For a huge chunk of my life, I only knew both the album and the band through the break out song. Like most of my generation, the first exposure to Pink Floyd can be narrowed down to either the album “Dark Side Of The Moon,” or the single “Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2.” For me, it was hearing that I don't need no education...and, yeah, I gotta admit, for awhile, it was the only Floyd song I heard.
But there's a reason that, despite it being off of a concept album (An album with a story), it broke out into a hit in it's own right. The fanbase of Floyd, especially the younger set, have gotten fed up with school at one point and the rebellious yells of “We don't need no education” and “Hey, Teacher, leave them kids alone” sparks like an anthem with some really great notes to accompany it. However, it's when you combine both the song's history AND the story of the album, “The Wall,” the song becomes better.
The idea behind the album was a combination of things, mainly the various lives and history of the band's members and how their leader, Roger Waters, was feeling at the time when he wrote it. TL;DR: The album is a combination of various issues and Waters' own emotions at the disconnect he feels between himself and the fans that was, no joke, the end result of him seeing a fan ECSTATIC over Waters spitting in his face.
Yeah...kinda makes you all freaked out in today's age, don't it?
The combination of these factors resulted in the story of the album, namely the artist known as Pink going over his personal history and how he feels about being famous. The result of the album was not only a hit for the band, but movie based on it, complete with expanding several elements of the album's story, most notably Pink (The lead character) and his feelings towards his fans.
Now, it's been recent that I heard the whole album, in fact I mainly did it for the review, and it's fantastic. As for the movie, I've never seen it as of this writing, but since the movie IS the album, I shouldn't have a problem with reviewing this...ugh... “tribute”...especially since I can research anything that I need to on the internet.
Which is more than Doug and Rob Walker have done for their...ugh... “tribute” known as Nostalgia Critic's The Wall.
This isn't so much of a tribute as an asshole who heard a classic rock station one day and realized he has a celebrity fan, Slipknot's Corey Taylor, that does music that he can use AND address people he felt wrong him...in a way that says his ego won't even let him even TRY to be self aware. Where as the actual album is poignant, dramatic, has the weight of both the fictional character and the history of the actual members of the band to back it up, this is just a moron screaming for almost an hour or so after getting floored at the karaoke bar and he forgot the words so he just made it up as he went THEN decided to call everybody assholes in the middle of it.
But...if this was just a bad review, that would be it...but not only does the review miss the point of both the movie...
Which I have to remind, I NEVER SAW AS OF THIS WRITING, I HAD TO DO RESEARCH AND HAD POP CULTURE OSMOSIOS ON MY SIDE, UNLIKE THE WALKERS!
Sorry if I'm being subtle on that.
...but there's an entire...ugh... “Tribute” album that misses the point of the original album. And because the...ugh... “Tribute” review is missing songs from the...ugh... “Tribute” album, we're also going to look at the album on the grounds that if I have to go to Hell, I'M TAKING YOU ALL, WITH ME!
So the review opens with a hotel maid (Tamera Chambers) about to knock on the door of it's version of Pink, the aforementioned Cory Taylor...or would've if the not so subtle sign told her not to *BLEEP*ing do it. The movie has Pink at the point where he wonders if everything he's gone through was all worth it, hence the whole album and it's start, “When the Tigers Broke Free, pt 1.”
Cory Taylor just calls up the Nostalgia Critic after just channel surfing, leading to Critic's review start,
“When The Wall Broke Free.”
...ha, ha, ha.
So, both the intro to the review and the song are centered around the idea that the movie, Pink Floyd-TheWall, bombed at the box office when young Cory, played by his own son, saw it at the time. It did not, it made most of it's money back. How do I know this? I DID MY RESEARCH!
Yeah, I never saw this movie and only listened to the full album recently, and yet I actually put in the effort to know about the original source than either of the Walkers have apparently done. I'm an idiot who only gets 100's of viewers on a text based site, and he's got a studio with a full cast...SO HOW AM I THE MORE PROFESSIONAL GUY!?
On it's own merits, the song is...fine. Nostalgia Critic just, as said earlier, sounds like a drunk in karaoke but the music that accompanies it is pretty good.
Unlike the album, though, the song is broken up into two parts as the first half ends with the maid trying again and her knocking somehow causing both a montage of the original movie AND the Nostalgia Critic himself to break out of the tv, leading to the first song on Doug's album, as that's more a...ugh... “Tribute” to the album than the movie soundtrack, “In The Floyd.”
And while, like “When The Wall Broke Free,” it has good music to go with it...the Nostalgia Critic answers the question of what you would sound like if you sung after drinking 2 bottles of the hardest whiskey the bar's got then inhaled helium right after. The point of the song was to address how Corey feels about the movie after thinking about it for the first time in years, leading to a flashback of him working at his dad's desk on homework when he finds a VHS of the movie.
I dunno, most kids would be trying to find the Playboys...or girls.
Yes, we at B-Movie Bomb don't discriminate porn hunting.
This causes young Cory to put on his best...shouldn't exist yet but somehow does...Hot Topic get up and pose in front of the mirror as Critic sings how the movie is really...whiny...
Yeah...we'll get to that...
It leads to the next song in both movie and album called “Corey” which is...just 14 seconds of a build up to jump right to his teacher yelling at him while showing off what'll be the answer to the animation characters.
We'll get to that AND we'll skip that song since, as I said, it's 14 seconds of nothing. In the meantime, let's get to the first song cut from the review, a mesh up of “Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 1” and “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives” called...ugh... “The Song After This One Is Really Good.”
While the original movie was a story about a singer named Pink, it was still also the story of the various members of the band, mostly Roger Waters's childhood. One of those issues was losing his dad at a young age to World War II and how it effected him growing up, leading to not only some of the issues he himself had as an adult, but those issues being reflected in Pink at various moments.
WHO THE HELL WANTS TO BE THAT DEEP!? We're all know you're here just for “Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2,” so let's just insult the two songs before it! Lost dad during the war, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Yeah, the thing is the review and the album tell two different stories, depending on how they're done...and they're both awful in relation to the original. The review is done from the perspective of somebody remembering their experience going through watching the movie, where as the album feels like somebody going through the album. Granted, it can be explained off as the movie having more songs AND in different order...except both the movie AND the album have that element that makes it not just Pink's story, but the bands.
And making the review somebody remembering the movie and the album somebody remembering the album removes that.
The key element of both the album and the movie is the in the personal story of the band, the whole idea is the lead character, Pink, has let the worst elements of his personal life AND his disconnection with the fans is making said lead feel like he's being walled in, hence the name of the album and movie. It may have started when Waters had a reaction to the fan being happy that he got spat on, but it also stems from various issues he, and the band had growing up. Awful education system, without a father figure thanks to a war that happened when they were children/not even born yet, and overall fame.
TL;DR: Burnout, the album. Or, The movie in the...uh...movie's case.
But, who the Hell needs to hear this!? This is just some guy bitching about an awful life, especially his awful school years like everybody else does at one point, so there's not need to actually CARE or anything! At least according to the next song, the parody of the original album's break out song, “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2,” the most infamous part of the album, “We Need More Victimization!”
It appears in the review when Cory flashes back to a class, with everybody played by various Channel Awesome staff members, being called out for listening to rock music. Cory calls out back, saying that school should teach things like how to fix a car and keep a job...the school responds with they teach algebra and giggling. But that's not what this part is infamous for in the review, oh no. See, Doug and Rob must've thought the song on the album was too subtle, so they decided to have the Nostalgia Critic break out the worst Dracula-like voice you'd ever hear and say every nice teacher you ever known was lying and were really people who hated you!
Yeah, do I need to mention the problem of this, and the specific lyric of “School sucks, grow a damn pair of balls” being done...IN 2019!?
Yeah, in an era of school shooting, especially since most of NC's older audience had events like Columbine or others in their mind from when they were in high school, to say this was insensitive is an understatement. Even if you take those out, there are students that face bullies who do horrible things to them each day, be it beating them up or even worse, so there might be a pretty damn good reason kids still think or grown ups will always remember school does indeed suck.
But take all of that out when it comes to “Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2” because that wasn't made for American schools in mind. When the various band members went to school, post war Britain had one of THE worst education systems in Europe, if not the whole world. They didn't teach kids to stand up or focused on the basic skills as they should; the goal of the schools was, more or less, to tell each kid to keep their head down, don't raise trouble, and just keep the machine known as the empire going. You have problems with this particular law or think the problem should be solved a different way? TOO BAD! Sit down, shut up, take a ruler to the knuckles and NEVER question the system again!
Oh, and to really drive home what the system did in the movie? During the song, the kids are in a factory, either on an assembly line or marching, wearing these weird blank emotionless faces, eventually all marching into a meat grinder. How do I know this without seeing the movie, you ask?
Oh, I do the one thing nobody from Channel Awesome has done.
R-E-S-E-A-R-C-H.
That's for any CA staff members reading. I know spelling it out is subtle, so I thought I'd point it out.
Actually, on top of looking the scene up, I actually saw this part on VH-1 Classic a few years back when they aired it as a music video for the song. But, no, you're not gonna find this part, as the closest thing in the...ugh... “Tribute” is the head master going Godzilla and smashing the city. No, that's because the entire review's symbolism is focused on kids riding into the school on a train during World War II...and yes, the argument is the movie is going where that sentence sounds like...except...
And, again, this is from somebody who's never saw the movie, I just know this part through pop culture osmosis and a certain “R” word most of CA doesn't apply.
...it's not. Another thing about World War II Britain is there was a time families had to send their children away on trains to various parts of the country to be watched by random people chosen...uh...at random by the government to protect them, especially since Germany around that time already attacked.
A little thing called “The Blitz,” even Doug Walker might have heard of it...or you'd think anyway.
So, yeah, after completely missing the point of the symbolism of the trains shipping the kids off to school, we get into ANOTHER song where the Nostalgia Critic misses the point, the parody of “Goodbye, Blue Sky,” “So Long, Weird Song.”
The fact that he's calling THIS the Oscar bait song isn't the worst part of it. An Oscar bait song is when an adaptation of a musical (Or concept album in the movie's case) writes an original song with the purpose of getting an Oscar. No, the song was on the original album and was about the aforementioned Blitz from the POV of a child, complete with Waters own son, Henry, voicing the kid watching it.
And in the movie? It's a giant bird that obliterates everything from a dove to a city, complete with the city actually bleeding in the wound.
And in the...ugh... “Tribute?” The bird has the word “EGO” on it as it wipes out a dove, a person that has the words “Self Content” on his chest, then goes into a rant about how World War II and school don't go together.
And we're not to the worst part of either the...ugh... “Tributes” of the movie or the album, but boy are we close to it.
After that mess, and Tamera questioning how it's better, the Nostalgia Critic breaks in and says he's gonna do several slow songs...only for Cory to skip 'em all. The album does to as it goes right to the “Hey, You” parody, “Forgotten song.”
As far as the movie goes, footage was shot but wound up dropped due to time. As far as the song itself? This is where Pink realizes he's in the Wall and tries to get back to reality only to fail miserably.
As far as the...ugh... “Tribute” goes? It's Doug crying “I'M JESUS! I'M JUST LIKE JESUS!” for a minute.
Again, this is all in response to an album made for the band to work out their own issues both growing up and famous. I really hate to see what Doug would've done if the movie had “Shine-on You crazy Diamond.” Cory eventually falls asleep as the NC gets fed up with all the skipping as it leads to the parody of “Is There Anybody Out There,” “Is There Anybody Who Cares?”
And much like the last song, in the original album, it's Pink's attempt to try to get people to find him and get out of the wall he put himself in. In this one, it's about the viewer going through the “Boring” and “Dumb” parts of the movie. Oh, and just in case the “Boring” part is too subtle for you, it has the background sound of somebody snoring because, hey, why should Doug think you were smart enough to know you were at the part where he found the movie boring?
Now, once would be enough, but The Walkers wanna make sure you know how boring the part of the movie you're on is, in case you missed the snoring from the track you just listened to, so, with thanks to whatever 3rd grader told him to make it the title of his “Comfortably Numb” parody, “Comfortably Dumb.”
In the context of both the original album and the movie, the song applies to Pink as he, at this point, is going through all the motions of an artist because of a combination of all the drugs and his disconnect with the fans. For the band, this was inspired when Waters was on so much meds because of the flu during a performance, that, like Pink, he was going through the motions. It can also serve for the band as a whole as it can also be a reference to their mass drug use.
In context of the review? The guy from Slipknot is falling asleep in the chair when his agent (Brad Jones) and a couple of other people toss him outside to “Sober up.” And what's the Critic doing all of this to link it to the movie? Walking in a cornfield. Deep.
At one point, the song mentions when the Critic was a kid, he was “Invested” like he was with “Dark-side Of The Moon,” but now that he's older, not so much. Again, “The Wall” is not perfection and there's arguments that Floyd's other stuff is better, but...again, “Boring,” “Dumb,” and “Dragging” are stuff I would NEVER put with “The Wall,” it's a journey from start to finish so there's gonna be some very personal moments, especially since that's half the album, the band's whole journey TO the point of recording “The Wall.”
This was all a culmination of a burnt out Waters, and various members, after a concert where a fan was overjoyed to get spat on by Waters, causing them to look on their lives, fame, and everything. Pink's story is, essentially, the band members' stories, from Waters losing his dad at a young age thanks to World War II to the band members' horrible school life. I'm sorry not all the songs can be “Money” or “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” but when you make a concept album based on your own lives, there's gonna be more somber and subtle moments.
And, yes, when we get to THAT moment, you'll find out “Subtle” and Channel Awesome are about as subtle as me, or anybody else, making a “Channel Awful” joke.
While all this is going on in the Nostalgia Critic's...whatever you wanna call the montage since he's not reviewing...in the hotel room, the agent, the maid, and a random person (Malcolm) drag Cory into a dark warehouse like place because it's...where he dumps people that he doesn't want other people to see...
A showing of Batman Vs. Superman?
Anyway, the agent orders Cory to “Sober up or have an existential crisis...”
Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd this is where everything falls off the rails. Oh, it's been bad, painful, and insulting, but at least everything I've relayed is somehow connected to The Wall as a parody of the plot, namely what Cory is going through to remember the movie vs. what Pink is going through burned out on life. But now...*SIGH* ...now comes the digression you probably waited to hear about.
Let's talk about how the Walkers and how their egos have no sense of irony...or they are freakin' stupid.
One of the most infamous moments of the movie has a disconnected Pink picturing him leading his fans as if they were Nazis and he was the head of the Gestapo, complete with two hammers forming an X as the symbol. It's to show how far gone Pink is with both his sanity and his disconnect as he uses his fantasy Nazi army of fans to feel better about himself as they march all over.
Now, I'll mention the songs parodied and what I think of those later, because...this sequence has to be unloaded at once, given what's come out about The Walkers recently...and how it shows, as I said earlier, they have no sense of irony or are REALLY freakin' stupid.
Cory wakes up from the room he's dragged to, only instead we see the back of the Nostalgia Critic as he matches into a room...with the words “THE PERSON YOU HATE” on his face, all the while he yells the song I'm about to mention into a wall of TV's...LABLED “ECHO CHAMBER!” Again, there is no sense of irony or self awareness, the Walkers want you to take this bit as seriously as possible IN A PARODY, complete with, in place of the hammers, THE HASHTAG AS A NAZI SYMBOL.
The reason for all of this is because a couple of years ago, as of this writing, a whole lot of his former partners, an currently ex-friends, left the site. TL;DR, there were issues from how he treated everybody during the filming of the 3 Channel Awesome movies to hiding a groomer (Somebody who molds under age women to be the “Perfect girlfriend”) and didn't do anything until they had to...even then, with reluctance.
Needless to say, the Walkers and the producers they were with on Channel Awesome didn't like it one bit and decided here, in a parody that was supposed to be about somebody's experiences watching/listening to The Wall, they would go on a digression on how the internet...
Which shouldn't TOTALLY BACKFIRE on somebody who is 100% DEPENDENT ON THE INTERNET.
...is causing him grief and how people wanna “Wrongfully” cancel somebody who did nothing but hide a groomer and told people he mistreated “Sorry you feel that way” in the most hollow of hollow apologies.
And...this is what convinced me to review the parody despite never seeing the movie. It's not just everything that I mention, but it causes the momentum of the main “Plot” of the...ugh... “Tribute” to come to a screeching halt. All because somebody wanted to remark on how he felt “Hurt” over actions he did that hurt others.
It's too long to list; when you're done with this review, Google “Not So Awesome Document” for more info.
To top it all of, he wrote, and performed, this response with everything I mentioned from the “Person You Hate” wording on his face to the area being called an “Echo Chamber.” This is the equivalent of saying why Marvel films are more structured at a DC Fandome, and the person saying it has no clue why people are rolling their eyes.
And all of this is done, in the first half, to a parody of “In The Flesh,” titled “In The Floyd (Again?).”
The whole point of the entire Nazi sequence, as well as this part of the story, was to show Pink has possibly gone down too far in his disconnect, that there might not be any coming back as his disconnect and resentment for his fame and fans turns into full on hate, evident by the very fact that, in his mind, he turned his own fans into Nazis and used them to deal with all his anger in the world.
Doug Walker wants to use this to tell you that everybody is an idiot for calling him out for everything and you're an idiot if you buy into it. And how does he put you “In the wall?” By posting you, the fans, in mean tweets that his fans are too happy to do it to. On top of that, this is supposed to imply that it can be “Anybody” just as long as you fans are happy to hurt him in someway, going against both the album AND the movie just so he can personally call you an idiot for reading the Not So Awesome document.
Just as much as people can call him an idiot for this...ugh... “Tribute” that he did very little to no research on. And, in case an entire song about this was too subtle about you, after he comes back in from discovering how bright the sun is, he continues the “Hashtag=Swastika” shtick with his answer to “Waiting For the Worms,” “Waiting for the Point.”
And this is played in the review while he, still in his fake Nazi get up, orders his troops and fans to post how bad people are for what they have done. DO YOU GET THE MESSAGE YET!?
And it's that point that the Walkers think you do, as the narrative goes back to Cory's memories of watching The Wall as we get to the parody of “Bring the Boys Back Home,” a song about, in Water's own words, stuff from not letting people go off and die in wars to not “allowing rock and roll, or making cars, or selling soap, or getting involved in biological research, or anything that anybody might do ... not letting that become such an important and 'jolly boy's game' that it becomes more important than friends, wives, children, or other people.”
And I got that off of Wikipedia, I did my RESARCH, the 4 letter word for the Walkers they really didn't want to do. How do I know this? Because the parody is “Bring The Run Time Down,” a song complaining about the length...OF A 95 MINUTE MOVIE!
Oh, I'm sorry, I guess Doug needs 5 more minutes in front of a mirror “I'm smart enough, I'm good enough, and dog gone it, people like me.”
Eventually, Cory goes to the Critic himself and they try to talk about the movie...when they get interrupted by a call from Sullivan Croft from “Satellite City.” It turns out his creation, Lucy Lacemaker, is a living breathing thing and she shows up to put the Nostalgia Critic, along with other CG'd characters, through their version of “The Trial,” known as “Fennah's the Trial.”
I'm not gonna complain about the CG in this, like others have. Not that they have a reason to, it's not that good. The reason I'm not is that I'm in the camp of “It's fine for an independent production” so...uh...it's that. What I will rag on is that the entire reason she's here AND for this trial is that she's arguing that all the characters that are supposed to represent Pink's inner demons need to be more rounded and developed.
Why? What's the point? Why does the mental demon of the teacher need to be as developed as the real one from Pink's memory? Why does an anthro form of The Wall need the same development as Pink when it's purpose is, as that of all the animated demonic characters, is to show Pink's mind has gone and he has to choose to either fight it or give in to the despair and disconnect. I don't need to know if the home life of the demonic version of the teacher is just as sad as the real one. The purpose of all these characters, and the trial itself, is to show Pink has let his life finally cave in and all the pressure that got him here has won.
So, what's the purpose of this one? To argue why we need to have the mental illusions to be developed...only for the trial to conclude “Oh, never mind, movie's still great, but tear down the wall.”
…
Wait...that can't be right, there was no mental wall in this thing, let me try that again...
So, what's the purpose of this one? To argue why we need to have the mental illusions to be developed...only for the trial to conclude “Oh, never mind, movie's still great, but tear down the wall.”
…
WHAT WALL!? Cory, The Critic, NOBODY built any wall in the...ugh... “Tribute” built ANY wall! What? That “Wall” Critic said fans should put people on that WE NEVER EVEN SAW!? The whole thing...save for the digression...was about somebody remembering watching the movie! The movie and the album had a wall, this didn't! It even FORCED ITSELF TO HAVE ONE AT THE END BECAUSE “MOVIE!”
Let's just finish this, Critic tried to leave on a vague note, Cory got pissed, Critic said “I liked it fine,” Cory sing “Spongebob Squarepants.” THE END!
This is what he does to movies he likes, I now have more sympathy to the ones he hates.
This...ugh... “Tribute” to The Wall is anything but. I've never seen something break the Guinness Book Of World Records in the “Number of things wrong in a short time” department, complete with insult after insult after insult. I looked up half of the stuff I was stumped on or needed to see the movie for, and the very existence of this review itself says that The Walkers saw this movie...AND STILL GOT SO MANY THINGS WRONG! From turning the most famous song into a pro-authority song on the grounds of “High School wasn't that bad, shut up” (When it was) to calling one of the songs that was on the original album Oscar bait, and not getting the part of both the album and the movie that was the band members' personal stories, especially Waters's. Again, I did the research to understand the World War II connection, where as the Walkers think “Research” is a 4 letter word 'cause them am smrt.
Insert recap of Nostalgia Critic yelling in an echo chamber here.
I'm gonna get around to seeing the actual movie one day, but for now I thank GOD we have the album, something that will ALWAYS be better than this...ugh... “Tribute.”
FINAL VERDICT: For no research, a horrible...ugh... “Tribute,” awful singing, not getting the point of the thing The Walkers are paying...ugh... “Tribute” to, awkward CG (Though not bad for an independent production), a personal shot that causes the main narrative to come to a halt, and a waste of the guy from Slipknot, this...ugh... “Tribute” gets a MEGA ATOMIC B-MOVIE BOMB! The melodies are good...then you hear the words...and the plot...
Now if you'll excuse me, I need some good ol' brainwashing to forget this thing. Xanadu, TAKE ME AWAY!
And no, I'm not doing Xanadu, I'm keeping what's next a surprise for once, I need a break from this level of pain.
