I think the folks at Red Letter Media are comedic geniuses and absolutely hilarious.
However, as far as real film criticism goes these guys are incredibly inconsistent to the point where I dismiss the intended “true criticisms” as nonsense and can’t take them seriously whatsoever. For instance, they hate Rogue One but loved Force Awakens which is just baffling to me. They hate the prequels but loved The Acolyte and liked Kenobi (another absurdity).
And even outside of Star Wars I find some of their opinions to be ridiculous. I remember reading on their Facebook page that they thought the original Alien was boring. That’s when I completely dismissed that channel as far as film criticism goes. RLM are just a bunch of clowns to me, so i will oblige them and laugh. I view these guys as comedians and don’t take their criticism seriously whatsoever. Sometimes I think these guys don’t even know what they like and just try to be contrarian on purpose for laughs and to be controversial. I absolutely love their Nerd Crew videos. And all the people that think their humor has “aged poorly” or is “sexism” are why comedy is dead today. None of you would be saying that if the genders were reversed and they were women making fun of male stereotypes. Instead it would be “empowering.”
Liking The Force Awakens made sense at the time because it seemed to address Mike’s criticisms about the prequels directly. There’s rumors and speculation that they actually had influence over JJ Abrams via Simon Pegg being a fan of the prequel reviews. It has the kind of frantic fast paced energy that Mike said he liked from the Abrams Trek movies, it has new characters, and as another example the lightsaber duels are a little bit more restrained - a snowy forest instead of a constantly exploding volcano world, without a lot of unnecessary flips and spins. Sure it was derivative and played on the rebels vs. empire stuff, but before the bottom fell out, you could see TFA actually going somewhere in the next movie.
Rogue One on the other hand was simultaneously dour and almost entirely nostalgia based. Jyn Erso is still not a compelling character, neither are the two Chinese guys, and as of Rogue One (not taking into account anything from Andor) neither is Cassian. K2 is funny and that’s it. Everything they criticized in that review is still true even if you like the ending battle and the Star Wars Battlefront Vader segment.
As for Kenobi and Acolyte yeah they completely lost the plot and went crazy. I think with those it’s as simple as Mike and Rich liking Star Trek so much. The cheap sets and episodic TV format remind them of older TV shows, which they find charming. They definitely have very questionable taste with a lot of other things too. Unfortunately they’ve grown to resemble what they were making fun of with the Nerd Crew.