Colin Farrell has scored an early vote for Best Actor at next year’s Academy Awards, which would be good news for Farrell if Tim Heidecker (of comedy duo Tim and Eric) and his On Cinema co-host guest host Gregg Turkington were voting members of the Academy. Luckily, for the film lovers and for the industry in general, they are not, because Tim and Gregg are the worst film critics of all time. Despite that, they’ve got their own film review show which they use as a forum for bickering, talking about their health problems, protesting big government, and—in a roundabout way—reviewing films without actually saying anything about the movie they’ve chosen to discuss (an impressive feat).
Okay, so it’s not a real show, rather, it’s a pretty funny series of sketches on Adult Swim’s Thing X page done in the style of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert’s At The Movies (only Tim and Gregg’s knowledge of film is basically non-existant and the contempt the two “critics” have for each other is much closer to the surface).
Tim, who’s very territorial about his show, struggles to pronounce actor’s names (like Oz The Great and Powerful‘s “Milan Kuris” and Jack The Giant Slayer‘s “Ewan McGwegor”) but that doesn’t stop him from giving nearly every film 5 out of 5 possible bags of popcorn. Gregg, a more charismatic presence on camera (speaking strictly by comparison), provides moviegoers with insightful nuggets about upcoming films (eg. “It’s a horror movie, so it’s frightening”). He too likes to give films five-popcorn-bag ratings, often trying to outdo Tim by adding a few cups of soda, a can of mace, a shot of Jägermeister, or several Oscar statuettes on top (in cases where the movie stars his favourite actor, Jim Carrey).
There’s about a dozen episodes available on the Thing X site, but the clip below has Tim and Gregg reviewing Dead Man Down (starring this generation’s answer to acting legend Dennis Quaid) and Disney’s new Oz prequel. A warning to sensitive viewers who have not seen Oz the Great and Powerful: Tim and Gregg discuss the film’s lack of munchkins and the reason behind that, which is that most of them are dead. It’s a hard truth that some fans of the 1939 original may not be ready to accept, in which case, I recommend checking out On Cinema‘s review of the Carrie remake instead.
