Yeah: http://youtu.be/ypZT4lQHoK8?t=1m3s
The falcon part always freaked me out a little as a kid.
A friend posted this on Facebook. I only made it 4 minutes in and was excruciatingly bored. I couldn’t imagine 8 more minutes of it. I never watched any of the shows parodied so it would all go over my head anyway. I suppose if you watch a lot of TV it would mean something and be funny.
According to one of the creators (I saw this in their Reddit AMA), that repeated falcon appearance was an editing glitch that they decided to leave in because why not.
I actually saw it before finding this thread (found out from August Pollak’s site). Couldn’t make it all the way through. The problem was the damn song. I simply cannot listen to insipid drivel for that long. If the video did nothing more than change the song every three minutes, I might have given it a shot.
Other than that, didn’t do anything for me. I’ve seen some amazingly funny YouTube originals…Bill O’Reilly Dance Mix, Lots and Lots and Lots and Lots and Lots and Lots of Trains, and those Isiah Mustafah viewer response videos, to name a few…and this isn’t even close.
Is this the Hot YouTube Thing now? From my experience, the choice of what gets to be a Hot YouTube Thing seems to be completely random. I didn’t anything at all special about Gangnam Style (although in fairness watching other Korean music videos might have contributed to that), and I’ve heard many, many singers worse than Jessica Black, nearly all of whom weren’t goofy amateurs. I really hope this doesn’t make it. I don’t have that kind of time. I’ve barely begun sorting through the Vocaloid videos, dangit.
You quit too soon. It starts getting interesting at about 4:15. As has been said, it goes beyond the original joke into some quite bizarre territory. I watch very little series television, and found it pretty funny.
Well, for those of you who quit a few minutes in, the spoiler may indicate a slight change in tone from the first 4 or so minutes…
Near the end, Smarf (the puppet thing) dies in a pool of his blood
I agree. And I watched the whole thing.
Here’s how a joke works. You have a punchline. You create a set-up that leads to the punchline. And when you reach the punchline, you stop. The joke is now over and humor has been achieved.
Too many people don’t get this. They get to the punchline and then they try to keep the joke going.
There is no formulaic method for humor my friend.
Ever had somebody tell the punchline first and then try to tell the joke anyway? There may not be a formula but there is a structure. Don’t follow the structure and the joke won’t work.
I’m sure Chris Kelly is slapping his forehead and cursing the gods you weren’t there to explain all this before.
Except, people still found the video funny, so how do you explain that?
I remember when the Simpsons first came out. I had a friend poke fun at me for watching the show. I pointed out to him that he too was laughing when he watched it with me. His response was: “Yeah, but I’m only laughing because it’s so stupid.” I explained to him, “That’s why everybody laughs at this show. No one claims it to be a bastion of intellectual humor.”
My point being: If it makes people laugh, the joke has succeeded in it’s task, regardless if the joke follows a rigid guideline or not.
Yup, I didn’t say too much in the OP because the film is very spoiler-sensitive, but it’s important to note that the initial joke (way too many people in the credits sequence) is not the joke of the whole thing. It continues to do new things, unpredictable from what’s gone on before, all the way up to the very end.
Indeed, the thing’s got a full-fledged plot and everything. It’s never what it seems, and in the course of things it seems to be a lot of different things.
At the risk of taking things too seriously, I’d submit that by the end the viewer may realize what he has just watched isn’t actually (at least not centrally) a case of comedy at all. Or at least, if it’s comedy, it’s the sobering kind.* I wouldn’t say it’s deep deep, but the thing supports some analysis at least. Believe it or not, the thing made me think of Hegel.
None of this makes it good or funny but I am just making sure people realize the nature of the thing they’re dismissing before they dismiss it.
*Wellbut… it’s also arguably parodying sobering comedy so… I’m just going to stop now.
What specifically in this video do you think runs afoul of a core feature of humor?
It changes drastically after about 4 minutes.
Tons of people find tihs video hilarious – it doesn’t mean they’re right and you’re wrong, but it means they’re right about what’s funny for them, and you’re right about what’s funny for you.
There’s no point in trying to define “what works” for comedy for anyone but yourself.
It ended up reminding me of something Grant Morrison would write, where narrative causality is breaking down. Sort of like Multiversity, except instead of a universe-destroying comic book, it’s a sitcom careening out of control infecting other genres.
An oral history of “Too Many Cooks”. Really fun series of interviews, with the writers, actors, and more.
That’s a good read. Thanks! Though now I have that damn song stuck in my head again…
I’m surprised no one mentioned the premise of “Too Many Cooks” goes back to The Intro and the Outro by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.
How odd, just the other day I rewatched this video for no good reason and now I see the thread has been bumped.
Cue Twighlight Zone music.