Law Revue Video Contest 2013: Dishonorable Mentions
We start with the worst so we can appreciate the best.
As law students gear up for finals, it’s finally time for us to grade the videos we received for our Fifth Annual Law Revue Video Contest.
As usual, we’ll start with the dishonorable mentions. We like setting the bar low so that when you see our finalists later this week, you can see how far they rose above the rest. Our dishonorable mentions weren’t necessarily the worst videos that were submitted; instead, they were bad in a somewhat interesting and cringe-worthy way. Their badness lent itself to discussion and analysis.
Still, we want to thank everybody who took the time to produce and submit a video. Even the bad ones were good for the ATL editorial team and the community. The trauma brings us closer together….
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Let’s attack this in alphabetical order. Our first dishonorable mention comes from Boston University. Two years ago, BU won the whole thing. But those guys have graduated. And now it’s come to this:
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There was actually potential here. And then the video dragged on, and on, and on. How many “little hands” jokes can you make in three minutes? There also weren’t really any “law” jokes. It was just some vague growling. The seagull was kind of funny. I don’t know, maybe I was just expecting some Raptor_Bro level of entertainment and instead just got a BU Law student in a Tyrannosaurus costume.
At least it was an actual dinosaur costume. The kids at Cardozo pulled off the single worst Honey Boo Boo impression ever. It was supposed to be intentionally bad, but it wasn’t unintentionally funny:
What the hell was that? How did they convince professors to be a part of it? This felt like a year where Cardozo wasn’t even trying. Even the kosher jokes were unleavened.
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At least there was no singing. Our next dishonorable mention comes from Emory and involves a horrible harmonic failure:
You know, there might not be a way to do One Direction that doesn’t make me want to punch you in the face, but at the very least, the harmony has to be tuned so that it doesn’t sound like I’m actively strangling Niall Horan. (I had to look that up, “Niall Horan.” I’m proud to say that I don’t have working knowledge of the individual embryos that make up these Billy Elliot all-stars.) We received better One Direction takes (yes, we received more than one). This was the boring, off-key one.
Speaking of failures, we have something from the University of Miami Law School. There are numerous things wrong with the video, not the least of which is that with all the “talent” at Miami, including some that is kind of part of the video, the main characters here are two freaking dudes. That would be enough fail, but it gets worse:
Yes, we get it, THE GUY IS BEING LOUD. Was there a second joke there? No. Okay, while we’re here, how come the chill bro who ends up having a drink with the hottie in the short skirt is, like, the bad guy, while the dude who can’t stand up for himself or keep his concentration together is the protagonist? What a bitch-ass loser. Next time I see a UofM student (or professor) with a hot girlfriend, I’m just going to start throwing pistachios in his face until he stops me or the girl abandons him.
Finally, we come to the University of Wisconsin, where apparently they just got ahold of movies from last century on laser disc:
A Blair Witch Project take-off? Really? Were you choosing between that or having Stifler’s Mom become a law professor? Are we just ten years away from Wisconsin’s “found footage” of Paralegal Activity? Look, if you are going to make highly self-referential videos like this, there needs to be a great hook. Or at the very least, you need to not live in Wisconsin so there are more than 16 people who get the jokes.
But look, thanks for playing, everybody. These things are actually kind of hard to produce. Tune in later this week for the finalists, and you’ll see what it takes to make a really good law revue video.
Earlier: Above the Law’s Fifth Annual Law Revue Video Contest: Everybody’s Got Time For That!
