The Webventures of Justin and Alden Review
Instead of hiding from these inherent flaws of a medium still in its infant stages, The Webventures of Justin and Alden relishes them instead by taking such growing pains and creating a hilarious spoof of both mainstream road-trip movies and the webseries genre itself. Professionally produced by Wilson Cleveland of CJP Digital Media, sponsored by Trident Layers, written by medium veterans Tony Janning and Sandeep Parikh (Legend of Neil) and directed by Sean Becker of The Guild, this is not some independent satirization but a good-natured finger-poke by true industry insiders.
Taking a cue from such comedies as Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, The Webventures of Justin and Alden is a buddy road trip webseries of ridiculous proportions. After spending an hour writing a script for their own Internet production, the two title characters embark on a four-mile journey to attend the 2010 Streamy Awards—the webseries version of the Emmy’s—in order to meet online actress Felicia Day and convince her to star in their creation. Along the way they encounter a psychotic hitchhiker pretending to be Illeana Douglas of the IKEA-sponsored webseries Easy to Assemble (portrayed by the actual Douglas), a gang of “modern day vampires” and even a time-traveling George Washington.
All in the course of the first three episodes, which average approximately six-minutes in length each.
Despite such a limited run time—the entire series consists of only five episodes—writers Tony Janning and Sandeep Parikh have packed enough jokes into The Webventures of Justin and Alden to make even the Zucker brothers of Airplane! fame jealous. Not all of the jokes work, as the webseries is more along the lines of the “throw everything we’ve got against the wall and see what sticks” comedy variety, but most of it does. Besides, not every Zucker joke was a masterpiece, either.
The Webventures of Justin and Alden is more than a road-trip spoof, however, but a spoof of the webseries industry as well. As previously stated, the script that Justin and Alden wrote took them only one hour, and this was after brainstorming rip-off versions of such popular real-life webseries as Legend of Neil, The Guild and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Even the premise that a webseries brings instant fame and fortune is a satirization of the medium. And once the two arrive at the Streamys, they pose as media representatives of the made-up Schmepic Fu and interview such webseries notables as Mark Gantt (The Bannen Way), the Sklar Brothers (Back on Topps) and David Wain (Wainy Days) to hilarious effect.
Then there’s Felicia Day. The professional actress turned webseries star has been portrayed by many in the media as the “Queen of the Internet” because of her success with both the self-created The Guild as well as Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and is as close to webseries royalty as one can get. Yet in The Webventures of Justin and Alden she allows herself to likewise be spoofed in the same fashion as the industry itself. This Felicia Day is not above chopping off the heads of Justin and Alden with her broadsword because they interrupted her speech—“Nobody messes with the Streamys, this is my night,” she tells them—but also turns out to be a time-traveling Highlander who once had an affair with George Washington and now appears on the one-dollar bill.
Even the sponsor of the webseries, Trident Layers, is not above being a part of the zaniness. Instead of finding subtle ways of placing the product, the creators of The Webventures of Justin and Alden made the gum an integral part of the action—from using it to plug a leak in a car engine, to forming a stake to ward off vampires, to creating balloons with it in order to float to the Streamy Awards.
“Justin and Alden had made a hilarious video for Trident a few months back in which they played themselves as two actors who decide they can become famous by getting their favorite gum into the hands of celebrities,” producer Wilson Cleveland told Pink Raygun in June 2010 regarding the origination of the webseries. “In December of last year we were asked to start proposing ideas around Justin and Alden’s original concept. Then in mid-March, Trident gave it the green light and two weeks later we were on set.”
Fame may not await everyone who attempts to film their own webseries, but having such current masters of the medium involved in the way that The Webventures of Justin and Alden does certainly improves one chances.
Anthony Letizia (June 28, 2010)
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