Review: Rifftrax Live!
by Jonah Gregory ~ December 17th, 2009. Filed under: Staff Infection, Theater.
The group over at Rifftrax did their second live show last night (12/16/09), and while I once again was nowhere near the actual taping, I did attend the live showing via my local theater and Fathom Events.
For those unfamiliar, Rifftrax is one of the two groups who formerly worked on the cult classic television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, and have continued the tradition of creating hilarious riffs over terrible movies. The group consists of former MST3k head-writer/the guy that played “the human” Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy (aka the voice Tom Servo) and Bill Corbett (aka the voice of Crow T. Robot during the Sci-Fi Channel Years). This time around they even had special guest “Weird Al” Yankovic as a special guest riffer for part of the show.
This second live performance, titled “Rifftrax Live! Christmas Shorts-Stravaganza!” featured a collection of holiday shorts (as the name implies), a random one about swimming that Bill Corbett claims is a holiday tradition in his family, and a few bizarre commercials from yesteryear. The strangest of which was for a series of robot toys called Ding-A-Lings. Before the movie, they even had their own brand of slides with movie quotes and fun facts, like the famous quote from Point Break, “Ha ha ha! This Calvin and Hobbes is funny!”
Rifftrax Live was a fun experience. The guys kept the crowd laughing the entire show, even to the point where they commented on the fact that they had missed a line or two, but it was worth it.
Shorts seemed to work better than the full movie format in a live performance. It allowed them to engage the audience between each film, tell some jokes, and break it up with the afore mentioned commercials.
They are doing an encore airing of the special tonight in select theaters (check your local listings) and will likely have a follow-up DVD like they did for the last show. For fans of cheesy movies or us old MSTies, you won’t want to miss it!