Sadly, I was late getting into MST3k when it was still around. In my area, we didn’t have Comedy Central until just before the show switched to Sci-Fi so the only option for Joel/Mike and the ‘bots was overly expensive VHS copies or one hour long segments at 2 AM on Saturdays. As such, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (henceforth referred to as whatever acronym I feel like) was an easy way to get your bad movie fix rife with sarcastic commentary. That is, until I realized that the movie is actually quite different from the show.
You should know about MST3k by now considering that we’ve had two previous posts about it, not to mention the dozens of other pages and wikis about the show. The long and short is that a man is trapped on an orbiting satellite just above Earth who is forced to watch bad movies to amuse his captors. Not content to suffer in silence, the first man, Joel, builds four robots, some to aid in the ship’s operation and others to make witty quips with him while watching the chosen horrendous films.
One of the most endearing qualities about a typical episode of the long running series was the reliance on rapid-succession jokes full of obscure references that only make sense after researching it. But, since this was designed to be a feature film to (I presume) increase the show’s exposure, the rifts were not as sophisticated or plentiful. It also helps (or hurts depending) that the film featured was not some DTV piece starring Joe Estevez but rather, the 1950s classic-for-the-time-period This Island Earth. This Island Earth is certainly cheesy with questionable special effects and performances that are mostly on par with other sci-fi movies from this time period but considering the depths of cinematic ineptitude this series has uncovered through the years, this one is Oscar worthy.
Mike (Joel’s replacement) and his robot pals have fun riffing the movie and most of their lines stand out as laugh-out-loud funny as opposed to the hit or miss barrage of jokes from the series. But I still feel a little cheated that a good portion of This Island Earth is excised which makes it look more vapid and nonsensical than the movie actually is. Also that the feature length film runs a good ten or fifteen minutes shorter than an average episode with seemingly longer host segments is almost inexcusable as well. Reportedly, there was a bit of animosity during the production with the almost certainly free-spirited MST3k folk battling corporate bigwigs. Perhaps that is the cause of the significant shift in execution or its truncated length but regardless, MST3k:TM is a much funnier and enjoyable time than your average Adam Sandler movie.
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