We've got Movie Sign!
This is a review for all 14 new episodes of Mystery Science Theater on Netflix. It's light on spoilers, which is a weird note to add since it's a MST3K and there's usually not much to spoil, but the story does actually get a bit serialized in the back third so... there's that.
I saw two of the new Mystery Science Theater episodes early before it debuted on Netflix, so I whipped up a first impressions piece that you can read, or revisit, here. I also spoke to show creator Joel Hodgson and new host Jonah Ray about the reboot here. Since then, I've watched the twelve remaining episodes. The verdict? Overall, it's very funny, and there are a handful of episodes -- simply because of the movie choices and the gloriously dead-on riffs -- that I'd totally watch again.
As many episodes of MST3K as there are, there are still some specific installments that stand out to fans and certain movies that made for classic episodes. To get there takes the perfect combination of film and snark - the premise, or cheap production, of the movie plus the running gags and jokes that those elements inspire in the writers. Often times, a particularly meat-headed hero is enough to carry a film because of how much the host and the Bots can mock his dense machismo.
The film choices for this resurrection are awesome. I'd say, of the 14 entries, there are only a couple of mediocre ones. Which is to say, still fun, but not exactly gut-busting. More often than not though, these are top-shelf choices with some truly hilarious commentary.
There's also a nice fluidity to the choices too. The third movie pick, The Time Travelers, was written by the guy who penned the first movie choice, Reptilicus. From there, one of the stars of the Rock Hudson disaster flick Avalanche, which the show lampoons in Episode 4, was actually in The Time Travelers. After that, there are two movies starring Doug McClure (inspiration for The Simpsons' Troy McClure and muse for many a meathead joke) and two starring Caroline Munro, with At the Earth's Core being the one that features the two of them and standing as the show's season finale. So there's a connective tissue, at times, to the film choices.
Jonah and the Bots also have to experience, in a row, an awful '80s fantasy film called Wizards of the Lost Kingdom and its in-name-only sequel, so time away definitely worked wonders for the series as it pertains to title selection. Not that any of these are new movies that came out in the past decade, but coming back for, perhaps, only one season (though the revival ended up airing on Netflix and they give out second seasons like discount candy) created an environment that could hardly suffer any stragglers. These had to be choice cuts, and you do get, almost, a greatest hits playlist of cheesy MST3K fodder. There are a few foreign Kaiju films, a Hercules movie, a Western, a late '70s Star Wars ripoff, and a Christmas movie.
Yup, that's right, you even get a "Christmas Special" with this season, though the Mads make a funny point about how the new binge model means that no one will ever actually be watching it on Christmas. It's with this movie, the Christmas That Almost Wasn't, and the one preceding it, Carnival Magic, where the show really delivers the goods. These two films aren't just bad, because that's easy to do. You can have a movie that looks cheap or that's acted and written poorly, but to have a movie where the story is so bafflingly bizarre that you can't figure out, for the life of you, how it got made is a true treasure trove.
I won't spoil too much about the films but to say that one is about a a frightfully un-jovial Santa scrambling to make rent while the other involves a talking chimp who whips crowds into a frenzy by performing menial tasks. And Jonah and the Bots have a field day with them.
Speaking of Jonah, Ray winds up owning the host role by the end. As mentioned back in my first impressions piece, it takes an episode to get used to him, but by Cry Wilderness he and the jokes hit their full stride and the faster pace of the riffs really begins to settle in as the new style. As does the new mobility of Crow and Tom Servo (now played by Hampton Yount and Baron Vaughn, respectively) as they, occasionally, hover around the screen and interact with the movies more. Well, Tom hovers and Crow walks. Even Gypsy (Rebecca Hanson) pops in twice an episode for two wisecracks, while delivering the "payload" and retrieving the "payload." Whatever the payload is.
Toward the end, and this is where I'll get into some light spoilers, things start to fully gel with not only the entire MST3K mythos -- as both Joel and Mike are mentioned a few times as Jonah's predecessors -- but the entire story takes a surprising turn when Felicia Day's Kinga decides she needs to get married as a stunt to increase her celebrity status. And who does she select as her betrothed? That's right - Jonah! And this arc actually plays out over the course of the final four or five episodes, giving the season finale an actual season finale feel.
One item I won't spoil for you, however, is the names of the many guest stars who stop by the Satellite of Love (or the Moon 13 base) for some laughs - and a few musical numbers too! Day and Patton Oswalt also shine bright as the new mad scientists, though it takes a few episodes before their true dynamic kicks in. Patton's Max, TV's Son of TV's Frank, carries a torch for Day's Kinga, and his occasional swooning winds up playing into the final third of the season when Kinga starts eyeing Jonah as her groom-to-be. Both of them play off each other nicely and together they help shape this season into greatness.
Lastly here, as many new jokes and references as there are now (riffs about Yelp, Uber, vaping, apps, etc), I love that there are also some callbacks to old MST3K bits like "Watch out for snakes," "Can't we get beyond Thunderdome?," "I WILLLL kill you" and "I don't know how this thing works - goodbye, folks!" They're funny on their own, but even better if you remember them from the original series.
The Verdict
The new Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a fiercely funny continuation of the classic cult series with an affable new host, a quicker riff pace, and some exceptionally great bad movies to mock.
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