Name: The Rating Game, or: Watch This If You Have a Black Box from BARB
Genre: Comedy
Released: 2004-12-22
Duration: 25 min
Rating: 5.4
Cast: Jamie Campbell, Joel Wilson, Matthew Field

Student humour with some funny moments, some stupid moments but generally entertaining and will please their audience

Jamie Campbell and Joel Wilson are filmmakers, although with only two of their films actually picked up by anyone they are having doubts. They decide to give themselves two weeks to get another film commissioned or they will quite TV for good  with Jamie going to work in the City and Joel claiming the dole. They turn to focus groups, pitch various ideas to executives and then just give it and try to beat the BARB system for counting ratings.

If you are wondering what sort of audience this is aimed at and what type of humour it will have then it is probably enough to tell you that the makers end their film with the production logo "a Campbell and Wilson Emission" and that it features a joke based around the slang term for a woman's vagina. Yes, it's late night channel four and we want students coming home from their evening out. And with this in mind, this film does a better job of suiting this style of humour than their other attempts have done; attempts to meld student humour with insightful satire is what has seen them fall down before. Here, apart from learning how ratings are worked out (I honestly didn't know any of this), the only intelligent insight into the world of television comes in the last few minutes courtesy of Michael Frente, other than that, there is actually very little in the way of intelligence in this. Anywhere else that would be a criticism but here, for the most part, it works.

The concept is good at times but perhaps could have been used better  the "pitch" of bad ideas made me laugh, and the focus group was clever because it showed how hard it is to find out what people actually want to see, but the majority of the film is nicely comic without ever being really funny. Mostly it is the little comic additions that made me laugh  like Campbell muttering "w*nker" under his breath as driving away and stuff like that, but it isn't consistent. Too much of it is still the sort of stuff that you think sounds funny when you are in your flat but then doesn't translate  but they use it anyway. One example is the "black box under the table" gag, which was only made more embarrassing by the fact that you knew it was coming fifteen seconds before it got there. The self-mocking tone they use is good because then they can react in the way they want (as opposed to doing it with people in the street, police etc who don't react as the gag would require in order to work). As with their other stuff, it isn't very funny or very sharp but they have managed to make the OK (if not "good") outweigh the bad to the point that it is fun to watch; at times it hit a nerve because the criticism they levelled at themselves was spot on and I thought they were going to go down a Deconstructing Harry road, but mostly even the self-mocking was gentle and good humoured. The talking heads approach is pretty good and does help the film come across as if it were being made by a third party.

Overall this is a student film with the sort of humour that will appeal to that audience, which ironically is the very thing that probably put this subject into their heads  silly student humour doesn't get very high ratings. For that audience this will do the job but for the majority of us the humour is too broad to be funny and the ideas are affected by this, making them less interesting. The end result is a product that is entertaining in a silly way with some bits that are OK that must have looked better on paper, three or four actual laughs and only one or two bits that totally crash. How long they can keep trying to make topical student comedies is something to ponder but for this specific thirty minutes they did enough to keep that group happy even if the majority of viewers will just see it passable, inoffensive and entertaining.

The comedy genre refers to a category of entertainment that aims to amuse and entertain audiences by using humor, wit, and comedic situations. Comedies are created with the primary intention of eliciting laughter and providing lighthearted enjoyment. They encompass a wide range of styles, tones, and themes, appealing to various tastes and audiences.

Will Ferrell, Angela Grillo, and Lap-Gei Cheung in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

The Rating Game, or: Watch This If You Have a Black Box from BARB

Two filmmakers with a poor track record desperately try to pitch a hit film to jaded executives.

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The Rating Game, or: Watch This If You Have a Black Box from BARB

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