Not sure what the director and writers were thinking when they made this movie. You have this interesting comic book movie that actually talked a lot about some of the older comics. That would for sure grab a certain type of viewer and the film could of had a following. Maybe even became a cult film. But half way through it went from being about comic books, to about killing people. It makes no sense. You could of made two crappy movies out of this one film. Small parts I did enjoy and that was mostly just some of the characters. Like I enjoyed Donal Logue and Danny Masterson. Logue really seemed to get his role and Masterson, although having a small part, seemed to get his also. Most of the other characters were OK or just awful. I really don't get Cary Elwes as his character. It just really didn't seem like his type of character and you can really pick it out in the film. Again, the story of the film just doesn't make too sense. Well too much sense on how they made it. The general background is easy to understand. People who love comic books fight to try to get a stash of old one of a kind comics that was left over by an old lady's dead son. But how they filmed it was just messed up. Eileen Brennan played the old lady and she was actually not that bad to watch. It shows even in a bad movie like this, the wise can still act.

I know Cary has been in bad movies, but I never thought he would sink as low as this. All this movie is some half baked director thinking he can take the styles of Tarantino and the Coen Brothers and come up with a happy medium.... well it sucked. No one waste your time on this horrible and worthless thing. All we seem to have nowadays are people trying to take the styles of other directors and find new ways to tell the same stories.No on in their right might with any directing talent would even try to take a wretched screenplay like this and make it into a horrid movie like it was. Movies have to have purpose and directors need to start coming up with their own styles rather than do poor rip offs of others. I can't remember the last time I saw such an awful film.

James Robinson started out with a pretty good idea although I was hoping for a character based more on the comic book guy from "The Simpsons". He had enough money to make a technically solid feature out of his material, and he did a fairly good job of casting (except for Cary Elwes). I won't bother to summarize the plot but will just address what went wrong. And enough is wrong to render this thing genuinely terrible.It appears that Robinson was inspired to totally change his original ending late in the game, but was not inspired enough to rewrite the first half of his screenplay (very lazy). Which means there is a HUGE disconnection between the first and the second halves of the movie. This is not a good thing because in the first half Robinson provides film language elements (signs and syntax) that point in an entirely different direction from the way the film ends up going. This 180 degree change of direction can work if the writer/director plants subtle clues in the first half that only register with the viewer at the end of the film, or when thinking about it the next day. Robinson planted no such clues and did no foreshadowing. The whole idea of film is to effectively tell a story; bottom line is that writers and directors who do this well are considered talented. Robinson should either learn his craft or find another profession.As I was watching it I gave it more credit than it deserved. I was waiting for them to reveal that the mother and the robber had just set up the store-owners to teach them a lesson. After a point I had to abandon this idea and began to wonder if it was a parody without any humor. If that's the idea then someone should explain to Robinson that to be successful a parody should be funny.There were some very good shots in this movie. Natasha Lyonne gave a particularly good performance even if it was a grown-up version of her "American Pie" character. So a lot of good work was totally wasted on something that doesn't work on any level which is very sad.

Comic Book Villains is a satirical black comedy about, you guessed it, comic books and the sometimes strange people that collect them. The movie is a little darker than expected so perhaps I would have enjoyed it more had I known what I was about to see. Still, it was a fun movie that pokes fun at the world of comic book collecting/collectors.DJ Qualls plays Archie, an all around good guy and the narrator of the story as well. Qualls is perfect as the comic book geek type. His favorite place to hang out and buy/read comics is at Raymond McGillicudy's (Donal Logue) comic shop (the names of the shops escapes me). Raymond is into the comic book scene and has the shop because he loves dealing with comic books. Across town is Norman and Judy Link's (Michael Rapaport & Natasha Lyonne) comic shop. Norman and Judy are there strictly for the money. Archie loves Raymond's shop and his knowledge in comics plus he finds everything he likes there so he has never found a reason to visit the other shop. On the other hand, there is "Conan", played by Danny Masterson from That 70's Show. Conan claims he is a descendant of the creator of Conan The Barbarian comic books and is the instigator for the whole movie because he visits both shops regularly and provides information to both.The movie takes it's dark turn after both shop owners discover there is a pristine collection of comic books that belonged to a deceased comic book collector who had a great collection. After that, the backstabbing, double-crossing, dirty tricks and much more begins the dark tone of the movie.My favorite characters were Norman and Judy Link. Rapaport usually plays a tougher character and it was different to see him in more of a submissive position here, especially to his wife. Lyonne also did a great job as a "comic book villain" and certainly looked her best here as well. Also, Danny Masterson played a subtle instigator well, not unlike his character Hyde from That 70's Show. Overall, worth a look. 6.5/10