Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Tony Jaa

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Tony Jaa

This was an article by some other user. But it got deleted. I wrote and formatted a new version, up to date, also. The VDO is a must see to understand. Any constructive help would be appreciated. Cheers! Funnybony    09:07, Aug 20 09:07, August 20, 2010 (UTC)

I'm starting it now. Hoping to finish tonight, if not I'll let you know and should be able to get it by tomorrow night. --Black Flamingo 19:56, October 14, 2010 (UTC)

Humour:	6.5	Hi Funnybony, this seems to be the oldest request here so I guess I'll get it. Overall you've got some great stuff in here but I also feel the article is being held back by a style of humour that is largely cliched. Allow me to explain: The main problem with the article, in my opinion, is that you rely too much upon the tired "exagerrated machismo" joke that we've all seen before in the Chuck Norris meme and dozens of other articles about so-called "bad-asses". Even though you pull this off a lot better than most of the other articles that attempt this, the fact is it's still an old joke that was never really that funny in the first place. It's a bit of a cheap joke too, if you don't mind me saying. At times it's quite random, which also isn't good. The thing that made Chuck Norris facts even slightly funny was the fact that it was supposed to be ironic (I think, anyway). Because obviously Chuck Norris is actually pretty lame (at least, that's how I read it). But with Tony Jaa, because he actually is quite bad-ass (for want of a better word) it loses the irony, and to me it just reads like it's been written by an enamoured fan. While it might be true that Tony Jaa is tough and athletic, there are any number of other famous people you could make the same joke about, so it's not unique to him. That's the kind of thing you should be looking for when writing a biographical article, a unique characteristic of that person. For instance, the you describe him as being "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap both under and over a moving train at the same time, or, for that matter, catch a flying helicopter and pull it down to earth". That's not really funny is it? It's just exagerrated. It's also nonsense. I'm not too keen on the video either. While I agree that it's impressive, I'm just dead against putting videos in an Uncyc artice, unless it's absolutely, positively vital. It looks scruffy and unencyclopaedic. Call me old fashioned but I still think of this as a writing-based website. Of course it's up to you, but why not try linking to such YouTube videos in the footnotes or references? I don't think it's so important that the reader sees this, and it's probably the thing that makes this article look more like a fan tribute than anything else. That's the key here, we're supposed to be laughing at Tony Jaa, not idolising him senselessly. Another slight problem with the humour is the cursory nature of some of the jokes. In plain English, you don't go into enough depth at times. A good example of this is the joke where you say Hinduism and Buddhism are the same thing, which to be honest I found more perplexing that funny. What do you mean by this? You really have to explain it better or nobody's going to know what you mean. Remember, take your time telling jokes, establish the facts before you make a crack about them. Another time this happened is with the joke about Thai language being a speech impediment. Now this time I knew what you were saying, but you just rushed through the joke and didn't take much care in the telling. Generally, a joke that just appears in brackets as a side-comment to an otherwise serious sentence is too cursory. Try to make the joke in the prose by saying something like "Jaa suffered from an speech impediment that initially hindered his acting career. This impediment, or "Thai language" as it's also known is..." While this isn't hilarious, I hope you can see how it flows better. The reader has time to consider and digest the joke and is much more likely to laugh. Another note on this; get rid of the Facts section. This is listy and has very little depth to it. While the jokes themselves aren't bad, again, you need to take your time with them, try to move them up into the main body of the text for maximum effect. Ok, so they're the main problems humour-wise, now let's talk about the stuff I did like. I thought the idea of him being a "defender of elephants" had a lot of potential, and is something you should definitely explore more. Unlike the macho jokes, it was something that I have personally never encountered before, and it held my interest well. Quite a few of these jokes about his elephant-worshipping actually made me laugh, so well done there. I would recommend you try to develop this though, and go into more detail about him hunting down these "elephant-haters" and things like that. Perhaps revise your characterisation to portray him as someone who cares really deeply for elephants and yearns to protect them but is oddly callous towards humans, and has no gripe about hurting them. I already got hints of this from your article and it would definitely be a good direction to move towards.
Concept:	6.5	The main thing I'm going to say about concept is try to keep this as realistic as you can. You really go over the top with some of the ideas, especially when you start talking about gods and circuses and stuff. It's difficult to take any of this seriously as it's so unbelieveable. Also, the god part could work just as well without any supernatural elements, Jaa could have become a monk to escape the indulgence and subsequent guilt that came with movie stardom. I would definitely recommend a more realistic edge here, something that takes a more cynical and realistic look at the martial arts genre. Your joke about him saying "YAAAAHHHHH!!" for instance was good, and I read that as being a subtle critique of the poor/simple dialogue in such films (whether or not this was intentional I'm not sure, but still, good stuff). More jokes of this nature would be beneficial, and I think you could easily knock the joke count up if you start thinking about ways you can poke fun at the genre.
Prose and formatting:	7	Now while your spelling and grammar are generally good, the prose can get a little messy at times. I would definitely recommend you give it a thorough read through, just try to smooth it out. Too many sentence start and end in weird places, so try to make that more consistent. As well as this, there are a few parts where you use way too many commas (or simply unecessary commas). Again, go through it and try to get rid of as many as you can stand to. At times, jokes are weakened because your writing loses its flow. The first joke about him yelling "YAAAAAHHH!!" is a good example of this. The line in question is: "Then he could easily be understood. For example, if Jaa screams, "YAAAAAAAAAAAH!" while attacking a gang of miscreants, most Western audiences can clearly understand what he is saying". I think you need to take longer telling this joke, like I mention above. I understand what you're getting at but I didn't really get any laughs out of it because I had to stumble through the sentence, trying to work it out. Basically, you're saying his English is poor, and the dialogue is poor. Right? So establish this first. Perhaps mention that there were fears that no one would be able to understand him. Then go into the joke about how people understand him when he yells "YAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!" Do you see how this would flow better? Like I said before, establish the facts before making a fun of them. Apart from that there are just a few little errors in spelling and/or grammar. Words like "dojo" and "elephant", for instance, don't need to be capitalised (these are both in the Early Life section). Also in that section, "bath" should be "bathe". Then in the Elephant Activism section, "most all his life" should be "most of his life". Make sure you check your spelling and grammar again though as I've definitely missed a few myself. And remember to proofread any changes you make.
Images:	7	Your images are ok, as are some your captions. The Mr Nice Guy one and the one with the fire could do with some work. My comments in the Humour section are still relevant when it comes to thinking up captions, so always bear that in mind. Maybe take another look at other biographical articles for ideas on what to do with pictures and captions. The good thing about articles on real people is it's always easy to find tons of pics of them on Google and IMDb and the like. So browse those, see if you can find some more varied ones, or ones that are inherently funny without a caption. Although the ones you have are good, they're all kind of similar. They even seem to have the same basic colour scheme.
Miscellaneous:	6.5	My gut feeling.
Final Score:	33.5	So to conclude, there is some good stuff in here. I particuarly liked the elephant parts, but felt the overdone macho-guy stuff really held it back. Also, take another look at some of the jokes I described as being "cursory" and just try to give them a little more depth. Apart from that, nice work. It shouldn't take much effort to get this article into good shape. Anyway, I hope the review was ok, sorry you had to wait for so long. Us reviewers are really falling behind of late (myself included). If you want me to take a look at anything more specific, or don't understand something I've said here, feel free to leave me a message and I'll see what I can do. Have fun editing.
Reviewer:	--Black Flamingo 22:22, October 14, 2010 (UTC)