To many of us, a pub quiz is a way of spending an evening with friends and having a few drinks. The competitive part of it is undoubtedly there but mostly it is about having fun with reasonable questions where you'll know many of them but really the main thing is to have a team name that gets laughs and respect from others. However to some people it is a full time profession with regional, national and international competitions. This film picks a couple of British "quizzers" and follows them on their way to the European championship.
A couple of the other New Shoots short documentary films have suggested that they would go down the "quirkumentary" but then sort of fudged it by seemingly not making that decision in a firm enough way. However Quizzers embraces it as delivers a light-hearted but engaging look at the world of the professional and semi-professional quizzer. In pub quizzes I have done in the past I have generally been an OK member of my team but with some of the questions asked here I simply have no clue not even enough to have a guess in most cases. However the people in this film seem to be infinite chasms of information (name the last 10 American Vice-Presidents? What!?) and perhaps curious characters.
So it is here as CJ and others are amusing people who make great subjects and themselves are amusing enough to carry a 25 minute film with a vague documentary approach built on top of them. In a way it is similar to the approach used by Morgan Mathews in some of his films (most notably Hair Wars) and it works well enough here to produce a mini-quirkumentary that is carried by the light approach and the selection of engaging characters. Probably couldn't have carried a film much longer than 25 minutes but I enjoyed it for what it was quirky amusement.
A couple of the other New Shoots short documentary films have suggested that they would go down the "quirkumentary" but then sort of fudged it by seemingly not making that decision in a firm enough way. However Quizzers embraces it as delivers a light-hearted but engaging look at the world of the professional and semi-professional quizzer. In pub quizzes I have done in the past I have generally been an OK member of my team but with some of the questions asked here I simply have no clue not even enough to have a guess in most cases. However the people in this film seem to be infinite chasms of information (name the last 10 American Vice-Presidents? What!?) and perhaps curious characters.
So it is here as CJ and others are amusing people who make great subjects and themselves are amusing enough to carry a 25 minute film with a vague documentary approach built on top of them. In a way it is similar to the approach used by Morgan Mathews in some of his films (most notably Hair Wars) and it works well enough here to produce a mini-quirkumentary that is carried by the light approach and the selection of engaging characters. Probably couldn't have carried a film much longer than 25 minutes but I enjoyed it for what it was quirky amusement.
