Ashens and the Polybius Heist Review

The rise of Youtube has led to the rise of the Youtube personality. Many Youtube personalities have tried their hand at making a film based on their characters, including Stuart Ashen, AKA Ashens who has made his second film.

Stuart Ashen is a collector of tat and obscure yet worthless technology. Ashens’ business partner, Benny (Eli Silverman) has been researching the infamous Polybius arcade game and believes it has fallen into the procession of the notorious businessman, Antony Agonist (Stuggy). Ashens set to steal the machine from Agonist’s headquarters in Norwich and forms a crew for an elaborate heist.

For anyone who doesn’t know who Ashens is, he’s mostly known for reviewing cheap tech and knock-off game consoles, other video game-related items, items from pound shops and puts his life at risk by eating bizarre and gone off food. His films have focused on the tech stuff. Ashens has a dry and sardonic delivery and naturally witty which makes his videos entertaining.

When it comes to films based on Youtube personas most of them are often awful. The Channel Awesome films were some of the worst examples of this because there were pretty much Salzberg-style parodies but with worst production values and acting. Ashens avoided some of these pitfalls. He worked with Riyad Barmania who has experience making short films and worked in the British indie film scene. Both Ashens movies ensured that both had some professional actors and crew members.

Ashens and the Polybius Heist is a standalone film. Ashens and the Quest for the Gamechild isn’t required viewing to understand Polybius Heist. The filmmakers went to great effort to make sure people didn’t need extensive knowledge of the web series to understand the film. Gamechild was based on an in-joke in Ashens’ series, Polybius Heist was able to work better as a film due to the Polybius machine being a more widely known urban legend and a heist story provided more focus. Gamechild did detour into a cul de sac just for jokes.

The filmmakers attempted to give the story some personal stakes. In the film Ashens’ father made the Polybius Machine and he left the family, so Ashens had a personal reason to get the machine. Ashens’ sister, Christine (Joanna O’Connor), was so screwed up by their father leaving that she had developed an unhealthy obsession with lawnmowers.

A pitfall with a lot of Youtuber movies is they become reliant on pop culture references. In the Channel Awesome Movies what constituted as a joke was re-enacting a scene from a film and maybe change one word or add a little bit of swearing. Ashens and Barmania were wise enough to make their references more subtle. The most obvious references were a few to Raiders of the Ark mainly due to Polybius’ infamous reputation. Polybius Heist did twist the codename scene in Reservoir Dogs. My favourite moment in the film was the title sequence which was animated like Casino Royale’s title sequence and had a song that sounded like “You Know My Name.” The titles had some references to some other popular franchises.

The jokes in the film were hit and miss. I enjoyed the sequence at the comic book convention where the screenwriters got to air their grievances with overly demanding fans. There were jokes that were solid in concept but not well executed like when Ashens talks about the plan and visuals showing everything going wrong. The filmmakers were being overly ambitious with their special effects because the low budget showed.

The cast was made up of Youtube/Internet personalities and professional actors. The most famous actors were Robert Llewellyn (AKA Kryten from Red Dwarf) and New Zealander comedian Jarred Christmas. The best actor in the film was Katia Kvinge as Vocal, an Irish voice actress who has to use her talents. Kvinge had natural comedic timing and she had a fun nervous tick where she did a deep hum and slapped her voice box. Alyssa Kyria played an over optimist character which gave the character like a Miranda Hart quality. The worst performer was Stuggy as the main villain – the character was meant to be overly irritating but Stuggy was a poor performer and not a natural actor.

Fans of Ashens and people he often collaborates with (i.e. Barry Lewis and Guru Larry) will enjoy Polybius Heist. There is also enough in Polybius Heist for non-fans to enjoy the film.

You can visit www.watchpolybiusheist.com/ for information about where you can watch the film.