DVD Rock Jocks

Hmm, if you ignore all the 1-review-only reviewers (who are often seen padding the reviews of obscure films with exuberant use of exclamation points and lack of content), "Rock Jocks" has a mostly lukewarm to negative response from IMDb. I'm not sure why that is because I thought it was a crowd pleaser. Take the absurdness of "The Office", pepper it with some immature humor (but funny I admit) à la "Southpark", add a goofy scifi vibe like in "Galaxy Quest", and throw in just a pinch of symbolic depth & quirky artistic flair (the Smoking Jesus scenes), like you might find in an early Tim Burton flick such as "Edward Scissorhands", and this is what you get. Whatever this is.

The story is about a secret government agency that shoots down rogue asteroids before they pulverize the planet. The comedy is that this agency is operated by a bunch of dysfunctional losers whom you wouldn't trust to valet park your Hyundai, let alone operate orbital satellites armed with planet-deafening lasers. The story takes place over the course of 12 hours, from 5pm to 5am, making up a typical(?) night shift.

The script is pretty funny and the acting is pretty good. Maybe too good in the case of at least one character who is so annoying you wish he would go stick his tongue to a frozen flagpole. Regardless of if you love em or hate em, all the characters are very vivid and identifiable, from the burned-out loser dad (the main protagonist) to the pesky British specialist who's trying to get them all fired, to the twisted old man (who excuses his utter crassness & vulgarity by saying "I'm old! I can say things like that!"), to the terminally uptight overachiever played by Felicia Day (absolutely loved her as the supervillain Panthera in the youtube series "Save the Supers"), to the nerdy whiz kid who is constantly getting abused in painful ways, to the annoying character mentioned earlier who does most of the abusing, to the refreshingly funny security guards whose entire screen time is mostly a dialogue about all the creative ways "motherf–r" can be used in a sentence (Bubba Gump shrimp style haha), to finally everyone's favorite character "Smoking Jesus" whom you just gotta see for yourself.

Plenty of cute & classic pop culture references (Lord of the Rings, Terminator, Star Trek II, and probably a dozen others which, alas, I'm not quite nerdy enough to get) spice up this funny script so that it never lags. So if you're looking to be entertained in an unapologetically inane way for 80 minutes, look no further than "Rock Jocks".

A group of dysfunctional government employees find themselves responsible for shooting down asteroids that are headed for earth.

While I most enjoyed the exchanges between Jason Mewes and Robert Picardo, everyone here was funny. The first third was a bit slow, but once I warmed up to the jokes and excessive vulgarity, it was a real treat. The old man is especially funny.

This may not be a film I ever watch again, but I enjoyed it just the same. In some ways, it reminded me of the profane humor of "Clerks" (another Mewes film), only this time with video game nerds rather than retail employees.