Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Unlike "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and the Film Crew DVDs, for Rifftrax there is no fictional premise. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett have not been shot into space; they are not minimum wage workers at a DVD authoring factory. Instead they're just doing what they did for years on MST3k, sitting around watching movies and making fun of them.
This single DVD collection puts together eight short films which had previously been for sale via the Rifftrax website plus one bonus short.1) Down and Out -- A typical factory worker safety training film. The multiple slapstick accidents are mostly fodder for encouraging workers to use their common sense. And if common sense was a commodity that could be easily transferred upon people using television, this film probably would have been very successful.
2) Patriotism -- This early 1970s film, narrated by Bob Crane, teaches children about how to be patriotic in their everyday lives. Fortunately, it turns out that virtually everything you would ever dream of doing is a form of patriotism.
3) Buying Food -- This short film is exactly what it sounds like from its title: rather trite, silly explanations about how one should and shouldn't purchase foodstuffs.
4) Right or Wrong? -- One part choose-your-own-adventure story and one part introductory ethics course.
5) Drugs are Like That -- This REEFER MADNESS type film is aimed at teenagers and children. As you may expect, it's a rather heavy-handed screed pinning all human suffering and unhappiness at the foot of drug abuse.
6) Skipper Learns a Lesson -- In this short about teaching children to embrace diversity, Skipper the dog is an incredible misanthrope who hates all those around him.
7) The Trouble With Women -- This 1947 instructional film isn't quite as awful as its title would suggest. It's not a pure rant against the female gender; instead, it's a guide for male bosses about how to handle the influx of women into the workplace in a post-WWII America.
8) It Must Be the Neighbors -- Every problem in a neighborhood can be blamed on someone else. Usually the guy who has a load of filth and junk in his yard.
9) Shake Hands With Danger -- Another safety instructional film where those unfortunately workers who ignore common precautionary measures end up dead or mutilated in various gory ways. This Rifftrax features an animated Mike Nelson, and Bill Corbett in the form of a cartoon inflatable parrot with Kevin Murphy as an anthropomorphic box of popcorn (I'm not making that up). The jokes are funny, but I didn't quite see the purpose of the animation. I suspect this was an experimental attempt to recreate something like the old shadowrama effect, but for me it was just more of a distraction which subtracted the size of the viewable image without really adding anything.The jokes and riffs are quite funny. The big question I suspect most fans are interested in is whether these Rifftrax releases match up to what we remember from "Mystery Science Theater 3000". One thing I've missed (which I think is also applicable to The Film Crew and -- to a lesser extent -- Joel Hodgson's Cinematic Titanic DVDs) is the sheer breadth of material which the writers drew on for inspiration on the old show. With fewer writers, it seems that the jokes are taken from a smaller pool of references.
So, I'd place this release at about the level of an average episode of MST3k. While this may sound like hollow praise, I'd put an average episode of MST3k well above the comedy output we see from most sitcoms. I'd recommend this to any fan of MST3k or even to anyone who never caught the show when it was running. It's great to hear Mike, Kevin and Bill once again making fun of incomprehensible and dated old short films.
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RiffTrax Shorts Volume 1 - from the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (2009)
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