Short of the Week
fight-for-your-right-revisited

Beastie Boys: Fight For Your Right Revisited

The Beastie Boys delve back into their past with this celebrity-driven, meta-comedy short film.

The Beastie Boys delve back into their past, with this celebrity-driven, meta-comedy short film. Seth Rogen, Danny McBride and Elijah Wood play the Beasties circa License to Ill, and a huge host of other stars come out in cameo form. The plot, if you can call it one, has the trio engaging in wild and drunken antics, eventually to face-off in an epic dance battle against their future selves.

Debuting at Sundance earlier this year, the 22 min film had its TV premiere last night, playing a censored version on VH1 and MTV2 and an uncensored version on Comedy Central. This is the uncensored version, put online this morning thanks to Audio Perv. I found it via Collider (updated to official YouTube link).

I’ve seen the iconic music videos, No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Sabotage and of course Fight For Your Right To Party, but am not intimately familiar with the Beastie Boys and their mythology. Any fans? What did you think?

 

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Sondhi approaches films from the perspective of an uber-fan, knowledgeable film academic, and occasional filmmaker. His tendency to over-think his film criticisms is due to a background in Philosophy, but he is putting useless intellectualizing aside for this site.
  • Jason Sondhi

    Down most of the afternoon, back up via http://www.joblo.com/video/player.php?video=beastieboysfight

  • http://www.thomasbealecipher.com Andrew S Allen

    Hmmm. Some interesting moments, funny at times. But overall, I’m not sure what I think. Part of me is disappointed that all these talented actors weren’t put to better use. But perhaps REVISITED is simply the more mature, high-brow version of the unfettered, improvisational style of the original music video.

  • Jason Sondhi

    I love how you manage to describe a film with a literal pissing contest as “high-brow” =)

  • Matt Kirby

    I agree with the above in that there was disappointment that those actors weren’t put to better use. There was so much space where nothing really happened. I got the impression that the intent was for this to be funny hence, so many comedy actors. A shame.

  • Felonious Punk

    This is some dope-a$$ed $#iT!!! I can’t count how many times I thought I was about to burst from a build-up of sheer joy! Truly from the future. And the dance-off scene was so real, I could have sworn I really smelled urine. :-(

  • Jason Sondhi

    Hey! We’ve got Felonious to get behind the film! Seemed everybody was down on it.

  • Jason Sondhi

    So, new OFFICIAL link via Hulu. Seems a bit longer too. Whats the difference between the versions?

  • Andrew Blake

    I thought the video was goddamn amazing. So cool that it was made 25 years after the original. As to earlier comments regarding use of actors? Remember how much money those actors would have been paid just for showing up, let alone have speaking roles or more screen time lol. It was also unnescisary. The video was about the beastie boys, not the cameos, just the sheer amount of well known actors (not all of them comedic actors…) in the video i found to be funny enough

  • Ben Davies

    Love the Beastie Boys but that is useless. Nerdy, but not in a self-reflexive way. Almost conceited in its execution, as though everyone involved was so confident it was going to work even though it seems to have never stood a chance since conceived.

  • Felonious Punk

    @Ben Davies: You were obviously not high on life at the time of watching. Beauty is in the eye.