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I can't quite bring myself to write my personal essay despite the dwindling of hours in my day off, (it's nearly four p.m. as I start to write this, now) so I'll talk about RiffTrax to get the juices flowing. (I hope.)
After watching the just-OK RiffTrax for Spider-Man 3, I decided I wanted to try the RiffTrax for some other titles. I eventually ended up going with Saw and Eragon because that's what Blockbuster had available. I bought the RiffTrax, waited three days and wondered why the order was still "pending" for all that time, emailed tech support and got a nice email apology back saying that they were having issues with PayPal but everything should be OK now. It was. And I watched.
I decided to listen to the Saw RiffTrax first. Unlike Eragon, I had seen it before at a memorable Halloween 2004 screening. I liked it. It has a bad reputation now as the premier example of "torture porn", but I think after a few decades pass Saw will be looked at like the first Halloween -- a movie which heralded bloody gorefests of brutalizing women without actually being one itself. In fact, any female character in peril comes out alive and with all of their appendages. The men get brutalized but except for the final scene when Cary Elwes cuts off his foot, the film never seems to linger over the violence. The two earlier men's death traps are filmed in a super-quick version which doesn't allow the viewer to take any visceral thrills from seeing the trap. So I didn't pick up a misandrist vibe from the film, either.
Anyway, I liked Saw because it made the audience's sympathies lie with the characters made me wonder what I would do if I were trapped in any of these horrible situations. The concept of the killer -- one who kills through a complex trap that has a chance of survival -- was also intriguing. The film wasn't without its issues, though. Cary Elwes' American accent was off at best and bizarre at worst and Leigh Whannell's acting was teh suck. So I figured the Riffers would be able to eviscerate it.
The result. Um ... it was OK. Just OK. I laughed at a few times, and was glad they referenced some of the things I did ("Apparently [Americans talk like] we have constantly stuffy noses ..."). And noticed other things I didn't. (Movie: "I was in the hospital parking lot ..." Trax: "which is in a barn, apparently.") And sometimes were just funny. ("Oh, the shame of being mugged by a furry!") But I still left the RiffTrax feeling overall dissatisfied.
Then I watched Eragon and ALL WAS FORGIVEN. I hadn't seen Eragon before. I like the idea of a cute, female blue dragon but hearing about Paolini's "It's not a ripoff, it's an homage" style of writing I decided I didn't want to have anything to do with this movie. Now I'm almost considering buying it just for the RiffTrax.
The movie itself is pretty bad in a generic way. I don't think anyone can act and whoever does act won't bother. Also, I was at least expecting pretty blue dragon action, but she's hardly on-screen. It's not quite in the so-bad-it's-good either, because there's no unintentionally hilarious dialogue. So in that sense it kind of fails compared to that Uwe Boll Dungeon Siege movie, which is pretty sad.
So the RiffTrax makes it much better. I was laughing really hard as they pointed out the ineptitude of the movie. (Even when they made fun of the "Faaaaaabulous!!!" armor ... although it was lightly pinging my homophobia-dar.) The RiffTrax also points out all the derivative parts of the movie. Not that you needed that, but it's funny to watch the movie and hear someone yell, "Hey! It's poor man's Snape!"
So ... it does make me wonder how funny RiffTrax is ... or maybe how dependent on the material it is. Decent movie seems to warrant decent RiffTrax but bad movie warrants good RiffTrax. So I guess it does overall make me question their choice to Riff good movies. Not that they should be untouchable but ... I wonder if it's worth it.
And I also wonder if they're always kind of just half-funny but the badness of the movie has made up for it in the past when they're not.
Of course, if the Jurassic Park RiffTrax is hilarious, forget everything I said here. :)
After watching the just-OK RiffTrax for Spider-Man 3, I decided I wanted to try the RiffTrax for some other titles. I eventually ended up going with Saw and Eragon because that's what Blockbuster had available. I bought the RiffTrax, waited three days and wondered why the order was still "pending" for all that time, emailed tech support and got a nice email apology back saying that they were having issues with PayPal but everything should be OK now. It was. And I watched.
I decided to listen to the Saw RiffTrax first. Unlike Eragon, I had seen it before at a memorable Halloween 2004 screening. I liked it. It has a bad reputation now as the premier example of "torture porn", but I think after a few decades pass Saw will be looked at like the first Halloween -- a movie which heralded bloody gorefests of brutalizing women without actually being one itself. In fact, any female character in peril comes out alive and with all of their appendages. The men get brutalized but except for the final scene when Cary Elwes cuts off his foot, the film never seems to linger over the violence. The two earlier men's death traps are filmed in a super-quick version which doesn't allow the viewer to take any visceral thrills from seeing the trap. So I didn't pick up a misandrist vibe from the film, either.
Anyway, I liked Saw because it made the audience's sympathies lie with the characters made me wonder what I would do if I were trapped in any of these horrible situations. The concept of the killer -- one who kills through a complex trap that has a chance of survival -- was also intriguing. The film wasn't without its issues, though. Cary Elwes' American accent was off at best and bizarre at worst and Leigh Whannell's acting was teh suck. So I figured the Riffers would be able to eviscerate it.
The result. Um ... it was OK. Just OK. I laughed at a few times, and was glad they referenced some of the things I did ("Apparently [Americans talk like] we have constantly stuffy noses ..."). And noticed other things I didn't. (Movie: "I was in the hospital parking lot ..." Trax: "which is in a barn, apparently.") And sometimes were just funny. ("Oh, the shame of being mugged by a furry!") But I still left the RiffTrax feeling overall dissatisfied.
Then I watched Eragon and ALL WAS FORGIVEN. I hadn't seen Eragon before. I like the idea of a cute, female blue dragon but hearing about Paolini's "It's not a ripoff, it's an homage" style of writing I decided I didn't want to have anything to do with this movie. Now I'm almost considering buying it just for the RiffTrax.
The movie itself is pretty bad in a generic way. I don't think anyone can act and whoever does act won't bother. Also, I was at least expecting pretty blue dragon action, but she's hardly on-screen. It's not quite in the so-bad-it's-good either, because there's no unintentionally hilarious dialogue. So in that sense it kind of fails compared to that Uwe Boll Dungeon Siege movie, which is pretty sad.
So the RiffTrax makes it much better. I was laughing really hard as they pointed out the ineptitude of the movie. (Even when they made fun of the "Faaaaaabulous!!!" armor ... although it was lightly pinging my homophobia-dar.) The RiffTrax also points out all the derivative parts of the movie. Not that you needed that, but it's funny to watch the movie and hear someone yell, "Hey! It's poor man's Snape!"
So ... it does make me wonder how funny RiffTrax is ... or maybe how dependent on the material it is. Decent movie seems to warrant decent RiffTrax but bad movie warrants good RiffTrax. So I guess it does overall make me question their choice to Riff good movies. Not that they should be untouchable but ... I wonder if it's worth it.
And I also wonder if they're always kind of just half-funny but the badness of the movie has made up for it in the past when they're not.
Of course, if the Jurassic Park RiffTrax is hilarious, forget everything I said here. :)