MassBay Film Festival

Checked out the MassBay Film Festival in Worcester last night. We saw The Helix Loaded and My Big Fat Independent Movie. They are both feature spoofs of other movies and I'm planning something similar so was interested in checking these out.

We had tried to see Helix (which is a Matrix parody) at the start of the festival back on April 15th, but technical difficulties intervened so we got to see "Sin City" again. So by the time I did see Helix it wasn't up to my expectations -- they got all the technical aspects and effects down but tried to spoof too many movies to make the whole thing work. Probably 5 good laughs thru whole thing. Big surprise was the one and only Vanilla Ice having a featured role, not sure who he corresponds to in "The Matrix" but whatever. They threw in lots of "Fight Club" references and then just a single line or scene from other movies such as "secretary" and one from one of my all time favorites "The Professional" that nobody reacted to but me. Helix was sometimes a serious, exact replication of The Matrix, then Tyler Durden would pop in and throw some jokes out that just flopped. To be fair there was less than a dozen people in the audience which makes it tough for a comedy to really get some big laughs.

On the other hand, Big Fat Indie was hilarious. A very pleasant surprise, just non stop gags and goofs. Closest to "Not Another Teen Movie" -- which I found surprisingly funny when I finally caught that on cable. This flick didn't stay in one movie for too long, just lots of good, rapid fire gags. If one went over your head, the next one would make you laugh.

Plan on heading back to the festival later this weekend. One documentary sounds pretty cool, "Down size Me" is a rebuttal to "Super Size Me" by a bodybuilder who goes on the McDiet and actually loses weight. Then there is a two hour block of Star Wars fan films that could be cool.