surpassed and they sure as Hell didn't want it to. **1/2

A Good Story, if a Little Clunky

[wisemantonofski · 6/10 · 13 September 2019]

There's a remarkably deep and personal story at the heart of this piece, telling of the disillusionment of independent creators in the face of increasingly strict and unfair online regulation, the changing landscape of Youtube as a community and a group of friends banding together in the face of it. With that said, that message is ultimately bogged down in an overly self-indulgent slog through dragged out wasteland scenes between oases of tradionally clever satire, all of which would have benefited from someone less personally invested in the story in the editing room.

This movie made me boldly flee

[darthMisaskernew · 1/10 · 23 August 2018]

I'm so, so sorry for writing a negative review of the AVGN movie. Although that film is heavily flawed, it at least has decent direction, cinematography, and acting, and even if the plot isn't good, it at least had a plot. It was a competent film at least. Compared to this train wreck, the AVGN movie is a freaking masterpiece. Seriously this movie is awful. I was a massive fan of Doug Walker and the NC when this film was first released, but even then I remember thinking it was bad. Now that I'm not even a fan of Walker any more, I can truly see just how atrocious this film is. Like, oh my god, this is one of the worst things ever. The plot is very unfocused and confusing, and revolves around resurrecting MaTi, a character nobody cares about. He doesn't have a show on CA, is rarely seen, and is mostly known for a bit part in one single episode of NC. The film acts like he's extremely important to the site, but the entire time I kept asking myself "who is MaTi and am I the only one who wishes this film were about someone else?" As a director, Doug Walker has about as much integrity as a 10 year old making a backyard flick with his friends using his mom's camera. Every shot in this movie is grainy, shaky, and just looks cheap, like it was recorded with an iPad. Could they not acquire a better camera for this massive extravaganza of an anneversery? Or is Doug just that bad of a cinematographer? Also, you'd think there'd be at least one funny joke in 209 minute torture sequence, but no. This film really only needed to be 90 minutes max and could easily be edited down because every scene goes on for about six minutes too long. 90% of this movie should've been left on the cutting room floor but it seems like Doug's massive ego tricked him into thinking every moment of footage was absolutely hilarious, which NONE of it is. Every joke in this movie is either boring, cliche, cringeworthy, or like a rejected joke from Family Guy. In fact, every scene in this movie feels like an unfunny extended Family Guy cutaway gag and it's excruciating. Another minor complaint for people who are familiar with the site (then again how many regular folk would stumble upon this movie without knowing CA?) is that every reviewer featured in this movie acts nothing like they do in their shows. For example, Film Brain is intelligent, snarky, and complains a lot, but this movie portrays him as an easily confused doofus. Linkara is a very well spoken individual with high morals and respects for all people, but this movie has him written as an easily confused (and rapey) doofus. In fact, everyone in this movie is portrayed as an easily confused doofus and it's very inconsistent to their actual characters. Overall, this movie is atrocious in every regard: the jokes are awful, the plot sucks, the direction is ameteur, the writing is embarrassing, most of the acting is terrible, and it's excruciatingly boring. 209 minutes, are you freaking kidding me??? I didn't like the AVGN movie but I'd watch that 100 times before even sitting through 10 minutes of this. Even for diehard NC fans, avoid this!

Far too long and egocentric

[RThyrring · 2/10 · 7 February 2020]

I used to be a huge Doug Walker fan back in the day, and this is mainly a review on the movie and not to reflect on my current feelings about Channel Awesome. That being said, this movie/miniseries having a total runtime of 3 and a half hour compared to the previous anniversary movies is far too long. Furthermore, it seems that Doug's character, the Nostalgia Critic, is the only one who really matters in the long run, even though the other CA producers are just as talented as Doug is. So compared to the other anniversary movies, this was a bomb.

2/10

"That was lame... it's OK, we'll edit it out and add it to the special edition"

[TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews · 10/10 · 17 September 2012]

A strange anomaly in our solar system causes some freaky things to happen to the TGWTG(if you don't know what that stands for, I'm sorry to say, this was simply not made for you, it's strictly for the fans) crew... and could it really be connected to Ma-Ti? They soon travel towards it, while a few old enemies resurface. What will they find? And will they ever return? This embraces the decision made that it will be the last anniversary film, opting for making permanent choices, providing genuine closure to extensive things(including the famous love triangle), and being one epic behemoth(seriously, this thing is 205 minutes long! That's LOTR running time right there... I definitely recommend watching it in parts, the way it was released to the internet... sitting through it all, with its brisk pace(albeit starting off slowly, it soon abandons that, occasionally returning to it here and there... and you may miss lines or bits the first time through) might overstimulate you), with a really cool set-up and a truly awesome climax. This is also the funniest and in general best so far. The decision to go for space-based(and they walk the difficult line of making it grand and yet making sure we can relate to it) sci-fi(and of course they parody and reference every large-scale venture in that genre in the last four decades, everything from classics like SW and ST to The Matrix(and stuff from their own reviews, or the subjects thereof, at least) and video games), the controlled conditions(they're in their own houses(with greenscreens, and many great sets), not roaming a forest or in someone else's place) allow them to do more with lighting(as well as go for more interesting angles and the like... by far the most visually compelling of these), and they take advantage of that to great effect. Additionally, it's the cleverest of these, going into the fundamental structure of storytelling and commenting on it. We have multiple plot lines and arcs, with everyone having some running gag and/or something to do in the narrative, in some form or fashion. CR, SadPanda and LAG(well, bigger role, anyway... as Obi-Wan, somewhat) are in this, at the expense of ones who have gotten screen time in the earlier ones(they get cameo appearances). NC himself is personally called on(can he grow past being a jerk?). Phelous is determined to prove that a Red Shirt *can* do something(other than get killed off). This has some really spot-on casting. The material is varied(a lot of silliness, some wordplay, tons of random ones, etc.) , and the vast majority of jokes work. Editing is great as usual. The make-up is outstanding. CGI and FX are incredible. Action is fast, humorous and well-choreographed, with chases and shootouts. There is proper tension in this. The performances are about the usual... numerous amazing ones, some ham, and at times it's awkward(psst: these people are not classically trained Shakespearean theatre actors). All the music making up the original score of this is really good, fitting the grand scope. There is some violent or disturbing content and a little mild to moderate language in this. I recommend this to every single person who enjoys the work of these fine critics. 10/10

Doug Walker is a pretentious dooshbag.

[masoncheek · 1/10 · 9 September 2020]

A 3 hour long piece of garbage. What is wrong with him.

This is the best anniversary movie that these guys have ever made

[MrBlue451 · 18 September 2012]

Let start from the beginning:

Kickassia: Entertaining, yeah, but it was boring in some parts, but it still being good in terms of an Internet movie. If you don't have to do anything in the day, I recommend to you to watch this film. 7/10

Suburban Knights: This film showed us that this guys can make something better, and this was really really better. This is a good combination of drama, comedy, action, and sci-fi. But, sometimes, it still a little bit boring, but less than Kickassia. 8/10

To Boldly Flee: My god, this movie prove us that this guys can make a film at the same level as Hollywood does. The plot was outstanding, the CGI effects were great, all was a gigantic ball of remarkableness. Lets talk about the acting: well, this was not maybe the better of the film, but Doug Walker does a brilliant job, maybe the better on his career. The directing is very well done, giving us a very good drama and comedy. At the end of the film I almost cry, CRY, and that prove us that this is a piece of art that you will never forget. 10/10

I'm Ignacio Salgado and I remember it so you don't have to.

A Lot of Fun

[QteCuttlfish · 10/10 · 9 July 2020]

I truly enjoy this film, and of the three Channel Awesome movies with this group, this one was the best. I was afraid that would be the case, considering everything that has since come out about the implosion of Channel Awesome (a lot of it having a tipping point in the making of this film.) But you don't see any of that onscreen.

It is still a low-budget film, that does overly rely on references from much better works, such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Superman, and Back to the Future, but that also helps with the charm of the story. You know what plot points they're going for, and darn, if they don't hit them.

Some of the sexual humor in this is a little juvenile for my tastes (feels more like middle school humor,) and there is one infamous scene that has a lot of controversy surrounding it. So just a warning on that.

For all of that, though, you can tell they had a bigger budget for this one, and they had a far more in-depth plot than the previous movies. Everyone got something to do in this film, and they at least all look like they are having fun while doing it, even if they actually weren't. The pacing of the film is decent. The music is good. The acting is much improved from the previous two films. They definitely learned their lessons from the previous films, and made this one a worthy effort. I definitely thought this movie was a lot of fun to watch, and of the three, it's the one I'm most likely to enjoy re-watching.

a flawed epic of internet reviewer cosplay-comedy-WTF-ness proportions

[Quinoa1984 · 7/10 · 8 September 2015]

This is kind of an 'averaged out' review of this movie, which I consider it so since even as it's in 8 parts it fits like one (a VERY long one). It has big peaks and valleys - in the last segment it has a turn in the climax I really loved, which is that the power of criticism and pointing out plot-holes ends up saving humanity. Very funny and kind of touching the way it was edited and pulled off. There's a lot of wonderful one-liners, the performance by Brad Jones actually was convincing, which surprised the f*** out of me, and I generally liked the whole plot-hole device. And the "Distraction" song was a fun set piece, mostly by Lindsey Ellis' ALL in the role.

... It's also, as I said, way, unfortunately too long. By an hour, at least. And a lot of the jokes - that are, chunks of the Star Wars jokes, where they basically take the original trilogy and turn it into Mad Libs - are hit or miss, mostly miss with some exceptions (the very last gag in the special is great). But there's just too many characters, and a lot of jokes that fall totally flat. And some of the people, frankly, can't act at all. And when it becomes amateurish with the writing/jokes/etc/etc, you can tell. And what happened with the whole Copyright-suit plot point early on? Did it just fall into Rob Walker's plot line as the "Emperor" of the sell-out crowd? And the "Evil" Linkara thing was tired after a while (given a slight boost with Todd in the Shadows - you'll see).

So, overall, it showcases a lot of what is fun and exciting and weird about this group of reviewers and their pop-culture-mania, and try to take it to the limit. I'd say it's almost TOO epic in a way, like the Heaven's Gate of internet-anniversary specials, but it's not exactly a 'mess'. I'm not even sure where I would cut things, save for a joke here or two or five. It's an example of splendid if over-indulgent entertainment for its key crowd, but maybe they'll win over a few newcomers (it does an OK job filling in some gaps from previous specials, though prior knowledge helps). And as for where they'll go from here... hell if I know.

Yikes

[tqkproductions · 1/10 · 19 May 2018]

I'm giving this "movie" one star not only for it's terrible writing, but also based on how poorly the entire cast & crew was treated during the entire process of this movie. To quote Allison Pregler, "Not a single person wasn't miserable, except Doug, who had no idea how badly it had went."

In fact, the only way to watch this movie is with Allison, Phelan, and Brad's Commentary where they make fun of the movie for 3.5 hours.

It's lazy, self-indulgent, shoddy looking, and quite honestly this makes RLM's Space Cop look like Empire Strikes Back.

P.S. Doug wrote a rape scene

Doug Walker's remarkable

[tom-43722 · 8/10 · 19 November 2015]

Doug Walker is a man of many talents. He's a skilled director, a great writer for both scripts and songs and a talented actor who can play many different roles. Although primarily known for his role as the Nostalgia Critic, in this film he is also enjoyable as General Zod, especially during the Distraction song. He sang Distaction alongside the Nostalgia Chick, played by Lindsay Ellis, who also did well at playing an obsessive but shallow stalker. Distraction quickly became one of my favourite songs and considering I'm not very interested in music, that's a testament to both Doug and Lindsay's singing talents as well as Doug's ability to write such a great song in the first place.

The storyline was also unique. People can complain all they want about plot holes in other movies but in this film the entire story revolves around a Plot Hole in space which is voiced by Doug's brother, Rob. Any plot holes in the storyline such as how Nostalgia Critic's car was able to work in space are explained by simply feeding into the Plot Hole, which was ingenious. The fact that Nostalgia Critic actually meets the writer gave Doug the freedom to leave as many plot holes as he wanted, without affecting the overall quality of the story. However even with that freedom, he did his best to make the story as watertight as possible, which is a sign of considerable writing talent. While it is largely based off Star Wars, using a literal Plot Hole to advance the story instead of leaving plot holes for people to complain about was something you won't find in any other film.

Although not as well known as his sibling, Rob Walker was great as Ma-Ti but was especially memorable as the Executor, who was basically To Boldly Flees version of Darth Sidious. The Executor was rather funny in some scenes, being very over-the-top during the confrontation with Last Angry Geek. However I think Rob was deliberately being over-the-top as he showed that he's also capable of subtlety through his amused expression whilst watching Luke beat the hell out of Darth Snob.

Noah Antwiller also did well at playing Terl, Spoony and Doctor Insano. Much like Doug, he's skilled as switching characters. When I first saw Terl, I didn't know it was the same actor, although to be fair he did have a good costume which made him harder to recognise. Although Terl was rather over-the-top, I saw that as being a part of the character's personality, much like the Executor.

Most of the performers in this film are good, with Doug Walker being superior or at least on par with most Hollywood actors, but there were two actors who couldn't pull off their roles as well as the others. Bennett White showed no emotion at all when he commented about the Plot Hole being unstable, treating the potential destruction of the universe as if it was just a mild inconvenience. Mathew Buck seemed rather unnatural as if he was forcing himself to show grief at the Nostalgia Critic's departure and was unnecessarily over-the-top when trying to coax information out of Spoony before going back into his mind. While some of the others were a bit over-the-top, most of them seemed to be doing it on purpose, while Buck seemed to be trying to go for either subtle or emotional but made them seem too forced.

Overall it was a great internet movie, perhaps a bit too long but enjoyable nonetheless.

Please never watch this

[aarrrrrrrffff · 1/10 · 27 July 2020]

My friend and I decided to watch this film and see how bad it is. It's dreadful.

The plot of this film barely exists, and is clearly written to show Doug Walker's attempts at character development, as he clearly believes that if a selfish character sometimes does something good that counts as development. Doug also seems to believe that stealing characters and sometimes entire scenes from other films counts as comedy, despite the fact that he barely changes them. For example, he plays General Zod from Superman in the film. He also takes several scenes from the Star Wars films, adding the occasional unfunny joke and changing Emperor Palpatine into a Hollywood executive.

The film is full of inconsistencies and scenes that go on for far too long or are overall pointless, such as scenes where General Zod holds a party for no reason. Doug Walker plays 5 characters, and Noah Antwiler plays 3. To Boldly Flee seems very bloated and full of itself, with the runtime being a torturous 3 and a half hours.

Don't watch this.

Nonce walker

[unusualguy115 · 1/10 · 28 September 2019]

They took something that looks and sounds so terrible far too seriously for it ever to be good in any way.

Worse than anything reviewed by these guys.

[trolliyama · 1/10 · 3 October 2021]

Say what you want about "The Room", at least that movie didn't last 4 hours.

Has potential but poorly executed

[QueenReviews · 3/10 · 8 November 2019]

This movie got a few chuckles, but this movie is way too long and tries to juggle way to many ideas for its own good. I won't go too much into sound quality or dodgey green screen effects, because for a low budget movie they're pretty decent. The plot relies heavily on prior knowledge of the Channel Awesome Anniversaries along with multiple CA shows (or should I say former CA shows). The writing feels very self-indulgent to the Nostalgia Critic character, as if him quitting reviews (note: this was supposed to be the last appearance of the Nostalgia Critic character) would be the end of internet reviews. If To Boldly Flee had picked one main plot and then maybe given over a little space for one or two of the subplots like Suburban Knights, it might have been passable as a mediocre Youtube flick, but as is everything is competing for space. The love triangle in particularly poorly handled. Say it with me now, nobody owes you date.

the worst "film" of all time

[marcykeeney · 1/10 · 23 February 2021]

This is not a movie this is a 3/hour long video of a guy making fun of his coworkers. your'll just be watching a remake of star wars and star trek but bad