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RiffTrax Presents a New Bridget and Mary Jo Riff38 Replies to “RiffTrax Presents a New Bridget and Mary Jo Riff”Commenting at Satellite News
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Dane Cook is Kyle Reese…
Thank goodness this site is back up!
I was concerned that it got hacked.
RiffTrax also has a new short available.
“Building an Outline.”
Enjoy.
This actually has a lot of name actors, at least if you watch B movies. American Ninja, The Gate, The Howling, Pumpkinhead II, Stargate (the TV show).
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the concept of “the poor man’s Rowsdower”…
…Bridget & MJ doing 70’s-80’s high-school-loser jokes?
What, are Mike & Bill going to riff Betty Crocker housewife shorts, now?
It’s amazing you’re still at this after years of negative feedback.
Eric J.:
That actually sounds fun.
The short “Cooking Terms” is hilarious.
This comment seems to be at least vaguely misogynistic, as happens whenever you comment about Bridget and Mary Jo’s works.
It’s actually nice to see them move away from “chick” movies or tacky 1950s stuff and do regular fare. That stuff they did had no appeal to me, but being a big Sherlock Holmes fan I had to buy the one they did and was really impressed how funny they were and how much fun they seemed to be having.
I’m sure the vagueness was unintentional.
BTW, inasmuch as the Rifftrax page doesn’t mention any actors’ names and there are about a dozen or more films that go by the name “Rescue Me,” it’s this one:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107949/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_7
You’re welcome. :-)
Bridget and Mary Jo are hilarious together. They have as good a vibe as Mike, Kevin, and Bill.
Thanks for keeping up on him. I categorize his comments like pop-up ads and go past them.
I’m all for more ’50s B movies like “Cat-Women of the Moon,” but agree on the Sherlock Holmes movie. Actually, that one was so “not horrible” that I was distracted from the riffing by Basil Rathbone and the actual movie during my first viewing. The second time I was much more into the riffing.
Jeremy Z.:
“Gravity,” “Angels’ Revenge,” and “Beyond Christmas” are considered chick flicks?
Which is just another facet of why Eric doesn’t like them. To Eric, the only good vibe is Joel, Kevin, and Trace…which I myself agree is a much better vibe than Mike, Kevin, and Bill. The more often I re-watch Comedy Central episodes, the more I realize just how much Bill’s SFC voice just really isn’t the voice of The One True Crow, that many of Bill/Crow’s riffs are things that Trace/Crow would simply never say (I’ve tried imagining Trace’s voice saying some of Bill’s riffs and It Just Doesn’t Work) because Trace/Crow was a chipper little kid* and Bill/Crow was a warped frustrated old man (which fits because he experienced 500 years alone on the SOL while Mike and the others were frolicking as pure energy). And then I get over it. ;-)
As I’ve mentioned before, I think that on average Mike/Kevin/Trace were better at riffing and Joel/Kevin/Trace were better at host segments. Neither trio was perfect at both or either, of course.
In host segments, Joel could make nearly any ridiculous concept believable, like the Charlie McCarthy hearings or the Godzilla family tree, because the Bots considered Joel to be an AUTHORITY on nearly every topic and believed almost everything he told them without question, and that carried over to the viewers. I don’t recall Mike ever presenting himself as an authority on anything in particular and if he’d tried the Bots probably wouldn’t have taken him very seriously.
Basically, Joel was the father-figure and Mike was the big-brother-figure, which plays into why I think the Mike era had better riffs, because Mike and the Bots interacted as more-or-less equals.
In contrast, no matter how strong the camaraderie in the theater, we were never quite allowed to forget that Joel was the guy who CREATED the Bots and had a certain level of authority that they were obliged to bow to, which allowed him to forbid them from making certain riffs, to dictate that Gypsy got to join them in the theater, to (on just THAT ONE OCCASION) rip off Crow’s arm without any real consequences. Mike could NEVER have gotten away with stuff like that. It’s the PARENT who disciplines two unruly children, NOT a third unruly child.
(I know, I know, yak-yak-yak…)
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*In hindsight, that’s probably why Servo so often physically tormented Crow during the CC years, by strafing him, pinning him down like a butterfly, knocking over his produce stand, melting him into an ingot, et cetera, because the relatively more sophisticated Servo was the OLDER brother razzing the YOUNGER brother. In Monster-a-Go-Go, Servo and Joel (the older brother and the father) teased Crow (the younger brother) by not letting him play ball with them (after which Joel gave Crow a Snickers for being a good sport); I don’t AT THIS MOMENT recall Crow and Joel ever similarly double-teaming Servo.
Off the subject of B&MJ, I know, but just to tie up:
Bill’s Crow isn’t the Crow–which, of course, they had to write into the SciFi script–because Bill Corbett, the Comic does not know when to quit.(And yes, let’s get all the “Look who’s talking” jokes out of the way now. Done?–Good. Let’s move on.) Or dial it down, or pull back…That’s called “Timing”, and in comedy, that’s everything.
I’m not going to go into medical diagnoses, but I think there’s an unspoken reason why Bill is cheerily convinced every single riff he makes is brilliant (even to the point of a few happily inappropriate/tasteless ones that were booed by the Live audiences), donkey-brays them at full blast as if they are regardless of delivery, and keeps beating them into the ground, long past the Rule of Three, to heckle his two comic pals personally until they literally have to do the running “Yes, THANK you, Bill, we get it…” shtick. To quote the Batwoman line, this is what happens when you put the Guy Who Thinks He’s a Hoot on the show, and anyone on an Internet forum anywhere has known that experience, usually for the same reason.
Trace was an experienced comic, a writer on the show-part of the show, and he knew what Joel Hodgson was trying for with one quick silly/deadpan drive-by line out of the darkness, to take us by surprise. Less is More, if you actually know how to tell it.
Now, to tie it back in to B&MJ:
MK&B on the Rifftrax years seem to think that the whole point of riffing, if not to “punish” the movie and everything that made it, is a comic’s-duel of one-upping and nudging each other in the ribs with personal digs, and we’re there to watch how much fun they’re having teasing and breaking each other up…Oh, yeah, and there’s some crappy movie on screen too, c’mon, hurry and get it over with.
They may snicker and giggle and “Look familiar?” each other, but Bridget & Mary Jo take that company idea a step further, treat the movie as if they’re at a girl’s-lunch-out, and giggle and guffaw at their own jokes out loud nonstop.
If MK&B trod slightly on the rule of “The comic should not appear to enjoy his own jokes TOO much…”, B&MJ practically clog-dance on it. Um, why should we care that they’re having a good time, again?
Incredibly, that performance made me think he’s even more neurotic/pathetic than I previously thought he was. I admittedly always knew that this was possible but for it to actually happen…
I’m sure my opinions are as valueless to him as his opinions are valueless to almost everyone else, though.
You know…
Bridget and Mary Jo are hilarious together. They have as good a vibe as Mike, Kevin, and Bill.
Eric J.:
Bill Corbett is one of the best people to follow on Twitter whether you’re an MST3K/RiffTrax fan or not.
He’s funny, kind, honest, and insightful.
He is truly a nice guy who paid his dues in theater, writing, and acting for years.
Joel himself has praised Bill.
Bill comes across as humble and is probably the most fan friendly of all the MST3K alums.
As for Mary Jo and Bridget, what they have is called chemistry.
By the way, YOU never sound like you’re having a good time.
Find something that gives you pleasure, besides trying to pummel people here with your views.
So you’re a medical doctor?
So Eric’s basic objection to Rifftrax is that the riffers enjoy themselves too much.
Not enough therapy in the world…
The Original EricJ:
I’m not going to go into medical diagnoses…
No, that’s why he’s NOT going to do it.
I kind of wonder, if he dislikes Bill for replacing Trace, shouldn’t he also dislike TRACE for making that necessary? Maybe the story behind why Trace didn’t rejoin Mike and Kevin for the SFC run has mitigating circumstances.
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But never mind that, let’s go HERE:
As far as I can tell, most if not all of the non-genre/”mainstream” dramas that MST3K riffed had plots built around criminal activity of some sort: Racket Girls, High School Big Shot, Sinister Urge, Untamed Youth, Final Justice, Girl in Gold Boots, and so on (and several of that type are among the episodes I find most entertaining). I have no idea if that was intentional or not, but there it is. Rescue Me qualifies as such a film as well.
So, has Rifftrax ever riffed any, well, heck, I don’t even know what term to use, any “plain” non-crime-based dramas? There must be lots and lots and LOTS of them because back in the days when studios churned out as many films as possible per year (the underlying premise being to just put SOMETHING, ANYTHING on the movie screen and people would watch it because some people will, after all, watch anything*), I’d guess that those would’ve been the quickest to churn out. Of course, that very fact would make it difficult to choose a handful out of hundreds. Still, it seems like a field that The Brains might want to consider tapping. Think about it, won’t you? Thank you.
I remember Film Crew riffing Walk the Angry Beach, in which the crime element was relatively minimal, so there’s that, anyway.
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*that’s why Roger Corman was considered a successful director, btw, because he invariably got his films in on time and under-budget; whether or not his films were necessarily any GOOD was kind of beside the point
Touches:
You’re letting Eric J. get under your skin too much.
Don’t waste your time and energy trying to figure him out.
Try this instead.
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJtRMFcbStvw5qWqSl1uuaObgkRFegxgz
Actually, I’m entertaining myself with my own theoretically amusing remarks more than I’m doing anything else. ;-)
Also, there’s stuff like the legitimate question/discussion point about plain drama films…
AND ANOTHER THING…
The movies occasionally drove Joel to emotional breakdowns (Castle of Fu Manchu, The One with the Sandstorm, probably others). IIRC during the Comedy Central years, that never happened to Mike (sure, he turned into Carol Channing that one time but that doesn’t constitute an emotional breakdown). Thus, kind of by definition, Mike enjoyed himself more than Joel.
And that’s why Eric HAS TO CRUSH HIM.
INCIDENTAL, Super Obvious In Retrospect Moment: Why couldn’t Joel and the Bots remember Robert Ginty’s character’s in Warrior of the Lost World?
Because Robert Ginty’s character WASN’T GIVEN A NAME.
What, am I alone in here?! Hello!
So . . . there WAS no Robert Ginty?
(I’m rarely quite sure how to deal with people who are being deliberately dense.)
I very clearly said that it was THE CHARACTER who wasn’t give a name. Obviously they could’ve referred to “Rider” as “Robert Ginty” but for whatever reason they didn’t want to do that. They could just as easily and just have accurately referred to Megaweapon as “Crappy Prop” but they didn’t want to do that either. Go figure. Take care.
Isn’t it supposed to be a “there was no monster” joke?
Oh, don’t even bother.
I mean, thanks, but hey, ya know?
Great thoughts. I’ve always had another. In the Sci-Fi years, when Mike is drawn back by Pearl, he had been free then forced back. The dynamics are different. Mike/Crow/Tom knew freedom and they’re back once again. You can be given two ways to react; bitterness, or just go ahead and laugh at it. This is what M&TB did. They were a little snarky and just gave up and sometimes laughed at the craziness.
Hey, I know it’s just a show and I should relax, but someone up-thread has BIG issues trying!
Well, Crow’s situation didn’t really change much; watching and riffing a movie now and then might even have been an improvement from his 500-year-old daily routine. The Brains at least offered Crow’s failure to take advantage of the chance to travel the universe as pure energy to explain the bitterness/cynicism that Bill Corbett can apparently just NEVER entirely suppress in his voice.
And it’s beyond human (or bot) experience to ever have existed only as pure energy, let alone for 500 years. So there’s that, anyway.
So, if Servo existed as pure energy, under what circumstances was he able to acquire tapioca treasure, take a gun off of a Nortonian commando, and do other stuff like that then there that requires, you know, solidity of some kind? It would probably take a mad scientist to explain it…
Off-topic or back-to-another-topic, it occurs to me to wonder how The Brains selected Racket Girls, High School Big Shot, and et cetera in the first place. There’s a lot of black-and-white low-budget crime out there…
Ease of getting the rights?
I know they “pre-watched” tons of movies that never made the cut; maybe when “pre-watching” the ones that did make it, something stood out and they came up with enough funny ideas to give it a try.
I’d be at least mildly fascinated to find out what they were, but I don’t know of any source on that. Oh, but I know they considered and rejected “Child Bride,” anyway. If I were in a position to “challenge” The Brains to a return match with “Child Bride,” to riff it on Rifftrax, I’d…at least consider doing so. :-)
It occurred to me: Since it’s been clarified that Eric’s problem is that he can’t stand watching people enjoy themselves, maybe he’s one of those human Grouches from “Follow That Bird” (1985). When we take that into account, so many of his posts become so much more explicable.
Laugh and the world laughs with you. B|tch and get b|tched back at.
addendum
Thus Mike and Servo (and Gypsy and Cambot and Magic Voice) have 500 years worth of what one might reasonably presume were happy cosmic memories to comfort them when things get dire. What’s a couple of crummy movies compared to remembering how you danced among the stars? Not that I believe that The Brains gave that much thought…
In fact, Servo (or Gypsy or Cambot) could download a copy of those memories into Crow and let HIM re-live them too. Food for thought at the very least.