I’d honestly love to see a series of just someone riffing on those…(Though maybe a mini-series, just because otherwise they’d all end up running together…)
It might make them bareable for anyone under 35 (or 35 at heart)?
Just a thought
I can’t remember which one exactly, but I think some friends of mine and I started riffing on one of them (or if it wasn’t an actual halmark movie, it was very much in the style of one…)
Yeah, as imdwalrus said, these movies are too one-note, and… honestly, they’re just too competently made. They are a well-oiled machine. Like a Barry Manilow song, you can tell there’s a lot of talent there, and it’s hard to put your finger on exactly what’s wrong, but… bleah.
I don’t know about Hallmark movies, I agree they might be a bit too…”schmaltzy” (a word which I’ve never heard before and really thought it must be some made-up Midwestern US vernacular, but no, there’s an actual dictionary definition for it ). It’s hard to make fun of sappy, sentimental because 1) too many people really like that stuff and 2) similar issue as with comedies, the riffing would quickly reach a point where there’s not much of a joke beyond “this is too sappy” and too much of that wouldn’t land (see point 1).
Now Lifetime movies….those are ripe for the riffing cuz there’s always SO MUCH going on in those and it’s all ridiculous
This reminds me of a game from the podcast My Brother, My Bother and Me - “That’s A Christmas To Me”. Justin and his wife Sydnee make up fake Hallmark movie summaries, mix them with real Hallmark movie summaries, and the other brothers guess which are real and which are fake. This game is treat every time I’ve heard it played, legitimate comedy gold. I certainly want any Hallmark movie I am subjected to complete with riffing, but it sounds highly challenging for the reasons others have listed. And you’d have a bear of a time doing more than one because they are. All. The. Same.
I’d extra-love this since I have some in-laws who are very Hallmark-positive and i just CAN’T. Alas, I fear the challenge might be too much. Prove me wrong, MST3K/Rifftrax!
Cinema Snob has done some holiday ones like both Christmas Kiss movies.
Someone I went to high school with and same class year is in one, Robert Buckley of One Tree Hill and iZombie fame. Knew of him but never had any class periods with him oddly enough. Seems like a nice guy from what I’ve read of him and on social media.
The answer from where I sit is that they totally can be, but some work better than others. Hallmark movies are a genre, yes, but there’s also subgenres in it, and sub-subgenres. Some are written to be funnier than the rest and I’d likely just give them a pass if my job was to riff Hallmark movies.
The trick is that, even though they are highly formulaic, what you riff isn’t usually about the plot. It’s about the things you see and hear. So while I don’t think riffing most of them would be that difficult comparatively, writing host segments (assuming MST3K ever did a bunch of these types of movies) would be tough because that’s where you break out theme and plot more than in the riff.