DJO – Happy in Paraguay

By Shamus Posted Saturday Mar 20, 2010

Filed under: Movies 29 comments

This is an interesting specimen. It’s made the rounds and clocked a million or so views as of this writing. It’s been on Attack of the Show.

(Warning: Naughty language.)


Link (YouTube)

I find myself loving the idea while disliking the execution. It’s amusing to see this nonsense dialog lip-sync so well with the original footage. But the constantly changing voices and the insertion bodily function noises feel like they betray the idea. Without those, it would kind of have the humorously subversive quality of found art. But once you add burping and “wacky” voices it feels like you’re trying to add humor instead of discovering it.

It still works, but I’d actually love if someone took this idea and played it “straight”.

But credit where it’s due: It’s a clever idea and the author does a good job of making the dialog fit.

 


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29 thoughts on “DJO – Happy in Paraguay

  1. mark says:

    You appear to have just gotten some free advertising. My Zero Punctuation feed has 25 Stolen Pixels in it…

  2. krellen says:

    I’d be even more impressed had they managed to make some coherent dialogue about apple juice throughout instead of the nonsense they did.

  3. eri says:

    Yeah, didn’t find it funny at all… it’s an interesting technical accomplishment but I feel like the “point” is lost. If you’re going to do a re-dub of something, why not make the content meaningful?

  4. Henebry says:

    I agree with you. Great idea, lousy execution. The thing would come alive if sense were discovered in the midst of the nonsense dictated by the rule that whatever you say needs to synch up with the character’s lip movements. The creator(s) of this video don’t seem to have looked hard for discovered meaning. And they make matters worse by making arbitrary shifts of tone (including body noises), adding 5 second blips of music, etc.

  5. Daimbert says:

    Yeah, I have to agree about it not being all that funny. I don’t mind some of the extra sound effects, but they really should match up with the body actions better.

    Especially since this sort of re-dub isn’t actually all that hard, since a very, very large portion of what we can say phonetically doesn’t rely on the lips at all, but internal reactions of the tongue, voice box, and general air flow. You could decode yourself a good dub by taking a phonetic chart and finding all the characters that align with the same lip positions, and then translating that to different words.

  6. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Yeah,Ive heard way better voice overs,though in serbian.I still have to find one in english that is good.Guess we have a better sense of humour then you guys when dealing with this stuff.(Im not counting remixes here)

  7. SiliconScout says:

    uhhhh… that was bad.. just bad.

    it was like listening to 2 drunk and high stoners talk. except not funny.

    nice try though.

  8. JPLC says:

    Wow, that was pretty disappointing. Especially because they did the same idea in a previous vid, but executed it much better. Here’s the vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPYGFNIv_Ak

    Again, same idea as Shamus’s embedded vid and by the same people, but I find it worthwhile because it manages to keep some form of coherency throughout. The vid Shamus embedded, by comparison, was just entirely random. And not even in the entertaining way.

    1. WoodenTable says:

      Oddly enough, my biggest issue with the video Shamus linked is the fact that the voices change every few lines. It’s pretty discordant, and does nothing for my sense of amusement. It just makes me wonder where they got all the lines from, in a distracted, analytical way.

      I have to agree with you. Some coherence is a good thing; the total randomness in the first video is just… baffling. The video you linked is much better.

      1. Shamus says:

        Agreed.

        I think fixed voices and less loony toons sounds would be dynamite. Sometimes it would just be absurd nonsense, but the flashes of unintended meaning and continuity would be far funnier than *FART SOUND*.

        And yes, the linked video was better.

  9. PAK says:

    Huh, it’s interesting to see pretty unanimous consent in the above comments that the video is bad, since I’m usually in agreement with the commenters here. I guess my sense of humor is just different in this case. I’ve quite loved this vid since being introduced to it several months ago.

    It’s pretty clear the intention in this case was NOT to worry about creating meaningful continuity. Of course, that’s going to make it intrinsically worthless to many of a certain mindset, but that doesn’t make it wholly purposeless. The approach to humor is simply absurdist and surrealist in nature, rather than linear. I love this style of humor. It makes me reevaluate why I think things are funny, and engages me in a sense of childlike play which I really enjoy (probably at least partially because I’m a theater actor). The silliness works at a straight textural sort of level instead of a high content level. I mean, strings of words like, “I have sheep doing roofing over my house. Drop in and we’ll put on Zeppelin and eat cheddar cheese,” are just intrinsically hilarious, no matter the context. Aren’t they? Maybe I’m just totally weird.

    1. Alex says:

      Agree. The nonsensical randomness is the point, it seems to me. Personally, I love random, nonsensical humor, and this had me choking and in tears from laughing. I think the fact that the source material is extremely clean and dweeby and takes itself very seriously is a crucial part of the joke – this wouldn’t have been nearly as funny if it were dubbed over an aggressively brainless and wacky sitcom, for instance. Star Trek, The Next Generation was all about sober, progressive moralizing (leavened with very lame attempts at humor and warm fuzzies) framed as a state-of-the-art sci-fi drama. Swearing, bodily functions, recreational drug references and frenetic incoherence are the exact opposite of what one expects to hear coming out of those characters’ mouths. Hence the juxtaposition, hence the humor.

      It’s the same sort of humor as Arfenhouse and the other glitchy Flash cartoons that were all the rage several years ago – aggressively random, reference-laden, running on pure hyperactive energy.

  10. Jordi says:

    In The Netherlands there was this talkshow where the host would occasionally show movies like this. I think they were from a website, but I wouldn’t know the name.

    I think they were much better done than this, because they’d have coherent dialog done by excellent voice actors. Occasionally, there’d be an interview with a well-known person and I was often fooled for a second about whether it was legit. It was basically just that it was completely unbelievable what they made these people say that showed it was fake.

  11. Ell Jay says:

    I’ve loved this video for months as well. I’m curious what you all mean by “changed voices”. I have no experience of any character’s voice becoming obviously a different character. It’s the same people affecting an occasional accent and change in tone, not “different voices”…

  12. Wonderduck says:

    How can you not love the quick clip from Tom Sawyer, accompanied by the pump-action shotgun sound as Picard tugs on his uniform and says “Apple Juice”? That’s funny, right there.

    The rest of it, not so much.

  13. mookers says:

    I love absurd humour like this. I do agree that the bodily noises aren’t necessary, but the rest of it – it’s like finding a kazoo inside your banana.

  14. Emkinator says:

    These guys dub mostly infomercials (still funny), but they have some other stuff too like a star wars scene or a scene from an old western. It’s much more coherent and follows some sort of script.

  15. LOLdependent says:

    That remembers me of “abridged series”, when someone takes clips from an episode of an anime or cartoon and inserts his own sounds and voices and makes a shortened funnier episode.Like Yu gi oh the abridged series.That’s the best.

  16. JoJo says:

    I agree they are fairly common and they usually matches my tastes. It’s rare to find one that’s memmorable, though. I remember one that’s great in my language (Portuguese): a gag dub of the old Batman tv series. It’s a whole episode dubbed changing the plot to hilarious non-sense. The funny thing is that it was made in the 80’s and it reached a “classic” status.

  17. Meredith says:

    I like random and silly as much as the next person, but this was just weird. I’m in agreement with the majority that some kind of continuity would have made it better. For me, this kind of thing works best with an actual context to hang the goofiness on. The other way to do this is to dub over something in a foreign language and just use body language and props as cues to what might be happening. I had a boyfriend once who was really good at making up his own silly dialogue over Spanish soaps; that was funny. Still, I’m impressed with how well the dub matched up to the lip movements of the actors.

    Also, the subtitles were distracting. I kept reading them instead of watching, which takes away from the above mentioned impressiveness of the lip sync.

  18. MadTinkerer says:

    “It still works, but I'd actually love if someone took this idea and played it “straight”.”

    DJO does this in another vid, though it comes off as trying-to-be-too-much-like-South-Park to me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z46_8EkC3g

    It shows the potential is there.

  19. rjp says:

    You might prefer the Dune Re-Edition dub. Which is played as straight as the original film (as best I know).

  20. braincraft says:

    So… it’s Sealab 2021 without the production values.

    Which is kinda sad.

  21. Spider Dave says:

    Maybe it’s cause I’m a 20 year old college boy who watched it with his friends a few months ago, but I always get a kick out of watching this. It’s probably just not humour for everyone.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to turn up the Zeppelin and eat cheddar cheese.

  22. 1d30 says:

    Needs less (none) soundboard noise, and three more passes on the writing. I liked this back when I saw it, but I’d watch it more than once if it were better.

  23. Jonn says:

    They did do a video with a plot, a poker game discussing 9-11.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa8sVGllQI

    Having a theme helps it out, although the overall quality seems lower and there isn’t much humor.

  24. Imagine not finding Happy in Paraguay funny. Maybe Jack and Jill is more up your alley lol.

    1. Pete says:

      I love that you commented on this 13 years later. Never change.

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