Director Peter Atencio
Stars Bert Kreischer, Mark Hamill, Iva Babic & Jimmy Tatro
Rated MA
Score 4.5/6

Bert’s drunken past catches up with him 20 years down the road when he and his father are kidnapped by those Bert wronged 20 years ago while drunk on a college semester abroad in Russia.

I suppose I have been procrastinating on watching this, I suppose because I didn’t want to be disappointed by the adaptation because I thought that Burt’s Russian Mafia story was wildly hilarious when I stumbled across it on YouTube. The Machine might not be as hilarious as Burt’s stand up routine. However, it is good to see that the movie is a second chapter to the standup story and is very much a beer and pizza with friends kind of movie. Sitting here writing this review I can’t shake The Hangover vibe The Machine had from my mind. Part of me thinks that the first time I watched this was on a larger screen instead of my laptop because there was some stunning B-Roll footage. There was a good contrast between the fight sequences involving the different leads and showcased them as badasses in different ways. The fight scene on the train evolved into something that was disturbingly hilarious. I thought that Mark Hamill was an odd casting choice as Bert’s dad. Hamill was great opposite Bert Kreischer.and it was also kind of cool to see the brief instances of what could be described as ‘Joker’ mannerisms bleed into Hamill’s performance towards the end of the movie. I enjoyed Iva Babic’s performance and I hope that we will see more movies from Bert. For some reason while I was watching this I kept thinking that Martyn Ford who played Sponge was actually played by Australian actor Nathan Jones.