Out now on disc from MVD Rewind Collection
This film version of the CW series is packed with interviews about what people loved about 1982 as a geek year.
This documentary is exhaustive to the point of almost being exhausting to watch. There is so much here that any fan of geek culture and the films that make it should find something to their liking here. The series as a whole was a lot and the condensing of it into a film still has a ton of information, film trivia, and clips of both the films discussed and a few celebrities nerding out over them. The documentary as a whole is well-done, well-directed, and well-worth checking out.
The cast here is composed of a whole lot of people getting interviewed and being talking heads about their favorite 1982 films and what they love about them. The names here may not all be super familiar to the general public with a good number of the interviewees being film reviewers and film scholars. For film nerds, these folks will be interesting to listing to and to watch them geek out about the same films many love as well. As for the more famous faces, the names that will attract the general public, they include the always lovely Felicia Day who brings her great personality and charm to it all as well as that bubbly nerdiness that she exudes along with what seems to be boundless happiness when speaking about something she loves. TV fans will recognize Bryan Fuller who should also appeal to horror fans along with the greatly knowledgeable Mick Garris, Darin Scott, and a ton of others. Oh, and folks like Ron Howard, Sean Young, Keith David, Roger Corman, William Shatner, Adrienne Barbeau, Roger Corman, Jon Cryer, Dee Wallace, and a ton of others. This documentary is packed. Packed.
The cinematography by Mecky Creus and Andrew Towe (and team) works well here, giving us a similar look to many other talking heads documentaries, with a setting that is in a theater for most of them and a few in other locations, some possibly coming through on a webcam which was transferred really well to match the rest of the footage. The editing by Jon Berry and Roger Lay Jr is on point here, mixing and matching the interviews and splicing bits and pieces of films, archival footage, old ads, and a bunch of other stuff to make it entertaining throughout.
1982: Greatest Geek Year Ever is a solid documentary on the nerd world, by some of the nerds, and for nerds and pop culture aficionados alike. It’s well-done, well-shot, it brings faces we have not seen as much in these kinds of docs, and it makes for a decently entertaining feature length documentary.
This new release here does a good job of gathering the series into a singular film and has some great extras. The best of the bunch here are the deleted and extended scenes, the 2002 SDCC panel, and the Fan Speak section.