I agree, I think this is the weakest episode this season so far. I think they over exaggerated how bad the movie was. Yes, it was bad, but it was more goofy bad than actual bad bad. I’ll have to give it another watch, but I don’t remember any of the host segments sticking out or being as good as the previous episodes.
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Weirdly enough, on my re-re-watch, the two moments which made me laugh the hardest:
The bit in-movie where the moon fell down as “Romeo” is giving his big speech, and
The end of the episode with the Mads unable to hear one another because they’ve spoken in rhyme.
The riffs are mostly solid to me, but there are a few clunkers. I enjoyed the host segments a lot, though.
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1 - Hobgoblins.
Yes, this defies all known logic, but as a movie, I actually appreciate the dorkiness of the entire nightclub sequence. The music is not bad and the weird mix of insider attention to detail and other sections seeming like what a junior high kid thinks going to a punk club is like kind of raises the overall movie up a point.
2 - Mac & Me
It’s a shallow soulless corporate shill of a movie, but it nails that Amblin-wannabe vibe, with still enough clueless weirdness (like the sheer hideousness of the Sea Monkey family) that it’s watchable and laughable even on its own.
3 - Munchie
The 80s Hollywood Sleazoid vibe lurking underneath is actually kind of offputting in what is nominally a kid’s movie. Dom Deluise’s seemingly improvised comedy routines are painful, and wildly inappropriate at times I wondered if he thought the film was going to be more of a Pg-13 comedy set in a senior year high school than what we did get. To be fair, maybe no one told him what movie it was supposed to be.
4 - Pod People. Awful music. Awful Alien. Awful Lead. Awful-looking movie. On its own you can show it to other people so they can react in disbelief but it is obnoxiously stupid.
That said, ranking them as MST3k episodes:
1 - Pod People
2 - Mac & Me
3 - Munchie
4 - Hobgoblins
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My thoughts exactly. The film is too polished and well put together. They tend to do episodes like this that are easier to watch to try to bring in newbies. But to me, it just ends up being the B-Sharps. Clever the first time you hear it, then less so as time goes on.
I wish they would show only obscure movies. If I had heard of the director and their movies when MST3K was on Comedy Central and the movie is on Season 13 & up, then they aren’t obscure enough. They probably had to show Munchie in order to get another film they wanted more. I can’t see any reason other than marketing to pick Munchie.
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I don’t really agree on the obscurity matter.
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It’s considerably harder now for even the cheapest, most local work to stay truly obscure for long. The internet has gone McLuhan one better by ensuring that in the future every obscurity will have its own tribute site for fifteen minutes.
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I think you’re mistaken on this point.
McDonald’s didn’t create Mac & Me and did not profit off it. It was created by RJ Louis to advertise the Ronald McDonald House charity, a non-profit which provides services and support to disabled children. That’s why the main character is in a wheelchair. A very rare instance of good disability representation. The kid’s disability is not the focus of his character, he is not magically cured, and he’s played by a disabled actor. He’s in a wheelchair, but no one asks him why, no one makes him stand out because of it. They just accept that that’s part of his life and treat him like a normal person. I can only wish that more movies and TV were able to take that approach.
Anyway, McDonald’s agreed to license their intellectual property to the movie. The only movie to which they gave unfettered rights. But that was the extent of their involvement. They didn’t come up with the idea. They didn’t fund the movie. They didn’t insist that McDonald’s be featured. The whole thing was Louis’s idea, and the spotlight was supposed to be on the charity, not the restaurant.
Louis apparently also felt that E.T., being a decade old, was a classic whose star had faded. He wasn’t trying to rip off the story. He wanted to give it new life for a new generation of kids.
Now, Louis did a poor job of all this. The movie doesn’t mention the charity, and it lacked the depth and quality of E.T. But it was in no way a soulless corporate shill. It was crafted with heart, independent of the corporation, to lift up a charity that helped families with disabled kids. What it lacked was not soul but talent.
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I feel like terrible kids’ movies are somewhat underrepresented in terms of MST3K fodder.
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I agree, it’s been a bit spotty in the past. But that’s probably because a lot of kids films tend to skew more towards the comedy genre, or have a lot of humorous elements woven into them (or attemts therof) which they’ve said before is something they’re usually reluctant to cover.
But they have done a lot more of them within the last two seasons (Cry Wilderness, Wiards of the Lost Kingdom I and II, Carnival Magic), so that’s nice. They’re a nice addition to the Gamera and Gorgo’s of old.
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Though we should also consider “Santa Claus Conquers The Martians” and “Santa Claus” in the kids movie vein too.
Not sure about “Christmas That Almost Wasn’t”…not sure how many kids would care about Santa’s real estate issues.
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As well as the two Rocky Jones movies and the Lassie movie, The Painted Hills. And Commando Cody.
I suppose the original TV series from which Time of the Apes and the Fugitive Alien movies were created were targeted to a kid/young adult audience.
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Oh, absolutely. I was just feeling lazy and didn’t feel like listing all the possible films.
And I’m sure The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t was intended as a kids film, since most such films involving Santa are (unless he’s running around stabbing people. Those are decidedly NOT in the kid’s film category), but as you said, once the film started down the “You own me rent” path, I’m sure most of the kiddies zoned right out.
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In here reading about how a Jim Wynorski movie is too slick and polished like…
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I mean, it’s not terrible. Jonah said his main problem was that the movie doesn’t leave time between dialog and quick cuts to wedge riffs in.
Munchie is a stupid movie, but, as has been said, it’s made for kids.
The puppet is weird and ugly, but I’m seriously impressed with how many moving parts it has. How many puppeteers did that take?
Dom DeLuise is weird, doing oddly dated humor (perhaps in an attempt to keep the parents somewhat interested?) and “jokes” that aren’t. But, you know, he’s just doing what he does. That’s his shtick, and it got him this far. He works well with Mel Brooks writing, anyway.
It’s weird that our hero wishes himself dead. But maybe it’s good to let him express that and let kids dealing with depression and confusion know that they’re not alone?
It’s juvenile antics, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything more.
So, yeah. I gotta agree. It’s a bad movie. But it’s nowhere near the worst MST3K has done.
It’s certainly a step up from Pod People, which started out as a horror movie, got rewritten on the fly because ET was such a success, and ended up fighting with itself. Is it a boilerplate horror movie about an alien monster killing off a band of teenagers out in the woods? Or is it a lighthearted kids movie that’s a cheap knockoff of ET? It’s both. It’s neither. There’s too much horror and death to really work as the latter, but trying to make it accessible to a younger audience means seriously cutting back on the gore and terror, so it can’t work as the former, either. So it’s just stuck as a peanut butter and roast beef sandwich, which isn’t going to satisfy anyone.
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I’m really in the minority here.
Firstly, I think Munchie is the best episode this season. That’s really saying something because I happen to think this is a very strong season thus far.
Secondly, Hobgoblins is one of my favorite episodes overall and I’m surprised it’s ranking so low in opinion in this thread.
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I’m gonna want to do an entire season run once Season 13 concludes to better figure this all out, but right now, I have it neck-and-neck with Beyond Atlantis as a season favorite.
I find Munchie to be an easier film experience to digest than Beyond Atlantis (heaven help me), but I found the overall riff writing/performing in Beyond Atlantis to be uniformly and impressively strong… perhaps stronger?
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Yeah, I think I would say Munchie is my favorite ep of the Relaunch Era so far.
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Me too. The over the top quality hearkens to classic episodes. Jonah and the Bots’ unease to Munchie (1992) is reminiscent of Joel and the Bots buckling under The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969) or Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966). The madness of Munchie infects the subjects leading to a manic zaniness and irreverence ripped from vintage old school MST3K. On that score, I grade 1304 as a homerun and one of the most accomplished and rich specimens in the Netflix or Gizmoplex era. The Host Segments are some of the best I’ve seen. The Dr. Phibes skit is golden. Ditto Jonah’s breakdown.
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I’m really in the minority here.
Firstly, I think Munchie is the best episode this season. That’s really saying something because I happen to think this is a very strong season thus far.
Secondly, Hobgoblins is one of my favorite episodes overall and I’m surprised it’s ranking so low in opinion in this thread.
I agree on both counts. For me, Hobgoblins is up there with Space Mutiny and Cave Dwellers as the best of the older MST3K stuff. And I really liked Munchie! If I had seen it as a kid (without the riffing), I probably would have liked it then too. As far as I’m concerned, MST3K can do as many E.T./Gremln-inspired films as they want, and I’ll tune in every time.
Honestly, I really like seeing multiple knockoffs of a single influential film, like was mentioned in the Dr. Donna St. Phibes segment. Other films to inspire a ton of interesting knockoffs are things like Star Wars (e.g. Starcrash) and Alien (e.g. Lords of the Deep). Is there any website or book that dives into these sort of knockoff films?
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Huh, that’s really interesting! Thanks for sharing, Rocket. I think they should have mentioned the charity directly, though. I never would have guessed. Perhaps they could have shown it in the McDonalds dance sequence or mentioned it in text just before the title rolled.
I like your point about having a normalized portrayal of disability in the movie. I don’t think I gave the movie credit for that, but it’s definitely a point in its favor. From a more personal perspective, I really like when movies have a gay character whose entire character isn’t “gay person.” Captain Holt in Brooklyn 99 is a great example of this. They don’t try to hide his homosexuality, but his character has a lot of other interesting traits too. If you were describing the character to a friend, it’s probably not the first thing you’d mention (you’d probably describe his dry humor or by-the-books demenor first). That counts for a lot in my book.
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