A few years ago, I made it a thing where I’d take time out in April to highlight my critical influences, namely YouTubers I obsessed over in my teens that got me interested in the work that I have spent the last six years populating this blog with. In lieu of a long-winded and likely painful detailing of why I don’t do that around here anymore (and from the looks of things never will again), let’s just say that I don’t have the same raging fanboy adoration for my influences that I used to have, and I try and stay away from discussing them here as best I can. But in all honesty, I’m willing to dip into that pool once again to discuss a YouTuber movie that is a nice breath of fresh air from the norm.
For a start, in sharp contrast to Stuart Ashen’s previous film Ashens And The Quest For The Game Child, this is far less reliant on in-jokes for people already familiar with his work. Honestly, that was my biggest problem with that film: That it felt more like an advertisement for the Multiverse collaborative channel he was working with at the time, rather than a film built on his own brand of entertainment. I was a bit worried this would be a repeat of all that, but this is comfortably accessible to the layman. A modicum of background info helps with the character of Ashens as a collector of largely worthless and outdated electronic gizmos (which the film opens with, so no worries there), and there’s a handful of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them sight gags to do with the cheapy stores he gets them from IRL (along with some cameos from other YouTubers like FilmBrain and Mike Jeavons), but for the most part, you could go in blind and not feel like you’re on the outside of a feature-length inside joke.
However, it does latch onto one key aspect of most YouTuber movies, and honestly, it’s the only one that these productions should ever feel a need to hold onto: Enjoyment out of seeing real-life friends and colleagues interacting with each other. And in that vein, this works really well. There’s a few spots in the main cast taken up by some faces from Ashens’ now-defunct Barshens collaborative channel, like Eli Silverman as Ashens’ assistant Benny, ‘Cousin Dan’ as a walking Baby Driver reference, and YouTube chef Barry Lewis as Chef Assistance, all of whom maintain their tight chemistry with each other and Ashens especially. To say nothing of the rest of the cast, who all fill in their places within the general heist movie framework, and Daniel Hardcastle as The Cube basically steals the show as the tech support. Much like Ashens, he’s not primarily known for acting but he certainly has a knack for it.
So that’s the ‘Ashens’ part of the title covered: What about the Polybius? Well, for the uninitiated, it’s a bit of video game folklore, an old-school arcade cabinet so addictive that it literally warped and took over the brains of whoever played it; a twist on the infamous MK Ultra. The Angry Video Game Nerd made a video about it a few years ago for his 150th episode anniversary and took that idea into a psycho-horror direction.
Even though Ashens is no stranger to that kind of abstract horror (his video about an old E.T. toy is a key example of which), his take on the idea is quite different. He goes for more of a mad scientist direction, with copious amounts of piss-taking about modern tech culture’s obsessions with the cutting-edge, largely in the form of aggressively hipster tech giant Antony Agonist (Stuggy). It makes for a solid opening for Ashens’ retro-loving character traits, and it adds a surprising amount of drama when it comes to his personal connection to the game and its creator.
The heist itself is very spoof-heavy, like how Ashens hires two randos just so he can call the team ‘Ashen’s 11’, or the aforementioned Baby Driver reference, but the humour on display goes beyond mere references. It basically plays out like a bladed answer to how convoluted and (even as a fan of the genre) pretentious writing around the inner workings of making the heist work. It takes the underlying notion that a lot of heist films, when taken as reality, rely far more on blind luck than intricate detail, and runs with it, resulting in a very funny deconstruction of the genre that, like the best cinematic pisstakes, comes from a place of love rather than disdain.
The humour itself definitely rings true of Ashens’ sensibilities, in that it’s very British and unashamedly silly a lot of the time, like the bickering between Ashens and The Cube, or the ‘smooth operator’ that manages to make me look socially savvy by comparison, or a voice actor amongst the crew having to answer every phone in the building while the heist is underway, or the ‘grease man’ being actually a man from Greece with a varying grasp on the English language. Again, it plays with the tropes of the genre, and I can’t say that every joke lands with the effect desired, but the ratio works out in the end and I definitely got my giggles’ worth from this.
It’s the kind of film likely designed for a specific audience, but unlike a vast majority of features that statement applies to, it doesn’t feel like you need to be familiar with the people involved beforehand to get something out of it. It’s as slick and well-acted as a film in this genre needs to be, the sense of humour works more times than not, and the approach to genre parody hits that fine line between appreciating the genre and ribbing the hell out of it. It’s a solid flick and an independent effort worth supporting.
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