Customer Reviews

Never Been Thawed

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I saw a trailer for this film at the Nuart Theater in Santa Monica (they show independent films) months before it arrived and couldn't wait for it to show up. It just looked like something so different and fresh. I have to say, "I wasn't disappointed at all." If you're a collector junkie like myself (Beatle Conventions), you'll like it even more than someone else might. Whether you hit Comicons, Trek Conventions, etc..., you'll love it. These folks collect frozen dinners. When they get together for a special club meeting to talk about the new Swansons Dinner coming out you'll die laughing. They go over the exciting rumour that the artwork will be purple---WOW! The president of the club (Shawn) gets everyone excited because he knows someone at the local grocery store that might be able to get them all in at midnight for the big release date. Shawn and some of the guys are also in a punk band going nowhere until they switch to Christian Punk as The Christers. If you're not offended, it's a riot and the biggest reason that it's funny and works is because the music is fantastic and the lyrics are very clever and weren't just thrown in for shock value. Shawn Anders---the star and writer/director was there for the screening I attended. I asked about a CD release and he stated that he hopes it will come out as a release as well. I've got my fingers crossed. You can hear some of the music at the NBT site. They get the idea to change their music from the mgr. of the cafe they're hanging out in: The No-Choice Cafe next to "THE" clinic. Shawn's groupie (Shelly) works at the Wlliam Jefferson Clinton Abstinence Clinic and talks girls out of having sex on their hotline. Nothing in this film is anti-Christian---it's just way out there and definitely would not be considered to be something promoting a conservative Christian lifestyle. No worse than a rap artist that sings dirty lyrics or a country star that sings about getting liquored up thanking God when they win a Grammy. They're not anti-Christian, they just have a more than liberal outlook at what the Christian lifestyle might be. It's actaully a fun, stressfree trip to the movies. If you dig Green Day you should really like the music and if you have any hobbies that don't include taking joy in trying to enforce censorship of a movie that you haven't even seen yet (for example: Dogma in the past or The Da Vinci Code now), you should really have fun watching this movie. If you love the independents and something new, grab this DVD (I'll be pre-ordering), you won't be disappointed.

This movie is a great antidote to the mindless inoffensive trash that is apparently all Hollywood can bring itself to produce these days. If you appreciate offbeat indie comedy you should drop everything and buy this right now.

I think the reviewer who discusses at great length how this movie is "not anti-christian" is off the mark. Intentionally or not, this movie portrays all its most publicly-religious characters in a cynical light: the "Christian Profiteer" cafe proprietor, the foul-mouthed libertine Christian band singer, and the pathetic twenty-something-year-old virgin. I can't understand how anyone who takes their Christianity seriously is not going to be offended by this movie, but then there's many things I don't understand about such people; I'm not one of them, so for me it just made everything more obscenely funny.

I grabbed this film because I saw Greg Behrendt was in it. He is and he's very funny, nailing the morning DJ act to a T. But the star of this film is the writing.

It skewers everyone from conservative abortion protesters to collector geeks to clowns. I always say that everyone has a passion that other people don't understand and this film underscores that.

Definitely grab a copy of this. If you're not easily offended, you'll be totally entertained.

While somewhat derivative of the mockumentary style first pioneered by the movie Spinal Tap and later fully fleshed out by the crew responsible for Best of Show and other films, this movie is worthy of inclusion in the hallowed halls of that absurdist academy.

The easy targets spoofed by the film, including small-town hypocritical Christian rockers and the local abstinence counselling hotline, are ingeniously married to the completely original frozen food collection club idea, so that you can almost forgive the filmmakers for taking shots at sitting ducks. The characters and the actors who portray them are spot-on, compelling, and hilarious-- easily the best part of the movie. The specificity of the characters redeems the somewhat easy pickings nature of the satirical targets. This is the kind of "comedy gold" that you will want to watch repeatedly, and show to your friends.

After seeing a trailer for these writers' new movie, Sex Drive, I had to see if they had done anything before, cause I'm tired of the same lame Will Ferrell movie and anything with Judd Apatow's name on it, and Sex Drive looked new and fresh but had 2 months to wait. Sure enough, I found they had made one movie before, NBT Never Been Thawed. After a long search to find it in my little hometown, I resorted to getting a dvd on the net, and It was worth it. I normally don't buy dvd's w/o seeing the movie first, but the synopsis of this movie i had to see it. I can't really say anything bad about this. Not only do all of the main character collect frozen food entrees, but they all have their on little "odd" part of their life too. One guy wears an external bladder so he doesn't have to waste time going "potty", and another was a former homosexual until he went to "ex-gay ministries", and he's also a firefighter that keeps plates from fires he's saved. I'm this movie is just top to bottom hilarious, and definitely no other movie is compared to it. Highly recommend it.

Never Been Thawed is my personal "surprise hit of the summer" - it joins the ranks of classic spoof/mockumentary films as This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, ... And God Spoke and so on. Once you watch this, you'll be quoting from it for days. I've already purchased four copies so far as gifts for unsuspecting friends. Try it out - you'll love it and want to pass it on!

I'm glad that some people take the initiative to turn their drunken ideas into films. This movie was hilarious.

No holds-barred mockumentary on geeks, dorks, jerks, and losers. Very diverse group of characters that everyone can relate to at sometime in their lifetime. It was really 2 movies in one, the frozen dinner collector's club and the foul-mouthed Christian rock band who are in it for the money and the chicks. This was the funniest move I've seen in over 3 years. I look forward to more movies from the director-writer who isn't playing by Hollywood rules.

I'd seen some excellent clips of this film on the Web, and had been wanting to see it for a long time. Sadly, the snippets available on the Web are the best parts. I'd been expecting this to be another "Waiting for Guffman," but it really isn't.

Most of the characters in this film are fundamentalist Christians of one sort or another, and a few are Christian rockers. It's obvious the director doesn't like conservative Christians much, and therein lies the problem: These characters say and do things that no actual fundamentalist would do. If you're going to lampoon somebody effectively, you have to understand your subject, and be able to put yourself in their shoes and think like them.

This film utterly fails to do so.

One example would be kind of late in the film, when the lead singer of the Christian rock band is being interviewed and he talks about how great it's been being on tour. He says, "We've banged a lot of hot Christian chicks..." and squeezes the breast of a groupie as he says it.

I'm sorry, but no Christian rock star, no matter how insincere, no matter how much of a fraud he was, would EVER say or do something like that in front of a camera, because it would end his career.

Throughout the film, we see characters say and do similarly implausible things.

I get it. I get that the film is saying fundamentalist Christians are hypocrites. And I'm not saying I disagree with that sentiment. I'm just saying that if this film had expressed it with more subtlety, it would have been a much better film.

Beyond that, this film just isn't funny enough. The basic premise, of doing a faux documentary about people who obsessively collect and preserve TV dinners, had a lot of potential. Too bad the execution didn't live up to that promise.