NERD FOREVER Review

Mario Caroni’s Nerd Forever plays out like every nerdy kid’s dream – or possible nightmare, depending on how you look at it – of being thrust into a video game. With copious game references, and some very fun moments, this is a short film every gamer should see.

The film revolves around four brothers taking a swim in the ocean when they discover a mysterious box nestled in the reef on the sea floor. Upon opening it, they find that it contains an unmarked Nintendo DS game. Being avid game junkies, they pop in the tiny cartridge, and one of the boys is sucked into the game. Now it’s up to the other three to play the game’s three levels in order to save their brother from being killed in real life.

Lifting assets directly from such games as Super Mario Bros., Pac Man, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, each level in the game is based off of a different genre: a platformer, an FPS (first-person shooter) and a fighting game.

An evil red-and-black animated mushroom acts as the demonic moderator, making sure to let the kids know that if their brother dies even once in the game, he’s gone forever.

Although the 14-minute short has a very low-budget look to it, the visuals are still satisfying, and all the sound effects are pulled directly from the previously mentioned games.

Like most video games these days, the film is surprisingly violent, especially in the Mortal Kombat-like fighting stage, where we witness the young boy facing off against an equally young girl, one who looks a lot like Kitana from the MK series. The fact that all the opponents in the game were other children made me wonder if there are more cartridges like this one floating around in the world and if these could be real people as well.

Of course, what would a day in a typical child’s life be like if there wasn’t some parental intervention at some point, and that happens in Nerd Forever at the worst possible moment. The mother in the film is heard but never seen, with the camera instead trained on her feet, as she interacts with the children. This proves to be an interesting stylistic choice that reminds us of the disconnect between our world as kids and the omnipotent grown-up world.

The sequences inside the games themselves look decent and could be compared to the YouTube series Video Game High School, with everything presented as happening in real-life, with the exception of the things like a giant Pac-Man head chasing you down.

Nerd Forever is the type of film that works perfectly as a short but could easily be stretched into a feature. It’s surprisingly funny, surprisingly violent and an overall enjoyable little ride. If this makes its way online, I would definitely recommend checking it out.
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