Fish and Cherries Productions

Synopsis: In the late 70s, the scientists at NASA receive a message from an alien race, warning that another species will come to challenge the champion of Earth in single combat and offering a powered suit of armor as aid. The military trains a boy named Adam (Alan Ritchson) from birth to be their champion in preparation for when the suit will arrive decades later. There is a hitch: the delivery pod gets knocked off course and lands in Milford, Texas.

There it is found by four bumbling fools: a beleaguered traffic cop named Anthony Hagan (Burnie Burns), a washed up former high school football star named Herman Mendoza (Colton Dunn), a current high school football star and drunken party boy named Zach Spencer (Michael Jones), and a complete simpleton named Woody Johnson (Gavin Free). Each of them bonds with a different part of the armor and neither the military nor Adam are too pleased. The day of conflict is coming soon, so the race is on to get these misfits into fighting shape, assuming they don’t get sabotaged by the competition, the military, or each other.

Review: Lazer Team is a fairly enjoyable movie, but I wish I liked it more than I did. I’ve been a huge fan of the production company, Rooster Teeth, since they came out with the webseries Red vs. Blue and was really excited for their first feature film. But this was not their A-game, more their… B or B+-game. I know these guys can be really funny, so when jokes flopped, my heart broke a little. It especially stung because there are some tropes and cliches present that Rooster Teeth should be above.

There were also quite a few distracting cameos from their fellow studio members. They’re not all bad, in fact there are some that are quite clever, but it hits that uncanny point between having a few friendly cameos and solely casting the in-house production team. See, I’m used to Rooster Teeth productions being crewed and performed by their existing pool of talent, so I fully expected to see some familiar faces. But the thing here is that there are so many outside actors that the cameos were more than a little distracting. I found myself thinking, “Oh hey, there’s the voice of Simmons and the costar of Social Disorder. Those guys are pretty funny. Kind of a shame they don’t have anything funny to do.” If they had used more in-house actors, it might have felt less out of place.

Okay, that’s the negative, so what did I like about it? Well, when the stars are allowed to be themselves, they get some good laughs and even some touching moments. Sure, the acting’s not all top notch (Gavin Free was a particular weak link before the movie let him use his normal British accent), but the Rooster Teeth mainstays have enough force of personality to project character. The effects are quite good and I appreciate the twist at the end, though I’m not going to spoil it. Overall, while I wish it was better, I can’t deny there’s fun to be had watching loud comedians running around with Portal style gadgets while wearing unitards borrowed from the 75th Hunger Games. At the very least, I can say that I had some fun.

Fun Tidbit: Did that news anchor in the studio sound familiar? That’s Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies, who has worked with Rooster Teeth a number of times. Rooster Teeth itself also produced and lent actors to Barenaked Ladies for the music video to their song “Odds Are,” where Ed also played a news anchor.