Overview

"No Review, I Refuse" refers to James Rolfe's protest review of Ghostbusters, the 2016 reboot of the popular supernatural comedy film franchise, in which the pop culture critic states that he will not go see or review the movie upon its release in July 2016. Although the video was met with positive reception from his fans and others who shared his sentiment, Rolfe's statement was also mocked by several media outlets and celebrities for his bias against the movie that has yet to have been released.

Background

On May 16th, 2016, pop culture review site Cinemassacre released a six-and-a-half-minute-long video titled "Ghostbusters 2016. No Review. I refuse" featuring James Rolfe, the longtime YouTube vlogger best known for his character The Angry Video Game Nerd. In the video, Rolfe declares that he refuses to go see the reboot of Ghostbusters or review it based on what has been revealed thus far about the film (shown below).

Developments

Within the first 48 hours of release, the video accumulated more than 700,000 views on YouTube and Rolfe's tweet reached over 800 retweets and 2,000 likes on Twitter.^[1] On the following day, Redditor Nezaus submitted Rolfe's video to /r/videos^[4], where it racked up 3,132 points (70% upvoted).

Patton Oswalt's Tweet

On May 17th, American comedian Patton Oswalt shared a satirical tweet^[2] about Rolfe's "preemptive" review of the film (shown below), mocking his predisposed bias against the film prior to its box office release. Within the first 48 hours, Oswalt's tweet accumulated over 300 retweets and 2,500 likes.

Rolfe's scathing commentary on Ghostbusters, along with Oswalt's satirical response, served as a fuse to an already heated debate about the film among the fans of the franchise and pop culture critics, with various entertainment news outlets reporting on Rolfe's criticism and the subsequent backlash on Twitter, including The Daily Dot^[3], Pedestrian.tv^[12], Death and Taxes^[5] and Esquire^[10], all of which seemed to criticize Rolfe's presupposition against the upcoming film, while other sites like GeekTyrant^[6], Fansided^[7] and Uproxx^[11] took a more nuanced approach to Rolfe's opinionated statements. The viral reception of Rolfe's video was also mentioned by The Atlantic^[8]
in an article titled "The Ongoing Outcry Against the Ghostbusters Remake."

Brad Jones' Parody

Also on May 17th, Brad Jones (a.k.a Cinema Snob), the creator of Stoned Gremlin Production and Channel Awesome affiliate, released a parody of Rolfe's video in which he explains why he refuses to go to see an upcoming reboot of a fictitious film titled "Dog Fucker" (shown below).

Observer's Parody

On May 18th, Observer's culture reporter Vinnie Mancuso wrote an article titled "NBC’s ‘Timeless.’ No Review. I Refuse,"^[9] a tongue-in-cheek review of NBC's upcoming sci-fi drama TV series Timeless that parodies the language of Rolfe's Ghostbusters review video.

Search Interest

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External References