What’s there to improve? That movie is most excellent!
The Rifftrax for bad movies are definitely more reliable than the ones for good movies. I wasn’t impressed by the Jaws one, and their Raiders one was fairly forgettable. The Star Wars prequels riffs are good overall, though, and I do enjoy their Lord of the Rings riffs as well. It doesn’t always work, and it works best when all three of the guys are there. Solo riffs just sound kind of sad. Sometimes they make bad picks beyond mocking good films, like Firewall, which was so boring that nothing could make it entertaining.
Overall I’m glad to have RiffTrax around, if only because it often sounds so much like a new MST episode when the three of them are really firing on all cylinders. I am more of a Joel fan, though, and I doubt anything will ever top Pod People.
The problem with the Rifftrax for a lot of the better films is that Mike at least seems genuinely convinced that most of them are quite bad. In his books about movies Mike made it pretty clear he had no love for genre film whatsoever.
Wow, that actually explains a lot, Lynx. I think it gets to the heart of why I prefer Joel. Like me, Joel clearly has a sense of affection for these crappy old genre movies.
-Tom
I think it’s telling that Cinematic Titanic covered pretty much the exact same sort of material as early MST3K, just with fewer TV edits for content. =)
That said, I do really like what Rifftrax does with public domain shorts and don’t mind buying those whenever a new one is out. The Rifftrax movie riffings have sort of lost their luster for me-- Cinematic Titanic is just a lot better.
I agree with you on this, although I will say that there is a certain smugness that’s started creeping in over the last year or so that I’m finding a big turn off.
To see this smugness, you need look no farther than the artwork in which they superimpose big-headed versions of themselves into pictures from the movies. That tells me all I need to know about where the priority lies for the Rifftrax guys.
-TomWhen, exactly, the Mike Nelson run over your dog?
The Mike Nelson? What about the Bill Corbett and the Kevin Murphy? They do Rifftrax, too, you know. Maybe they’re the ones who ran over my dog?
BTW, you Nelson fanbois can cool your jets, as I never said he wasn’t funny.
-TomThe thing I like about the RiffTrax project is that they can finally riff the big budget stinkers. I like an atrocious obscurity as much as the next guy, but things like Batman & Robin and Battlefield Earth really do deserve a good riffing as well.
I’d never buy one for a movie I actually liked, though. And I’m pretty reluctant to buy one for a bad movie, because I’m certainly not going to buy the bad movie. That’s where MST3K and Cinematic Titanic have a definite edge.
In some ways I wish Kevin Murphy was doing CT. If I have one complaint about that group is that it’s a bit too avant garde at times. What I like about Murphy is that he brings a bit of vaudeville to the proceedings.
I think Trace used to have some of that energy, but he comes off a bit muted these days. There’s none of that Doctor Forester scene chewing, or the naughty abandon that you get with Crow.
I do appreciated Joel’s delivery a lot. He always seems so laid back and funny. Whereas Mike is a bit more forward.
I always said that Mike was better at Riffing and Joel was better at skits. However I think thats changed.
Not to exhume ancient argument from burial site (too late), but neither man was comfortable on camera. One was better at hiding it.
Joel’s on-camera persona was affectation used for performances. Clear example seen here shows it was all an act; Hodgson has stated as much in interviews. Also left on-camera performing to again be a comedy writer (most recently on ABC Late Night show) and publicly stated it was because he preferred to be behind camera, not in front of it.
Mike was and is a comedy writer, plain and simple, not a performer. MST performances were always stilted and awkward; at some points, could all but see the man sweating bullets.
Neither man was exactly an ace on camera, but Joel’s “I’m really laid back and kind of sleepy” affectation made him far more watchable.
Also, Joel era had fellow cast member Trace Beaulieu, who, with Joel, kept more of a mellow atmosphere to help contain unbridled mania of later cast addition, the type-A Kevin Murphy. Once Trace and Joel left, no one was left to rein Murphy in…judging from above clips, that dynamic of no one reining in Murphy has survived in RiffTrax troupe’s material.
He did stand up and theatre before MST3K.
This is very true. While I do like Kevin’s presence in the RiffTrax overall, sometimes he’ll go off on some long tirade/tangent/crazy thing that is intensely unfunny and goes on forever.
Which turned out not to be true. There was a blow up over MST3K between Joel and Mallon which made him decide to leave.
In recent interviews he’s said he didn’t actually want to go.
IIRC Mallon has been a dick about letting anyone have the MST3K IP rights, too. Apparently Cinematic Titanic originated as an effort to relaunch the show in digital distribution form that Mallon pretty much made impossible.
So who is this Mallon? That’s not a name I’ve heard associated with the MST3K crew before. Is he the one responsible for those godawful web shorts with the robots?
Yes, he was also the voice of Gypsy.