This movie exists to showcase how every schlocky B movie of the '80s looked and sounded like and to ridicule that by exaggerating all of the bad tropes and characteristics of those films. It is all done intentionally and it's an homage to those very niche films that everyone has watched at least once in their lifetime.

Everything is here: the terrible alien costumes and low budget sets and all-around production value, terrible accents, acting, awful one-liners, and every cliche possible from that era. Music is styled in a synthy way and fits very well.

What is bad is the movie's run time. If it was all focused and condensed in a one-hour movie or even less, it would've been much better. This way you pretty much know after the first 10 minutes what you are getting and it is not really funny or fun to ''enjoy'' it in its entirety. I found it amusing enough to watch it, but I get it if people get tired of it and turn it off. I was thinking about it too. Another problem is comedy. I giggled 2 or 3 times but I cringed throughout the whole film and it can get tiring as the jokes have no breathing space. It is a pretty good movie to laugh at which is its purpose.

I liked some of the jokes and the performances because I love the RLM crew but all in all, this is a below-average parody that even parodies a parody (Scary Movie)...

The long and the short of it is this: if you like RedLetterMedia content like Half in the Bag, Best of the Worst, re:View, or the Mister Plinkett reviews, this will probably be an enjoyable experience for you, albeit, maybe a little more-of-the-same.

Having familiarized myself with a lot of RedLetterMedia's backlog of content going back to their Plinkett shorts and The Grabowskis, it's interesting how the advent of the Plinkett reviews and the Half in the Bag skits have seen their humor evolve. However, I can't help but feel like that this sense of humor and these characters make this film feel more like a really long Half in the Bag skit than a standalone film, which is ultimately my biggest critique of this.

That's not to say the humor is bad, on the contrary, I laughed at a lot of the jokes in this film, especially when I saw a reference to The Grabowskis included in one of the scenes. The cheesy one-liners Space Cop says are also great. My problem lies in that the characters portrayed by Mike, Jay and Rich all feel like characters we've already seen before and feels like more of the same as one of their YouTube videos except with higher production values. Coming into this film after seeing all 5 seasons of The Grabowskis and having watched The Cleaning Lady for the umpteenth time, maybe I was expecting something a little grittier and more of that vein of bizarre humor than this. There are some moments in this film where I felt the joke was included to satisfy a checklist, like Rich Evans yelling "OHHH NO" despite it feeling a bit out of character for Space Cop. I still laughed at that joke but, I couldn't help but feel like characters were being reprised in this film, either for the sake of catering to their YouTube audience who know them for those sorts of jokes on their various review series,or because it's being done somewhat on autopilot- or maybe a little of both.

There are some people who have reviewed Space Cop and have called it disappointing by pointing out technical flaws in the way it was made, but it's obvious this film wasn't made on a very robust budget which is probably why they went for a science fiction schlock comedy film instead of trying to make something more profound.

I just wish Space Cop had an identity of its own but as it is, it's still a fun experience and one that I think many RedLetterMedia fans will enjoy.

First things first: If you're not familiar with Red Letter Media, not even their majestic Plinkett reviews, I suggest checking their stuff out from RedLetterMedia.com or their Youtube channel. It's basically three guys (along with some occasional sidekicks) talking about films and obviously making them themselves. Naturally funny guys, I might add. Their humor is something many probably want to imitate, but can't. I found out about them four years ago, and I still think they're probably the best "content creators" around.

Anyway, about the film. Space Cop! I have to say that I wanted it to be better. I knew how funny these guys can be, and I set certain expectations for the movie that weren't met. And I know how hard it is to strike that balance in a movie like this. Space Cop knows it's a bad movie, which is an approach that almost always guarantees a failure. It's not unintentionally bad either, which of course is the funniest kind of bad. So from the get go, this movie makes things hard for itself.

It's ultimately not any funnier than an average RLM skit. It's not that spectacle of hilariousness many of us were waiting for. Some jokes are even straight up bad, in the worst kind of way. I smiled a lot, but I don't know if I laughed out loud even once. Space Cop takes the obvious route too many times, and it seems to hold itself back. This is evident from some of the deleted scenes: some of them were a little more off the cuff, lacking this certain restraint that plagued much of the main film and it made me actually laugh.

But is it crap, then? If you're expecting to see a good movie, yes, it's kind of crappy. If you're just interested about these guys and what they do, then it becomes okay, because you're not the audience anymore, but an observer instead. "Space Cop" is basically a strange inside joke in a movie form that's hard to explain. The RLM quality is still there at times, and it's still a funny enough movie to barely deserve its own existence. You can see how Mike, Rich and Jay love movies and the craft involved. They probably hate the process of making a movie itself, but they like to express themselves in a funny way nonetheless. That certain childish heart shines through. So whenever I saw weird miniatures or several do-it-yourself solutions on the screen, I smiled like an idiot.

And that's what Space Cop ultimately is. It's a somewhat self-aware B-movie made by a bunch of friends who love (B-)movies and like to be creative. It feels like more of a thing that these guys made, and less of a movie. It's not the ultimate RLM experience by any means, but it's certainly a part of it. Be warned though: For anyone with no affection for these guys, this movie might flat out suck. There are plenty of winks and inside meta-humor too, and for a newcomer they probably won't land at all.

Rich Evans and Mike Stoklasa play the main characters, and they're both fine. I've always liked Mike. I just can't help but have a stupid grin on my face when I see him "acting", but Rich is alright too, playing his role straight. In fact, there are good performances and even real actors in this movie. No joke. Chike Johnson and Deborah Clifton, for example, do really well. Plenty of familiar faces, some going back as far as the Plinkett reviews and probably their older movies too. Bonus points for Patton Oswalt, his bit was good. Double bonus points for Len Kabasinski's performance as Rich Evans' stunt double.

I also have to compliment the production, because it's not that bad for a low-budget flick. Some of the visual digital effects are way better than I thought I'd see in this movie. Looks like their Canadian friends came through! And of course the practical effects and this do-it-yourself approach never gets old. At its best, this kind of B-movie charm can inspire people into making films just as much as praised classics. That mostly happens with better movies, but there is some of that to be found from Space Cop.

Whoever made the opening title sequence theme music, captured the Terminator/Total Recall vibe perfectly.

I don't know what else there is to be said. Space Cop is Space Cop. It struggles to find its comfort zone, and it's bad in all the wrong ways, but at the same time I kind of like it. Not so much as a movie, but as a thing these guys made. If they make a movie after this, I'd like it to be something really stripped, really simple, really mindless and loose (which can make for a tighter movie). It might be that Space Cop was just too much of a collaboration and too long of a project for that Half in the Bag - kind of humor we (or at least I) love to surface itself. In that environment, these guys are relaxed and funny all around. With Space Cop, there are loads of things to take care of, people to work with, schedules to worry about and such. I don't know if that has any effect on anything, but it's a thought.

They might have gone too far - or not far enough - in a few places, but it's stylistically designed to be that way. They can't undo it, and now that it's out they can't even diminish the effects of it.

I paid a little too much for the movie (well over 40 euros when shipped to Finland, including the ridiculous toll),and It's not what I hoped, but I don't regret getting it. I'll probably watch it at least one more time, and check out the cool extras again as well.