Ashens and the Polybius Heist

A decent independent movie. The previous Ashens movie was a good effort but you needed to be a fan of cult movies to appreciate it. This one however is really good. Wonderfull British humour and good acting. If you are into British humour and can appriciate the geeky theme then this movie will not dissapoint you. The cast was well chosen and the story kept you interested. The characters had enough dept and all contributed to the movie. There was only one gag that seemed a bit out of place but I can easily look past that one.

I found this super-cute. Actors were very good. I love the main guy, the heist people and the sister romance. It looked also amazing although maybe the lighting a bit hard at times, but I love lighting so I see these things. Most of all it was the best fun all through and the characters felt friendly and sweet. A bit like Friends but with UK style. I hope they do do a series with everyone and a wedding.

While the synopsis might make this movie seem a bit nerdy and niche market, it reaches parts others can't reach. It is a blast. Lots of laughs and some great characters. Good to see some strong women characters. Loved the oh so stylish jumpers. Has production quality rarely reached in low budget productions.

I was quite delighted by the film, and just how well it stands on its own merits (regardless if you have prior knowledge of Stuart and his content). For a "Youtuber movie", if you could even call it that, it knocked it out of the park. Great value for money, and would reccomend to anyone interested in light hearted comedy and heist films.

This film set itself two very difficult goals. The first - creating a comedy heist movie at all - it succeeds at very well. The characters are neither so competent that they are distant, nor so incompetent that the heist itself is unconvincing; the percieved difficulty of the heist is pitched just right, the characters' failing are understandable and identifable, and it strictly limits the amount of humor that comes from character incompetence. The production quality is also remarkably high, especially for the budget involved. The second challenge is making a character-driven movie featuring YouTubers, who (regardless of acting ability) have the difficulty of their existing fanbases associating them wholly with their "YouTube mood". Ashens himself comes off best, due to his previous acting experience, his fanbase's knowledge of his previous films, and his dry-comedy theme; but as mentioned elsewhere, Dan Hardcastle clearly suffers from trying to play his YouTube persona "Nerd Cubed" in a way his viewers would expect (they even named his character "The Cube"), which leaves his character reacting to a disasterous development like.. well, a YouTuber reacting to an abrupt Game Over on a Let's Play video, rather than a person who is actually in imminent and increasing danger of going to prison for 20 years. The difficulties of the second by no means overcome the success of the first, though, and the film works extremely well as a convincing heist with some genuinely hilarious moments. There are a few down spots, though, in part caused by the film's habit of integrating meta-humour about directorial tropes and film-making at odd moments. This often comes up in the backgrounds or details of the film, sometimes so dramatically that it comes close to being its own CinemaSins reel, but when it gets pushed to the foreground it becomes more awkward. The scene where the villain has to pursue Ashens while both are moving extremely slowly through motion detectors probably sounded hilarious on paper but when actually filmed you realize it's just two people moving really slowly in gaits that don't make sense; it looks like a good chunk of that scene was edited out, for good reason. By far the cringiest of these points was one which a sign inside the facility is written purely in Greek, entirely so that the (otherwise incompetent) Greek-speaking character accidentally recruited by the team can turn out to be crucial. I suspect this was intended as a parody of this trope in team movies, but with no explanation it comes across as so contrived as to just be a horrible example of that trope rather than a joke about it. As previously stated, though, the highs and the general quality outweight the lows, and while this film will obviously appeal much more to fans of the YouTubers involved, to nerds, and to fans of Ashens' style of humor (whether or not they have heard of the man himself), it's a fun watch for anyone, especially those with prior experience of heist movies.