MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1996 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
What is the worst thing that can happen to you in a movie theater?
Sitting next to a group of people who not only talk incessantly back to
the screen, but who say nothing but inanities and bathroom humor.
Well, welcome to your worst nightmare, MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000:
THE MOVIE.
The movie is based on the increasing unpopular and soon to be
discontinued "Mystery Science Theater 3000" TV series on the Comedy
Channel. MST3K's format is they take an old science fiction movie and
make fun of it with non-stop jabbering. The setup is that there is a
mad scientist, Dr. Forrester (Trace Beaulieu), who has Mike Nelson
(Michael J. Nelson) and two robots, Tom Servo (voice by Kevin Murphy)
and Crow T. Robot (voice by Trace Beaulieu), trapped inside a space
station called Satellite of Love. They are forced to watch old sci-fi
movies, but end up enjoying them. Mike and his two mechanical buddies
are shown silhouetted in the bottom of the screen talking back to the
movie which occupies the rest of the screen.
In MST3K there are also scenes without benefit of the old movie.
The laughs here are rare. The only piece of dialog I like is when Crow
tells the others, "I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus
doing something very stupid, and I decided to go ahead." Sort of like
what producer Jim Mallon did when he decided to make a feature length
movie of something people had tired of seeing on television.
The picture Mike and company are forced to watch is THIS ISLAND
EARTH (1954) with Jeff Morrow as the alien Exeter, Faith Domergue as
Dr. Ruth Adams, and Rex Reason as Dr. Cal Meacham. I have never seen
THIS ISLAND EARTH before and the best part of MST3K is getting to see
it. The worst part is the non-stop rambling by Mike and the robots.
I guess I must confess my prejudices. I watch little television,
and when I have channel surfed past this show in the past on TV, I have
not been impressed. The concept is fine, but the implementation,
thanks to director Jim Mallon and writers Michael J. Nelson, Trace
Beaulieu, Jim Mallon, Kevin Murphy , Mary Jo Pehl, Paul Chaplin, and
Bridget Jones is fatally flawed. If you run out of ideas for dialog,
admit it and cut back to only the material worth filming. Moreover,
the characters do not have to suffer from diarrhea of the mouth. Let
the old film speak for itself most of the time, and then a few jabs
will prove much funnier.
I can not print MST3K's bathroom humor in this G rated review, but
think of the type of tasteless commentary that a 9 year old might come
up with as vulgar humor, and you get the idea. In the printable, but
typically bad dialog, we have exchanges like that when Dr. Meacham
flies into Exeter's hideout in the country. Crow proclaims, "He's
flown into a Flemish painting," and Servo tries to one-up him with, "I
claim this land for Spain." This is supposed to be funny?
There were a few members of the audience who laughed frequently,
but most were like me and just stared at the screen. There are a
couple of funny parts. One is when Dr. Adams and Dr. Meacham try to
escape from Exeter. Stealthy they are not, and as Crow puts it, "Let's
slip away in the dark of the afternoon in the biggest car in the
county." The other occurs during the credits when Mike and his robot
sidekicks hang around to poke fun at everything from people's names to
their titles. If you think about it, some of the titles people get in
movie credits are pretty esoteric. Perhaps because they were not
interrupting a better movie, I liked most of their jokes during the
credits.
If they had taken THIS ISLAND EARTH and perhaps some other films
in this 50s sci-fi genre, they would have had the core of a fascinating
documentary which would have been much better than MST3K.
Alternatively, if they felt they had to stay with this contrived
format, the writers should have drastically limited how often Mike and
the robots should speak. As it is, I was constantly wanting to scream
at them, "shut up!"
MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE runs a mercifully short
1:14. It is correctly rated PG-13 for bad language and gross humor.
There is no sex, nudity or violence. Given the setup of the film,
there is no reason why they did not make a G or at most a PG show. The
crudeness of the script detracted dramatically from the quality of the
movie. Done right this should have been a show fine for my seven year
old. Thank goodness, I did not bring him. I do suspect the film will
be okay for most kids over 9 or 10 since by then they are all too
familiar with crude humor. I do not recommend the film, although loyal
fans of the show will probably enjoy it. I give it * 1/2 solely
because I did enjoy seeing parts of THIS ISLAND EARTH.
______________________________________________________________________
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film.
*** = Excellent show. Look for it.
** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable.
* = Poor show. Don't waste your money.
0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: April 23, 1996
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
