This Giant Papier Mache Boulder Is Actually Really Heavy

Directed, written and starred by Christian Nicoloson, this movie follows three guys who goes into a nerd convention and upon watching a screening for a B-grade science-fiction film, are sucked into the movie’s universe.

The first third of this movie is incredibly funny, the movie is extremely self-aware, it knows it’s audience, it knows it doesn’t have a big budget, it knows itself that it too is a B-Grade Science Fiction movie. It’s parodying itself and majority of the time it’s... More effective. It has a lot of humour to offer and most of the time it’s clever.

The movie is consistent to it’s theme and it knows how to work it very well, it captures the tropes from 80s science fiction films and works it on it’s favour. From the cinematography to the movie’s overall look, and that gives it a very unique yet impressive take on parodies.

Unfortunately the movie does suffer from several problems and it’s heavily noticeable. The pacing is slowed down tremendously around the second and third act and the story drags at this point onward. The movie is two hours long, and for a movie that’s a parody, it is thirty minutes longer than it needed to be. Though it offered a lot of clever jokes the use of fart jokes did downgrade this movie’s quality down a bit.

Overall this movie is fun, the characters looked like they’re having fun and it resonates throughout the movie. For what it’s going for, it is competently well filmed and well edited. Even with it’s problems, if you enjoy indie-films, this is a movie worth checking out.Hide

This Giant Papier Mache Boulder Is Actually Really Heavy may be an insanely long title for a film, but it's worth every syllable. If you're a fan of comedy, parody, sci-fi and old-school special effects, then this film may just be your dream come true. Three ordinary guys get zapped into an old low-budget science fiction film and have to find their way back out again. It sounds simple, but when they have to battle cheesy super villains, rubber-masked aliens and even each other, things become... More more complicated - especially when they're in a cardboard set armed with only shiny outfits, witty one liners and gadgets that look suspiciously like household objects!
I saw the film at the Starburst International Film Festival in England and was blown away by the clever dialogue, the hilarious performances and the superb attention to detail - who knew spaceship controls and sports-cap bottle tops looked so similar? Such a big part of the magic is the intentional low-budget look of the film. What also comes across is the obvious love that everyone who worked on the film had for it, and it deserves just as much love from as big an audience as is humanly, or even Tokdarian-ly, possible.
I already can't wait to see the film again so I must urge everyone to get yourself "inside the B picture" and go and see it as soon as you have the chance! After all, where else can you watch a giant lizard running around to a Benny Hill-like theme tune?Hide

Right from the beginning the film set a pace that I was unsure that it was going to maintain right the way through. However I was proven wrong. From fantastic composition to great use of cheap visual effects and the quick wit from the cast there was not a dull moment throughout the entire screenplay.
New Zealand film has a tendency to lack pace and be set in bygone eras of the past yet TGPMBIARH managed to tip all my preset constructs on the head. As a skeptic on the sci-fi genre as a whole I... More was uneasy at first however pleasantly surprised as this film surpassed all my expectations. Will go see again.Hide

As the title may imply, THIS GIANT PAPIER-MACHE BOULDER IS ACTUALLY REALLY HEAVY, is a very, very silly movie. And that’s its strength. Some no-budget, labour-of-love, locally made movies are stupidly proud, completely unaware of their limitations. But BOULDER's proudly stupid.

Two-years and a sh*t-ton of cardboard toilet-roll tubes, kitchen utensils and tin-foil in the making, this is Kiwi artist, Christian Nicolson’s baby. As director, co-writer, co-producer and co-star, Nicolson’s... More channeled Mel Brooks, by way of SPACEBALLS, and Monty Python, by way of HOLY GRAIL, only on a far smaller budget, with no Hollywood stars, just a few hairdryers and only a couple of rabbits.

A loving, bonkers homage and goofy piss-take of C-grade 50s sci-fi, BOULDER is Ed Wood’s PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, if it was made in Auckland, with slightly better special effects and a scatological sense of humour.

A string of sight-gags, slapstick, kooky art direction, bad puns and low-brow gags, BOULDER is genuinely, and occasionally laugh-out-loud, funny. A highlight for me was a direct take-off of STAR TREK’s notoriously violent Kirk vs Gorn fight from the original series episode, ‘Arena’, in which Captain Kirk duels spectacularly with a giant lizard... ;)

Other gems include an easily insulted alien shopkeeper, (a character that could be straight out of THE HITCH-HIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY), giant reptiles, giant rabbits and some great background spaceship window gags (look out for a cat, a cow, a dog and, wait, what, was that – sperm?!)

The set pieces are a hoot, with a gloriously tacky sci-fi convention, and a fabulously cheap STAR WARS-style Mos Eisley spaceport scene, complete with a rubbish skip dressed up as a space tank.

The acting is no great shakes, but then because the beautifully bad sets are made so obviously of kitchen appliances, egg-cartons and newspaper, two-dimensional characters work wonderfully.

The meta-comments, and cult references (largely to BLAKES 7 and STAR TREK), are fun too, as when the boys first encounter the spaceship, and Lewis Roscoe mutters: “Whoever did this was on a real low budget.”

The stand-out performance is Joseph Wycoff, camping it up and chewing the wonky scenery as the puffed-up villain, Lord Froth. His mono-browed, buck-toothed, right-hand-gal (Tansy Hayden) is a hoot too.

Where the film falls apart and stops being fun is in its run-time. At just under two hours, it outstays its welcome by at least twenty minutes, running out of puff, and in desperate needs of trimming back if it’s to ever appeal to a wider, less forgiving audience.

Runtime aside, it’s surprisingly entertaining, with genuine laughs, and it’s made with a passion and joy that ooze off the screen. It’s a local venture that’s a lot of fun and has done well to get so much comedy and sci-fi festival attention around the world.

It’s main issue, aside from the run-time, is that it tries to wedge in a “plot” in the last act. But this kind of zany silliness doesn’t need much more plot than: three mates (Nicolson, the crazy-haired Daniel Pujol, and Roscoe, who gets one of my favourite lines: “What was in that mint, Jeffrey?”) find themselves in a C-grade sci-fi movie. Nicolson falls for a nerdy non-Princess (Sez Niederer), and sets out to woo her on a flying space moped - defeating an evil galactic Battlelord along the way… Oh and you get to find out what a Sponkey is too. So, you know, bonus.

I took my son, he’s 10 and enjoyed it. Like me, he could have done without the last half-hour. Heck, if it wasn’t for the odd “F” word, and it was cut shorter, it’d be a great family comedy adventure, with the added fun of local references.

I mean, come on, how often do you get to hear Auckland’s North Shore, Glenfield Mall and Glassons mentioned in a sci-fi movie? ;)Hide