Law Revue, Law Revue Video Contest, Law Schools

Law Revue Video Contest 2016: Dishonorable Mentions

A look at the bottom of the barrel from this year's entries.

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Justin Bieber (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty)

Justin Bieber (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty)

Elie here. You know, for all the crap said about Millennials, they get how to make a watchable YouTube video. This used to be one of my favorite posts of the year: law students singing badly in not-funny ways while I got to make fun of them from the safety of my bathrobe.

But this year, the Law Revue submissions were uniformly pretty decent. Nobody really embarrassed themselves. One could ask why have a “dishonorable” mention category at all when everybody did a pretty good job?

BECAUSE NOT EVERYBODY GETS A TROPHY, that’s why. We grade on a curve and that means that somebody has to fail. Here, are the worst of the best.

Columbia University Law School — Straight Through

Last year, Columbia won the whole thing with a funny, well written paean to the food choices at FedSoc events. Columbia has been a consistent finalist in these contests with videos that actually contained law jokes. Check out this number from 2012.

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I don’t know what the hell happened this year. It wasn’t particularly funny, it wasn’t particularly well performed, and conceptually it was just forced. Slightly older Millennials making “get off my lawn” jokes at slightly younger Millennials? Meh. This is a Super Bowl hangover if I ever saw one.

Joe: Indeed the word, “meh” is exactly what I wrote on my notepad when we watched this. The bridge was pretty good. That said, as an NYU grad it gave me great pleasure to watch that uptown cow college fall on its face like this.

You say, “Super Bowl hangover”? I say, “Bieber Curse.”

Notre Dame — Drunk Outlines

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlMr7f2oLYw

Elie: It’s not easy to parody something that is already funny. You don’t see The Onion writing fake Daily Show headlines. And if you are going to do this, you should pick a case that is a little more deep cut “only lawyers would get this,” instead of something as popular as Marbury v. Madison.

Joe has some strong thoughts here, so I’m gonna let him finish.

Joe: Sure. We’ve had a few Drunk History spoofs over the last couple years. They generally do a pretty good job of recreating the look and feel of the show. Notre Dame’s entry is no exception.

But here’s the thing. First some fine print:

Above the Law and Joe Patrice are in no way encouraging or promoting the mass consumption of alcohol. As always, alcohol should be used and consumed in a responsible manner and only consumed by those individuals who are of legal drinking age. Drinking can cause both short- and long-term health problems. Such as challenging someone to a footrace and concussing yourself trying to slide head-first into concrete like Elie did once.

With that out of the way, the problem is that y’all don’t get nearly drunk enough. On the show, they have comedians literally taking vomit breaks! Every entry we get here shows a law student just on the threshold of tipsy whose “drunk mistake” amounts to confusing impleader and interpleader. For this scheme to work, the narrator has to be completely blotto.

SMU — Sorry

Elie: Look buddy, I’m not here to actually hear you sing. I’m not hear to see you live out some kind of Belieber fantasy.

I’m hear for the lulz, and this did not bring it (except for when you caressed the professor). Keeping the same “sorry, I’m not prepared” joke through all three choruses was a bad choice. It was as boring as an actual law school class by the end. Five minutes is a long time, plan your jokes accordingly.

Joe: There’s that Bieber curse again! If we’ve learned anything this year it’s that Bieber is probably not the road to Law Revue success. May your failure serve as a warning to others.

In my years here, SMU has consistently produced solid entries, but this was just a little flat. As Elie said, it’s not bad by any means — the production value is solid and the one joke is good the first time through — it just dragged on too long.

Elie: Bottom line, none of these videos would have made our dishonorable list in an average year. The submissions were pretty strong but, I don’t know, nobody really took any chances this year. I mean, I didn’t really like Justice Roboto, but at least it was reaching for something.

Joe: Justice Roboto remains the greatest work of absurdist legal comedy this side of the sovereign citizen movement.

Coming later this week: The Finalists.

UPDATE (4/20/2016, 6 p.m.): For your viewing and voting pleasure, here are the finalists.

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