Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Unfomercials:Progressive Insurance - Bike insurance (2nd review)
Unfomercials:Progressive Insurance - Bike insurance[edit]
Just wanted to get a second opinion on what people think of this type of article. No offense to the first reviewer, by the way. 22:42 Aug 19, 2009 22:42, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
- There's been a tiny issue with this review not quite sticking to PEEreview standard. I have deleted the previous one, but it is still available in history (obviously) if anybody wants it. I don't know what the ruling is for doing what I'm doing, but the spirit of the guidelines of PEE say that this is here to help the author, which is what I'm attempting to do. Pup
| Prose and Formatting: The writing style, spelling, grammar, layout and overall appearance. |
7 | Okay, Unfomercials are a fairly small sub-set of the entire juggernaut that is Uncyclopedia. So much so that there is only one that I was able to discover that has been featured over the past five years - Unfomercials:Uncyclopedia Krazy Kemistry Set. Other than that you have Unfomercials:ShamWow! (Unrated), and Unfomercials:Inspirigun and only a couple of others.
So this means that you have a certain amount of flexibility in what you can do here in regards to your formatting and style. So what you've done here does not exactly make me sit up and say "Wow!". While it's not bad, there is a couple of minor bugbears that I have with this. Firstly your text is realistically captions for the images. Now in most cases captions will not exceed the width of the images, and where they do they are word-wrapped so that they cover multiple lines. Secondly the captions are related directly to the images, so I'd be more inclined to have the border of this encapsulate each frame, as opposed to encapsulating the entire bundle. That way it will have more of a film-strip or comic-book flow rather than just bundled on top of each other. Thirdly, given that it has a significant lack of text, it just involve a huge amount of scrolling to go through this. Now I'm not sure exactly how to rectify this, without reducing the size of your images. The size that the images are in ShamWow! might be a little more fitting. It would help with the image quality (see images) as well as keeping this flow a little neater. The downside to this is that you would potentially lose some of the humour that is derived from her facial expressions. |
| Concept: How good an idea is behind the article? |
6 | Again, Unfomercials are not often done, and that is likely to be because they are not really an uncyclopedian thing. It is a parody, make no doubt about that, which is one of the central aspects of Uncyc, but it's not encyclopeadic. Now while that doesn't stop this from being funny, it will knock it out of favour for a significant number of users.
So, this would mean that you would be looking at an above average concept at best if you had everything else perfect. (Keep in mind that a PEEreview has a significant level of opinion, so parts of this are purely subjective.) Now what would blow me out of the water is if the supporting images for this came from somewhere completely different. So if it was pictures of Barrack Obama advertising fountain Pens, or some other juxtaposition of two very different paradigms. (I like to use big words. It makes me feel smart!) The other thing that does drop you down is that this is heavily reliant on a gay joke. What you've done with the salesperson is fantastic, turning her expressions to mean something very divorced from the original, but the gay joke here doesn't quite gel. It might work if that was the discovery at the end of the ad - she's trying to date and he rebuffs her because he prefers bears to kittens - but as the opening premise it loses a little. Especially he doesn't look like an average motorbike rider. In fact, he looks more like an office worker who likes dressing in leather. As an office worker who likes to dress in leather myself... actually, let's not go there. |
| Humour: How funny is it? Why is it funny? How can it be funnier? |
6 | Have I covered this in concept? Yeah, pretty much. Again this is light on jokes, and usually I reserve this are for more of your one-liner type jokes, and the concept for the overall joke.
Having said that the jokes themselves could potentially be a little punchier. I don't know how, but I'd be looking at a rewrite of the text based upon the change I'd suggest to the concept. |
| Images: How are the images? Are they relevant, with good quality and formatting? |
7.5 | Okay, I really wanted to give a higher score here as the images are very suited for what you are doing, and even without the text they are ridiculous enough to be funny. I mean, if I didn't know the original ad was for bike insurance, then the add could well be for marital aids in boxes.
The major issue I have with the images is the poor quality, obviously having been chopped straight from a TV ad. Otherwise they are well suited for what you are doing. However as what you are doing is building around the images, again there's no way you can get that "Wow!" factor from me. The other thing is if you are building the article around the images, the images have to be fantastic. By having lower quality images, you have as a result a lower quality article. |
| Miscellaneous: The article's overall quality - that indefinable something. |
7.5 | And a slight boost here as I think you've done a good job. There is a bit of work that you can do to this. One thing that I would attempt to forget when you are doing this is the concept of the original ad. I've never seen the original ad, and the fact that he is an office worker dressed in leathers is funnier to me if I don't know that he is supposed to be a rider. Her, on the other hand, looks like a chemist, however she is also the spitting image of a girl who I used to work with who is now a bank manager. And we actually had a couple of conversations like this as well. |
| Final Score: How much can it be improved and what are the most important areas to work on. |
34 | Good luck, and keep up the good work! |
| Reviewer: | Pup | |