A Wasp In A Nursing Home by Eileen Over - Short, Comedy - Elder abuse and a lousy meal plan run rampant in a country nursing home, until the arrival of a mythical masked wrestler, known as The RED WASP. 6 pages - pdf, format 8)

Might just be me, but was this even supposed to be a comedy? Doesn't read like one. Other than that, biggest problem I've got here is how Roscoe always tells us what Mildred wanted to happen. Sounds artificial and is only there to give the story some sense. Not exactly a visual approach to storytelling.

Again, I agree with Equinox.  It wasn't funny.  It was sad, and it certainly didn't read as a comedy.  

I admit you can make anything funny.  But, this wasn't funny.  And it wasn't visual like he said.

Sorry, but, I didn't like this one.

5/10

Very well written and formatted by someone who knows their stuff.

Unfortunately, I didn't laugh at all. Sorry

0 laughs out of 10

The writing was excellent and although I didn't mind the story I just couldn't find anything funny in it. Seemed to get pretty dark there too with all that senior abuse.

I would've preferred Red Wasp to come in before the rolling pin and have a more comedic battle going in.

Well, I did catch a couple of typo's . Doesn't matter. It wasn't funny for me either. Sad in some ways. I don't find nursing homes or hurting very elderly people to be humorous.
I barely got through this one.

This was a comedy OWC and this was not a comedy.

The writing was great but the story was depressing, it doesn't even fall under dark comedy.

Good job on entering

Let's get a little more in depth here,as I think I've only got 10 more to rad or so.

Page 1 - Writing seems to be pretty good, but also seems to be trying a little too hard and I'm concerned it's going to get worse.  Dialogue is not great, but sure appears to be trying to.  I don't see any comedy so far...at all.

Page 2 - Trying to save some lines with your Flashback formatting or don't you know any better?  "NEW FLASHBACK" - ?  Really?  Oh man...reads so poorly like this.  "10" - "ten".  "rain-thin" - ???  "It's a $25 cab ride around this guy." - I'm out.

Zero comedy and very, very little going on in 2 pages.  Not working at all.

Yep, like the aforementioned,  this didn't come anywhere near a comedy to me. There was a super hero but this was too grim to meet the parameters of the challenge.  Not for me.  

Writer,

Decent effort but I think the dialogue could have been better, or the jokes could have been better set up. Way too much action going on towards the end. Almost a whole page for a fight that should have been a sight gag, just didn't read like one. Nice try, but just not feeling it.

Steve

I liked this as a touching drama about old age, but not so much as a comedy.

Good effort outside the OWC

I liked it and found it comical to a degree. Probably the very degree you were aiming for. Not quite the consider, but you do have an excellent character in Red Wasp.

I struggled with the flashbacks angle of the story, I had to go back and re-read a few things to get what was going on. Also, the fight scene became a blur of Red Wasp does this and Samoan does that but in the end I found this a decent story. I didn’t see the funny side though.

-Mark

You almost lost me at page 1 due to the exposition in the dialogue.  You could have easily established that Mildred was the Red Wasp by showing old pictures of her in her heyday.  There was too much on the nose dialogue which made reading this a chore.

The jokes fell flat and the whole story danced the line between absurdity and drudgery.
If you had committed to absurdity across the board, it would have been better.

Congratulations on finishing a script.

Jordan

Mixed bag here.

It's notably well-written, even though most of the other entries I've read have been decent. There's a distinct voice and world to it as well, and the character is fun. Good balance of silly and plausible with a name that could actually be applied to a non-comedic work (nice title also).

I see hints of humor here in the dialogue, but they're subtle to the point of me not even being sure. Even if I've identified the jokes correctly, I have to wonder how many I'm missing. The physical gags play a bit more broad and read better as a result, but it's hard to pin down. Is the abuse of senior citizens supposed to be dark or more of a slapstick variety (abusing seniors is fucked up, but I can see it going either way here)? I'm leaning toward the latter off the silliness of the 9.5 gag and the assumption that the Red Wasp is supposed to be funny because she's an old lady doing martial arts.

Didn't find it funny though. I'd say there's a certain exuberance to it, but then others are getting a dark, depressing vibe. Was that what this was supposed to be? I don't see it.

Dragged a little here and there. Perhaps a tad dense. Also... leotards? Is she wearing more than one? She only needs one.

Anyway, not bad, but not particularly funny... whatever this is.

The multiple flashbacks at the beginning didn't help.  Once the story actually got going, it turned into this dark, bizarre tale about elder abuse.  The attempt to mix lighthearted humor with such serious subject matter fell flat.  

A nice job on this one.  Liked it pretty much all the way through.  Any problems are small.  Enjoyable.

Funny author name.

Quoted Text Eileen Over

Structure/format et al were fine. Based on the beginning I thought the humor would ramp up - but for me it kind of plateaued. This share's the same fate as many others - on the writing scale - well done. On the comedy scale - fairly average.

Just like pretty much everyone above, really well written but not enough of the funnies. Sitting back and thinking about old pleople fighting muscle men is actually quite a funny visual, which makes it even more confusing as to why the laughs didn't come.

Anyway, good effort but just not for myself

A senior superhero is a good idea. Otherwise, the story had too many characters and with that felt complicated. The detective in the end reminded me a bit of a Poirot when he develops his theories about the "true" happenings. The whole concept shows potential but somehow nothing really grabbed me. Too much happened, too many characters... Could be very good if you once can find precision.

The comedy could have been ramped up in this one. They elderly in line at the beginning was the perfect place to start -- Instead they all have bandages on their hands from the rolling pin abuse.

I think some dialogue was meant to be sarcastic but the context wasn't clear. Also, a villain is better humiliated than killed. And please don't tell us a person is dead "(for now)" in the narrative. It immediately gives away the ending.

Just realised I have one more.

I like the title and loved the logline.

Perhaps for this to pull off we needed a little more slapstick, after all it's an elderly wrestler...err...superhero in an old persons home.

I think the fight scene could,  on screen, be much much funnier than in print. Think any airplane film etc

Needs work, but I love this premise. Almost feel like there is a feature potential in this.

Best of luck

The humor in this one is pretty absurd. But not a snappy, non-sequitur type of absurd. More the type of absurd where completely ridiculous things play out with complete seriousness and it’s not always easy to tell how I'm supposed to interpret the events I'm watching. I’ve seen this tone work for others, but it’s not really my thing, and it probably wouldn’t be fair or relevant to say more. This type of absurd humor sort of makes itself immune to criticism in that way.

Huh, I really enjoyed it.
It reads like noir meets Kill Bill.

And it's about the elderly - kudos for finding unique angle to all this superheroes theme.

And there's a lot of twists and turns in it. I wish we learned a bit more about the Red Wasp. And I wish the story was told from her Point of View. Like it's in Kill Bill - why she does what she does. Roscoe could tell us maybe.

Anyway, great job I think.

Talking about finding a germ in those that I haven't yet read...)

Eileen Over,

This was well written, but not funny and I began to skim the last two pages. It wasn't really holding my attention. I do like the Red Wasp character though and think with a bit more work this could me something pretty decent. As it is though, it failed to make me laugh and really hold my attention.

Good luck.

Glenn.

So, from what I gather the Red Wasp is a little old lady who was once a pro-wrestler, then decided to fight crime as a superhero, protecting fellow seniors from the Samoan Chef, a mean spirited and abusive fellow who torments them "by rolling out the dough" because they didn't care for his movie. Roscoe resurrects her in the end by (assumedly) giving the mask back. Really liked the action sequence; kung fu flowed nicely. Would have thought the detective to sound more hard-boiled, 1920's, though. Enjoyed it, but thought it might be something else given the title...

After all these years I finally come across something by Abe!  This was a treat.

Don't you got any features, man?