Video Games: The Movie is a crowd funded documentary about a very broad topic... video games. It is very ambitious in theory, but ultimately doesn't accomplish much in its 1 hour and 45 minute runtime.
The unfortunate nature of crowdfunding implies that the people behind a project or the project itself were not marketable enough for a studio to want to get involved. And sadly this means good ideas will occasionally be squandered as will peoples' money. These aren't investors we're talking about... these are just movie fans... or fans of a particular niche. And maybe once in a blue moon, the product that comes from their money is actually what they were hoping for, but frequently crowd sourcing feels like a radical experiment by a mad scientist with a dream, but no means or knowhow to make that dream a reality.
What I'm essentially saying is, Video Games: The Movie is a squandered idea. I'm much more interested in another film coming out later this month titled Atari: Game Over about just one specific event that this movie is forced to breeze over. That one got backing because it had a foundation. One story. Focus.
Video Games: The Movie essentially hits too many pitfalls to overcome. It cannot take the time it needs to discuss why Mario has survived so long or what makes a good video game good, because it wants so badly to tell us about everything... I think this concept was too big for its filmmaker Jeremy Snead. And he would have been better off shopping the idea to networks with the hopes of making a quality, Ken Burns style docu-series breaking down generation by generation what it is that makes video games a consistent money maker in our modern world. But ultimately, this is just a glorified fan flick.
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