MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE
A film review by Bart
Copyright 1996 Bart
Starring: Michael J. Nelson, Trace Beaulieu, Kevin Murphy Director: Jim Mallon Rating: PG-13
Score: 8.5/10
It was a rainy Friday afternoon in Columbus when I persuaded a friend to see a matinee performance of MST3K:TM. He had never seen any episodes of the show, and I have watched a scant few, due to its unsocial airtime on Comedy Central and the uneven nature of many of the episodes.
For those of you not familiar with the premise, Dr Clayton Forrester (Beaulieu) wishes to take over the world by finding the worst film ever made and unleashing it upon an unsuspecting public. To achieve this, he (in the words of the TV series' theme, which is missing in the movie) "bumped [Mike Nelson (Nelson)] on the noggin and then shot him into space", and is monitoring Nelson's reactions to the movies he is forced to endure. Rather than succumb to the sheer awfulness of many of the movies, Nelson spends his time making wisecracks with the help of his two robot companions, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot. The format of the show consists of Nelson, Servo and Crow making their comments while silhouetted against the movie being watched, and breaks every 20 minutes or so for segments set on the Satellite of Love, the ship on which our heroes are marooned.
Only two things are different in the movie: the absence of Forrester's sidekick, TV's Frank, and the slower pace of the jokes. This latter change is presumably deliberate to avoid the viewing audience missing some of the best lines while laughing from the previous joke. For their big screen outing, the producers have chosen "This Island Earth", a 1954 classic, and one of the first SF films to have a special effects budget larger than the average grocery bill. Unfortunately for that film (but making it ideal MST3K fodder), acting and dialogue appear to have taken a back seat to the effects which, by today's standards, are less than impressive. Nelson & Co. make jokes about everything from Japan's dominance in the world market, to Star Trek, to the state of disrepair of Seattle's Kingdome, and most of them work. Unfortunately, the segments set outside the satellite's movie theater seem out of place and aren't particularly funny, but at least they're fairly short.
The big question about this movie though is: Why? I presume it was an attempt to gain a larger following to keep support behind the series (rumours of its impending demise circulated for some time before the plug was eventually pulled a few months ago), but the format gains nothing from its transition to the big screen -- there are no special effects to dazzle you, no action sequences to keep you on the edge of your seat, and no use of digital surround sound. So, it seems pointless to spend $8 per person to see this movie when in a few months it will be out on video and you can watch it for $3, and not have to sit in a room full of popcorn addicts.
Nevertheless, MST3K:TM provides more laugh-out-loud opportunities than any film you're going to see this year, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone with a pulse. Given its uniqueness, I hesitate to grade it against other films, but it fulfils its claims and so in the class of "unsubtle comedy films whose laughs come at the expense of bad B-movies" it does well.
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