Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Tom Cruise

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Tom Cruise

Vertumnus (talk) 07:44, April 25, 2012 (UTC) :Your resident Peereviewer. |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Aussie CUN|IC Kill | 07:23, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

Look, I don't want to do this. |Si Plebius Dato' Joe ang Aussie CUN|IC Kill | 10:45, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

Humour:	6	The way I review, I generally put the majority of my comments and suggestions in the humor section. This allows me to be lazy keep all of my thoughts organized. I'll give you my first impressions after one read through and then go in for a more detailed look. Just so you know, I was a section editor for a newspaper with a circulation of about 3,000 weekly readers. My opinion matters dammit! Initial Impressions Well, while short I was given the impression that this was written without the benefit of being proof-read. There are some tone issues, some grammar and syntax errors and so on. The piece suffers from a schizophrenic disposition; you establish a bunch of different narrative that compete with each other to the detriment of the article. The other thing that struck me was that the article was a bit bland and labored. I chuckled at parts, but I found myself hurrying my reading toward the end so I could start writing the review. The other thing that struck me was red links and a quote at the top of the article. More about that later. Let's dive in: Section by Section Introduction The quote at the top: get rid of it. The joke that Tom Cruise is spontaneously crazy and strange can be better made within the article. The quote at the top of the article thing is old news. Forgive me if the culture has changed around here (I haven't posted with regularity in a long time), but I was under the impression that the quotes at the top of the article were a tired and old trope. An introduction section is supposed to be a primer for the reader in addition to being a summary. That said, your introduction implies to the reader that the article will be a narrative about how Tom Cruise got the many names attributed to him through Scientology. The article really isn't about that, which is the first of many tone issues throughout. I would expand your introduction and have it include more information relevant to your article's focus, more on that later. Early Life Right off the bat, we have a classic case of syntax error mixed with run-on. Your sentence; "Very true to the style of the soppy flicks that propelled him to stardom, Tom was allegedly born into "near poverty" in Syracuse, New York, the screenwriter not being very inventive in giving him a Catholic upbringing and an abusive father" could be much better written as; "Tom was allegedly born into "near poverty" in Syracuse, New York, eerily reminiscent of the many characters he played in the soppy flicks that propelled him to stardom. The screenwriter was not very inventive, so he gave him a Catholic upbringing with an abusive father." Using a quote in the middle of an article is much more effective, and I feel like this point in the article could benefit from such a quote. However, I'm not entirely sold on what you've chosen. A lot of the problems I'm seeing at this point are largely conceptual rather than anything else. I'll probably end up doing a large concept section for this review. A bit of Aussie fun I'm not so much a fan of referring to Cruise's movies in simplistic terms (e.g. "good guys shoot down commies"). On top of that, I'm not really picking up on many jokes throughout, it seems mostly that the article is focused on making the concept funny overall through the narrative. You have basically two motifs running at this point: that Tom Cruise's life is a movie being written by cheesy screen-writers a la Michael Bay. Second, it seems that you are making light of the many romantic relationships that Tom Cruise has had. Also, there are references to Scientology that are infrequent. You need more explicit jokes I think, you know, those one liners or non-sequiturs that make people spit out their soda. From Cruz-lover to Couchjumper More of the same relationships and screenplay stuff. Scientology starts to prominently feature here. I thought overall this section was the hardest to read. It stopped feeling like it was somewhat clever, like before with the screenwriters stuff, and started to veer off into strange and forced land. A land where many Uncyclopedia articles go to die, devoid of readers. We'll touch on larger issues in the concept section. L. Ron Hubbard Odd, just odd. Not funny, and very odd. Cruise future Lots of random stuff that is forced and a closing that is, by far, one of my most hated to come across as an editor: the "what comes next? who knows but it will be interesting to watch" conclusion as I like to call it. This section would require a lot of expansion if you were to keep it. Final Humor Comments Overall, a fairly uneven article. It starts off a lot funnier and better than it ends. The article and the themes within it feel forced and tired after a certain point, almost as if you lost steam writing it in the middle. The tone and focus of this article wanders a lot, and I have a few suggestions below under concept that I hope can help you turn this into a good piece of satire.
Concept:	5.5	Here's the problem. The idea of Tom Cruise's life being scripted is intriguing. I think the satirical angle is that the majority of his movies are cliched, simplistic, and predictable and that his life follows the same scripted pattern. The problem is that you don't execute this very well. This is what I mean by tone. The second part to that is that Tom Cruise's life is anything but cliched and predictable. Tom Cruise is nuts and a scientologist, which you allude to throughout. This a problem. Tom Cruise can not have a simplistic and predictable scripted life and also be completely off-the-wall nuts. Second, you mix in a lot of material about Cruise's many marriages which doesn't really tie in very well that what you're trying to accomplish. My overall suggestion would be to drop a lot of material you have, especially the "randumb" stuff towards the end and pick one focus and run with it. If you choose the "scripted life" approach, go all out and stick with a single tone and premise. For me, while it may seem obvious, I would scrap pretty much most of what you have and write a biting piece of satire lampooning the fact that as time has progressed and Tom Cruise had fallen deeper into scientology, he's grown more and more crazy. For me, this is where the greatest potential for humor is. Write a narrative of how Tom was an all American kid, seduced by L Ron Hubbard, and is now bat-shit insane. Be careful not to overdo it, which such a topic could easily lend itself to.
Prose and formatting:	6.5	For the most part, the article is formatted OK. I would expand the introduction and make it's scope a little more broad (a summary of everything if you will without much detail). I would definitely work on eliminating those ugly redlinks and the top quote. Last, mop up the article for spelling and grammar, there are a few issues.
Images:	4	You have plenty of images, but for the most part they are fairly straightforward and don't offer much in the way of humor. Pictures and captions are a goldmine for producing interest in your article and for causing laughs. I'm not a fan of the caption for the infobox picture. I'm inclined to say a caption isn't necessary at all. "Tom shows off his poker face." the picture is fairly unassuming and is a normal faceshot. What about it implies a game of poker? What about it implies Tom is hiding something? Get some more interesting images and spend time coming up with good captions. (a small tip. I find the funniest captions are non-sequiturs, meaning that the caption relates to the topic of the article but does not tie in to the text specifically. In essence, an unrelated one-liner).
Miscellaneous:	4	My level of enjoyment from reading the article, on a scale of 0 being not at all, 5 being average and 10 being jizz-in-my-pants.
Final Score:	26	Uneven, and not terribly funny. This article needs work, and if I were tasked with working on it I would redo a majority of it to address the tone issues and come up with a specific angle for the article's satire. Bulleted summary of suggestions: come up with a specific angle of attack for your satire and stick with it. better images and captions. If you have any comments, gripes, threats, etc. I encourage you to drop me a line.
Reviewer:	-- Sir SF13 (Talk) GUN WotM RotM FBotM VFH SK Maj. ΥΣΣ 2144 EDT 12 June, 2012