What the hell is this all about?
It's Movie Criticism, but, you know, for the Retarded, silly.

Yeah, but what does that mean?
We write musings on the world of movies, as well as other observations on popular culture, in a fun way that you don't have to be a film scholar to understand.

So, why "Retarded"? Isn't that offensive?
Only if you're retarded. If you want to complain, please remember that we've heard it all before. MCFTR is a website based on lighthearted humor, pop culture observations, and good old fashioned fun. Although we use "for the retarded" in our domain and website name, we in no way wish any harm or insult on any persons of mental or physical handicap. It's a term we toss around like it's a tennis ball. It means nothing. It just sounds good. And god damn, is it funny. So please, if you want to hit us with hate mail, feel free, but we've seen it many times before. And we're not changing the title. Ever. In fact, the site will probably outlast you, so learn to live with it.

Who came up with this idea?
Well, it can all be traced back to the year 1996, in a small video store outside of Atlanta, Georgia. One of the fun things we did to relieve boredom was to type musings to one another during the shift. One fine day, Bobby penned a little piece on CITIZEN KANE that he entitled "Movie Criticism for the Retarded". While it caught our eye at the time, he never realized what that one little thing could snowball in to.

Who else was involved in this mess?
At the time, the store in question employed myself, Bobby, Chad, and Terry. Over the course of the next year or so, we spent all out bored time in the store writing our little reviews, making top ten lists, and other random observations in to the world of film.

Shouldn't you have been working?
Yes.

What about the web site? When did that start?
After the video store shut its doors, I felt the urge to share our musings with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, all I had was copies of about 3/4 of the stuff printed from a dot matrix printer. I painstakingly transcribed all of this material into cyberspace, and finally put it online in the summer of 1998 on a shitty web server.

Are you calling this web server shitty?
No, that was another host. I launched the site on this server in October of 2002 with a new look and a real domain.

So who writes for the site?
I designed and maintain the site as well as write the majority of the articles, but there are several other fine folks who have contributed to the site. I'll even give us little mini-bios:

Noel Wood serves as the webmaster of this site, and has been with this thing since the beginning. While not watching movies and spouting off about them online, he spends his time and money surrounding himself with small plastic objects and filling his brain with useless knowledge. He currently is writing this in the third person.

Bobby Jones is one of the founders of Movie Criticism for the Retarded, writing the first review and creating the name of the site way back when. Bobby enjoys reading comic books, playing video games, and collecting toys, which would surely earn him ridicule were he not a happily married man. I heard he once shot a squirrel just to watch it die.

Chad Shonk was also among the original crew of MCFTR, lending the first real shred of credibility to the content with his film school knowledge. Chad is currently our "inside man" in Hollywood, sent there to bring the industry down to its knees. He even has his own page on the Internet Movie Database as well as official fan club!

Terry Baker has also been involved with this whole MCFTR gig since the video store days, or in layman's terms, waaay too long. Terry got hitched in the same chapel that George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones did in INTOLERABLE CRUELTY. His interests include Zombies, Monkeys, Alyson Hannigan, and Weird Japanese Shit.

Jay "Me So" Hornsby joined the action here at MCFTR a bit later in the game, but brought to the table his unique brand of humor and wit. Jay is another one of us certified geeks, an avid comic book fan and toy collector as well quite the B-movie aficionado. He got married wearing his sneakers by a preacher with more tattoos than your mom.

J.R. Gast began contributing in the winter of 2002 after demanding I post his drunken CHICAGO review. J.R. Recently spent ten weeks in India training his job replacements and now has a call center in the third world named after him. You can also find his writing on his own site, The American Undershirt. J.R. has been missing in action for over a year now, and search parties have been deployed.

Justin Patterson's MCFTR genesis also originates in the days of the video store, the difference being that Justin was on the other side of the counter as one of those annoying customers. After years of coaxing, we were finally able to talk Justin into lending his insights to the cause here as well. You can also pay the man a visit by checking out his brain.

JK Radtke has become a semi-regular contributor to the MCFTR cause, supplying his insight on some of the finest B-movies ever made. JK's work can also be found on his own site, Living Corpse, which has also featured the occasional crossover article from MCFTR as well.

Beth Van Dusen began her tenure at MCFTR co-authoring some pieces with her partner in holy matrimony, Terry. Soon, she began to lend her own insights into the world of film by her lonesome. Someone who puts up with Terry's oddball interests has to have a pretty high threshold for pain, so Beth often reviews some of the real stinkers out there.

Keith Nichols was recently recruited into the MCFTR fold without his knowledge or permission. Every once in a blue moon Keith's private e-mail to the webmaster will be usurped and posted to the site to flesh out the content here. While Keith is a pretty good guy and all, we find it's best to keep this dirty little secret from him. You can pay him a visit in his little padded cell here.

So those are the players. Now back to the FAQ:

What are your favorite movies?
There's a ton of movies that I hold dear, but my favorite films of all time include 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, THE WIZARD OF OZ, PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, BLUE VELVET, HEAVENLY CREATURES, and SAY ANYTHING.

Why do you cover non-movie items?
I decided some time ago that the entertainment spectrum was just too wide to limit myself strictly to motion pictures. I still try to keep movies as the focus of the site, but I've started doing reviews of television specials and bootleg toys as fairly regular features. At one time, I toyed with the idea of changing the name of the site to Entertainment for the Retarded but there's so many general pop culture sites out there that I decided to stay in this niche.

You haven't updated in a while. What gives?
Chill out. I do this site completely in my spare time, spending my own money on resources, and don't make a cent off of it in the process. I try to keep the site updated at least two or three times a week, but if I have something going on that keeps me busy, then that's not always feasible. I work two jobs in addition to maintaining the site, so it's tough sometimes to even see movies, much less write about them.

Where else has your work appeared?
While most of what you see here is exclusive to MCFTR, you may have also run across one of our articles on another site. Aside from the cross promotion with JK Radtke's Living Corpse, MCFTR content has also appeared on Badmouth Movies, The Sci-fi Movie Page, and even in German on Comicgate.

If you have a site and are looking for a guest article, feel free to use our material provided that you link back to us and give proper credit.

Are you an Elvis man or a Beatles man?
Beatles, all the way.

What are your favorite articles and/or reviews on the site?
Well, I'd have to break this down into two categories: The content that I enjoyed writing, and the content from others here that I'm most proud to have on the site. Granted, I think every bit of content here on the site is worth its salt, or else I would have trashed it as I did several articles from the early days.

Here are some of the favorites I've written:
Finally, STAR WARS on DVD! (Not Really)
The Top Ten Robots in the Movies
The Scariest Clowns in Movie History
A review of BEYOND THE MAT
I pun my way through FINDING NEMO
The FARK-Approved tribute to THE BIG LEBOWSKI
Mr. T's Be Somebody! video dissected and rated
Controvery! The phenomenon known as the Magic Negro.
I finally express my hatred toward STAR WARS EPISODE I
An ode to the one and only Patrick Swayze

And the cream of the crop from those penned by our other contributors:
Chad reviews KILL BILL VOLUME ONE
Kevin Bacon tells us how to cut Footloose!
Justin looks at the Married With Children Christmas Special
Terry takes a hard look at the aesthetics of Zombies.
Chad grills THE MATRIX: RELOADED
J.R. reviews Best Picture winner CHICAGO
Jay looks at the biggest crimes against comic books
Terry monkeys around with movie titles
Chad tells us how to title a movie
Bobby's now-infamous ditty about John J. Rambo

How long can you keep this up?
Until I lose interest, which doesn't seem too likely anytime soon. I've been doing this for close to six years on the web, and my interest only seems to grow as time goes on. The more readers I reach, the more I desire to write, so if you want me to keep writing, alls I can say to you is keep on reading!