Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie

I watched a movie and it was called Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, directed by Jim Mallon, released in 1995. It stars Michael J. Nelson, Jim Mallon, Kevin Murphy and Trace Beaulieu. This is a movie based on the tv series of the same name, where a scientist (and his assistant) submits a man and the robots he built to terrible movies to see if they will crack, in a satellite in space. It’s a simple show that really needs no explanation. The thing that makes it funny is that these three “riff” aka make funny comments about how terrible the movies are. It’s basically like watching a movie with three wiseacres making comments throughout. It is an acquired taste and requires some knowledge of pop culture to be fully appreciated, at least I think so. This is the movie version of the show, like I said so there are some slight differences but not too much to stray away from the roots of the original show. In this incarnation, the human is Mike Nelson. He is joined by Crow T. Robot, Tom Servo and Gypsy, who pilots the Satellite of Love where they have the actual experiments. The scientist is Dr. Forrester and he is evil. Well, mad. He actually is the first person you see and does an introduction to what we are about to see and the concept of the movie so you can be up to speed, basically forgoing the explanation via theme song like in the show, which actually works. We then see the Satellite of Love float across the sky (looking suspiciously like a bone) and we see Mike inside running on a treadmill…more like hamster wheel complete with water bottle. This is the first sketch of the movie, which was something that tv show did as well before going to commercial, also known as host segments. Basically there would be an introduction and something crazy happening, in this case its Crow using a pick ax to “dig” out of the Satellite of Love to get to Earth, which will be the running theme of all the host segments for the movie. The movie they watch is the “terrible” Universal classic This Island Earth. One of the interesting aspects of these host segments is you get to see Servo’s room, which was not explored in the show. All I can say is underpants.
The production value of the show went up quite a bit because it is a movie, where the sets don’t look as cheap, which again, totally works. The hallway to the theater gets a special upgrade (and is not used again when the series resumes on Sci-Fi channel later) and even the bots get an upgrade, though that might be the lighting. The movie that is chosen has some quality riffs on it and is pretty consistent throughout. One of the best parts is the guys even riff on their own credits, which they didn’t ever do it the show.
This is a special part of the show and to me personally. This movie has the distinction of being one of the movies I have seen more than 100 times. Im not even exaggerating. I worked at  video store for 3 years and one of my co workers who was my manager in the first year I worked there, would watch it every time we closed, which was basically every night for that first year. He moved and I still kept the tradition, in his honor, for the remaining 2 years I worked there. I am still amazed that this movie even got made as I have read many articles and commentaries that say it had quite a bit of executive meddling so that made it quite difficult. So much in fact that Trace Beaulieu left after this film.
This is a great little movie and hilarious to boot. I may be biased because I’m a fan of the show and the movie but I think you might like too if you give it chance.