Web Video / MikeJ

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Mike Jeavons, or MikeJ, is a British person and was a reviewer on Channel Awesome until March 2018. His shows include Shameful Sequels, which looks at inferior movie sequels and Hang on a Second, which is essentially a show about Fridge Logic, Fridge Brilliance, and Fridge Horror. More recently he has begun a show looking at the output of The Asylum in an uncharacteristically positive So Bad, It's Good fashion, called Asylum Seeker and a sort of riff show regarding infomercials testing and usually mocking the product in question called "Infom€rcia£i$m". He can be found on YouTube👁 Image
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He's also started a series called "A Week on..." where he spends a week on a themed diet. Types include legitimate weight loss programs, fad diets, or trying a specialty line from a grocery chain, though sometimes he finds some more unusual ideas to attempt, like a week on "apocalypse food", or a week entirely of items that start with the letter A.

On the side, he runs a movie analysis channel known as Film Thought👁 Image
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Also known for his English to American video.

Tropes that feature in MikeJ's works include:

• Accentuate the Negative: Averted in his Infomercialism reviews. While he does poke fun at the commercials, Mike tests the products out if he has them and tends to mention both the positive and negative points about them, even if it's Damned by Faint Praise.
  • Occasionally subverted in his Shameful Sequels reviews. He always makes jokes at the film's expense. But sometimes at the end of the review, he'll say he enjoyed it and why or at least, what he think worked.
• Actually Pretty Funny: A few jokes in Fred 2 get a genuine chuckle out of him, much to his horror.
• Anachronism Stew: According to him, Food was invented when some guy got bored killing kittens for lulz and ate one, England is cast in total darkness every so often, there is a 87 foot lemur (which is really a whole bunch of lemurs) in the countryside, and goats are the dominant species.
• Aroused by Their Voice: Katie, the Australian water-sports expert from Our Lips Are Sealed. Mike stated he wished he could bottle her voice and take it with him.
• Artistic License – History: Played for laughs in his A Brief History of Britain segments.
• Bait-and-Switch: From A Brief History of Britain:
  So can you guess the major franchise that exists today that Andrew McDonald started? — That's right, Burger King.
• Berserk Button:
  • Ridiculing the British pushes Mike's buttons, as shown in the Shameful Sequels reviews of Garfield 2 (tea) and Problem Child 3 (Igor Peabody saying that British people have teeth like wolverines).
  • While not in a rage, he's obviously displeased when an infomercial product add-on to shred cheese just destroys it instead. Given that almost all the food-related commercials showcase his love of cheese, you can see why.
  • Inversely, he's equally impressed when Mr. Frosty which is absolutely terrible at making slushy snacks turns out to be the best cheese grater he's ever used. He writes Mr. Cheesy on a post-it note and proudly sticks it on his new repurposed cheese grater.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: Savagely reviewed the Channel Awesome movie trilogy, and then for good measure reviewed the special he and Film Brain made.
• Black Comedy: Well, he is British...
• Black Comedy Rape: During his Butterfly Effect 3 review, two characters in the film are taking part in a rape fantasy but the man decides it's too much for him and stops, annoying the woman. MikeJ comments that he didn't know women were into that sort of thing, so he goes off-screen and all that's heard is a woman screaming. MikeJ returns to his chair and continues the review.
  • Throughout his Passport to Paris review he makes jokes about the Olsen twins being kidnapped by Albanian sex slavers.
• Blatant Lies: His "facts" about Britain.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: This is pretty much an ongoing theme in his videos. Very frequently he'll bring up some sort of uncomfortable detail (such as having sex with his sister, or being driven to Domestic Abuse by an infomercial he's watching) as if it's something normal and continue on without comment.
  Infomercial: Are you tired of cleaning up after your dog?
  Mike J: (deadpan) No, because my dog is dead.
• Brits Love Tea: Plays up the stereotype, to the extent that he can't function without one. Not even coffee would do when he's in a rut in a review.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Mentions he just finished having sex with his sister in his first review, uses it to Bookend "season 1" in fact.
  "Not really! (Beat) It was my cousin!"
  • He jokes about him and his sister having children.
    • In the Catwoman (2004) review, he learns that it isn't his.
  • Really, it's a bit of a Running Gag. Apparently, it applies to all British people, as seen in the Halloween 2 review, where special guest star Welshy proved his British-ness by claiming to have had sex with his sister, a sheep, and cheese on toast.
  • He thought The Reveal (in The Butterfly Effect 3) that the sister killed all those people because she was in love with her brother was bad. But he later admitted that he wish she was his sister.
• The Cameo: Stuart Ashen, Sad Panda and Welshy all briefly appear in his crossover review with Film Brain.
  • JewWario shows up when Mike invokes Godwin's Law.
• Can't Believe I Said That: The nadir of the Beethoven sequels makes him pine for Judge Reinhold. At this, Mike chokes back vomit and decides to go the pub with British Bastard.
  • At the end of his review of Fred 3: Camp Fred, he says that since each sequel is slightly less awful than the previous, and that maybe if they produce 600 Fred movies they'll create a half-decent one. Then he realizes what he just asked for...
• Cardboard Pal: In one episode he has a cardboard cutout face of Film Brain on a stick with a ventriloquist's-dummy mouth; all it ever says is Film Brain's catchphrase "SYMBOLISM!!" His Ace Ventura Jr. review also had "The Nostalgia Critic", which was actually an obviously female guest wearing a cardboard Nostalgia Critic mask.
• Cargo Ship: With aforementioned cardboard cutout. In-universe.
• Catchphrase:
  Hello, I am a British person.
  "Hang on a second!"
  *infomercial product in reach* Let's give it a go then, shall we?
• Christmas Episode:
  • Santa Buddies in 2009.
  • National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2 (with Guru Larry) in 2010.
  • Both The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3 in 2011.
  • Beethovens Christmas Adventure in 2012.
  • A Christmas Story 2, Santa Paws II, Home and Alone for Christmas, and Bone Alone in 2013.
  • Casper's Haunted Christmas, Richie Rich's Christmas Wish and Home Alone: The Holiday Heist in 2014.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Often comes across as this.
• Comically Missing the Point: After being sarcastically told by Guru Larry that a bad scene in Christmas Vacation 2 was Oscar-worthy, he points out that made-for-TV films can't be nominated for Oscars.
• Companion Cube: A cardboard cut-out head of Film Brain who only can say: "Thymbolysm!"
• Crossover:
  • He reviews National Lampoon's Xmas Vacation 2 with Guru Larry.
  • He also is in Forget About It: Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Sad Panda, Welshy, MasakoX and Film Brain.
  • He reviews Matrix Revolutions with Film Brain, as well as a "Shameful Sequels Beatdown of Nutty Professor II: The Klumps''.
  • He teamed up with The Porn Critic of The Agony Booth to review Busty Cops II and Porn Critic also appeared in a couple of episodes of Shameful Sequels.
  • He reviewed Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance with The Nostalgia Critic.
• A Day in the Limelight: British Bastard knocks out Mike and does a two-part review of The Dark Knight Rises.
• Despair Event Horizon: Due to watching Baby Geniuses 2
• Dolled-Up Installment: Three of the movies that he reviews are this:
  • Beethoven's 5th since Beethoven himself is secondary to all the human characters in that film; Mike even jokes about remaking Old Yeller with Beethoven, thus the franchise would be guaranteed a happy ending.
  • Angel Dog 2 which is actually the re-release of Sheeba, which is the re-release of The Crab Orchard, a 2005 TV movie which also featured a dog. It even got billed as a comedy, when it was actually a somber drama about post-9/11 struggles.
  • The supposed Brave ripoff Braver which is actually an unrelated Christmas movie from 2005 called A Fairy Tale Christmas.
• Ear Worm: Invoked in the Infomercialism about Smash instant mashed potatoes, when the tune of the jingle gets stuck in Mike's head, but he needs a while to remember the words: "For mash, get Smash!"
• The Exit Is That Way: To Guru Larry as he attempts to escape from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2.
• Fake Brit: invoked Subverted in his Baby Geniuses 3 review when an actor puts on a terrible British accent and when Mike checks IMDb to find out his real nationality he's shocked to find out the actor actually is British.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • His review of American Wedding/Pie 3 was done entirely in rhyming couplets.
  • A few episodes are more defensive, with "👁 This example contains a YMMV entry. It should be moved to the YMMV tab.
    Contested Sequel Mike J actually likes". The Star Wars prequels even earned "In Defense of Episode 1/2/3" videos.
  • His videos covering The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises seemed to be Mike testing the waters to see if he could give negative reviews to sequels that he likes. Since then he's done similar videos for Ghostbusters II, Robosapien Rebooted, Weekend at Bernie's II, Dennis the Menace (1993) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch.
• Fridge Horror/Logic/Brilliance: In-Universe. His series, Hang On A Second, is about finding examples this in (good) films.
• Fun with Subtitles: Jurassic Park III subtitled the velociraptors dialogue.
• Gretzky Has the Ball: During his review of Switching Goals, he points out the various ways the rules of soccer are portrayed inaccurately, such as having time-outs and ending as soon as the timer reaches zero.
• Heroic BSoD: The mere thought that someone made a Baby Geniuses 3 was enough to give him one.
• Hypocritical Humor: Lampshades the bad clichés National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2 does, before doing the exact same joke.
  • He complains that he hates a Sell-Out... before a Blip.tv commercial break.
  • Every time he complains about the use of stereotypes in what he reviews, he immediately notices he's out of tea and goes to his kitchen for more.
• I Am Very British:
  • His catchphrase, "Hello, I'm a British person".
  • He responds to the bad, posh British accent of the dad in Legally Blondes by going "So very British" in a bad British accent of his own.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Fred: The Movie reduced him to this.
  There isn't enough booze in the world.
• Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: In his "review" of The Dark Knight he references the Disney attraction Soarin' Over California, and then proceeds to congratulate "the three people" who got it.
• Land Down Under: He makes fun of Our Lips Are Sealed for portraying Australia this way.
• Mental World: He goes to one containing versions of the other British critics when he reviews The Matrix Revolutions. If he doesn't complete the review in time, something terrible will happen to him in real life.
• The Nicknamer: After watching one too many Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, he decides to refer to them as the combined nickname MKNA.
• Nightmare Face: Rejuvenique, a plain white mask which delivers tiny shocks to the face and causes your pores to vibrate. The safety video that comes with it doesn't help. (It looks like this.)👁 Image
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• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Much of his humor relies on Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick.
• Overly Long Gag: Often in his Infom£rciai$m series when demonstrating a product is nowhere near as fast or effective as it claims.
• Parallel Porn Title: According to Mike, the title Bone Alone sounds more like this than what it actually is (a rip-off of Home Alone where the child is replaced by a dog).
• Primal Scene: He is particularly disturbed by the Flora "Wrestlers" ad, which shows a pair of kids walking in on their parents having sex.
• 👁 This example contains a YMMV entry. It should be moved to the YMMV tab.
  Questionable Casting: After finding out both Baby Geniuses 2 and Karate Dog have the same screenwriter and star Jon Voight, he figures the former must have naked photographs or something of the latter.
• A Rare Sentence: In his review of xXx: State of the Union:
  "Along for the ride is Xzibit and a bunch of unnamed extras, who hijack a cheese lorry and retrieve some guns. Now there's something I didn't think I'd say today."
• Running Gag:
  • In Catwoman (2004), turning off the movie, which later becomes "trying to make the remote turn off the movie" when the batteries die.
  • During the Dump Cake Cook Off, Mike and Grace's increasing frustration at the amount of entries that pat the cake mix down before adding Dr. Pepper, resulting in the latter not mixing.
• Schmuck Bait: From the review of Honey We Shrunk Ourselves:
  "You're gonna be really sorry if they're upstairs playing soggy biscuit. Don't know what that is, go google it. Actually, don't. *smirks* Actually, DO.
• Separated by a Common Language:
  • The title of his show Asylum Seeker is a pun based on it being about him looking for good parts in the films of The Asylum, while the phrase "asylum seeker" is often (and stereotypically) used by British Newspapers hostile to immigration about immigrants seeking political asylum. Foreign viewers may not get the reference.
  • He also made a Music Video about common words that are different in American and British English.
• Sequelitis: invoked The premise of his segments.
• Shared Universe: Being part of Channel Awesome automatically made him part of the Reviewaverse.
• Shirtless Scene: Film Brain almost gets one in The Matrix Revolutions crossover review, but MikeJ stops him.
• Shower of Angst: At the end of his Matrix Revolutions review after he and Film Brain kiss.
  "Make me clean. Make me clean. Make me clean."
• So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe.
  • MikeJ says Baby Geniuses 3 is this even going as far as to say it's "brilliant" (in its badness) and that you should give them all of your money... and then he realizes he's gone insane.
  • His series, the Asylum Seeker, is about finding the film of The Asylum So Bad It's Good.
  • Played with in his Fred reviews. To his surprise, he finds each one marginally better (or at least less painful) than the one before, leading him to muse that, if 600 Fred films are made, then they might finally end up with a genuinely good film. Then, the invoked Fridge Horror of what he's just said hits him...
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: invoked Although he still considers Baby Geniuses 4 to be a bad film, he's surprised by how better it is than previous Baby Geniuses movies.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: In Speed 2: Cruise Control he states that "Keanu Reeves, here played by Jason Patric"
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: During Sharktopus (on Asylum Seeker), he notes one of the characters was in Epic Movie, then claims he's never seen Epic Movie... not at all.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: invoked Mike's opinion on the new version of the Operation game with larger openings and easier to grab pieces no longer shaped like organs. He proceeds to demonstrates the pointlessness of this version by flawlessly removing all pieces in under 30 seconds on the first try.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Aside from tea, he seems to focus on cheese a lot in his Infomercialism reviews.
• Trolling Creator: When MikeJ reviewed The Dark Knight, the response was invoked pretty much just as you would expect. The second part of the review ended with MikeJ saying that he actually likes the film and he just did the review for fun.
• Values Dissonance: Played for laughs in-universe. He will sometimes make a pretty offensive offhand remark, and explain how it is okay, because it is apparently a normal British viewpoint/practice.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: He gets increasingly embarrassed at his compliments to Spider-Man 3.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: If he doesn't finish his dream review of Matrix Revolutions before 7:30 AM in reality, something terrible will happen....