Nostalgia Critic

About

The Nostalgia Critic is a character created by comedian Doug Walker (b. November 17th, 1981 in Chicago) for a webseries hosted on his personal site, That Guy With The Glasses.^[1] With ranting monologues similar to the Angry Video Game Nerd, he reviews movies and television programs from the 1980s and 1990s that have been widely perceived by media critics as terrible.

Online History

The first episodes of both The Nostalgic Critic and Walker’s other project, Five Second Movies, were uploaded to YouTube in summer 2007. However, On June 18th, 2007, Walker’s YouTube account was suspended for potential copyright violations.^[2] Walker tried to get around this by making several other YouTube accounts, believing his work was covered under the Satire provision of copyright law. Despite this, by October 2007, all of his accounts had been removed from YouTube.

Because of this, Walker chose to move over to his own site^[1] and host the videos in conjunction with Channel Awesome^[3]. Walker made That Guy With This Glasses his full-time gig^[12] when he relaunched the Nostalgia Critic series on April 6th, 2008 with a review of Transformers The Movie.

The Nostalgia Critic is known for his catchphrase, “I’m the Nostalgia Critic. I remember it, so you don’t have to,” which he usually says at the opening and close of each episode. The show is currently hosted on his website^[1] and Blip.TV.^[4] Walker produces several other shows as well including Nostalgia Critic, Ask That Guy with the Glasses, 5 Second Movies, Bum Reviews, and Video Game Confessions. The YouTube account for Channel Awesome, which hosts all of his projects, averages 12,706 views a day.

Despite his early copyright troubles, the Nostalgia Critic has produced over 231 episodes and is currently mirrored by several fan accounts on YouTube.^[5] There is a Facebook page^[6], a TV Tropes page^[7], and a Wikiquotes page^[8] dedicated to the show. Surprisingly, however, the top viewed video on YouTube is not a review episode: it is the Critic doing 50 celebrity impressions in 50 seconds, with over 870,000 views.

His top viewed YouTube episode is for Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin, with over 515,000 views. Other top episodes include Super Mario, Cartoon Allstars, and Space Jam.

the Nostalgic Chick

On August 10th, 2008^[13], Walker announcing a contest to find a female counterpart to do similar reviews, focusing on stereotypical “chick flicks.” The role was won by Lindsay Ellis, aka “The Dudette,” who reviewed Disney’s Pocahontas in her audition. Her videos are also available on That Guy With The Glasses^[14], and has since made 65 episodes on movies from Hocus Pocus to Spice World.

Reputation

In 2008, The Critic started a video war with the Angry Video Game Nerd. The two swapped several video responses before finally coming together for a final battle to celebrate the one year anniversary of That Guy with the Glasses.

Yearly, Walker now celebrates the anniversary of his site by producing full length movies featuring other reviewers.

The Nostalgia Critic gained notoriety in 2009 when Blip.TV, the company hosting Channel Awesome, signed a deal with YouTube.^[9] Also that year, Roger Ebert tweeted^[10] out a link to the episode Walker produced about Siskel and Ebert.

The next year, Nostalgia Critic encountered copyright problems when Walker received a DMCA takedown for the episode on the cult film The Room.^[11]

After the video was removed, Walker produced an episode making fun of Tommy Wiseau, criticizing his reason for taking down the episode:

YTPMV’s

The Nostalgia Critic has become a popular source material for YTPMV’s , almost entirely due to his video 50 Impressions in 50 Seconds^[15], posted to the That Guy With the Glasses site on the 20th August 2008. The video features the Critic doing series of impressions, several of which are used frequently in the YTPMV’s, including Pavarotti and Eddie Murphy.

Search Interest

External References