Not Even Rifftrax Can Do Justice To The Room
So Rifftrax, one of the companies you can pay to talk over bad movies for you, has just added The Room to their roster, and a lot of tipsters are sending it in. I don't want to start some sort of beef with the MST3K Claymates or anything, but, wait, this is supposed to be better than watching the movie itself and thinking your own funny thoughts in your own funny head? Because if this sample, from one of the "best" scenes in the movie, is representative, the only service being provided here is two annoying guys with the most obvious jokes distracting the audience from even having the chance to notice the funniest things about the scene. They're basically like "Want us to ruin the experience of seeing The Room for you? That'll be four bucks."
This is probably a case of just being overly obsessed with the the wonderful experience of any person's first discovery of The Room, but if these guys are going to be years late on this (and, I'm sorry, if bad movies are your job, you are so way late on this), they should at least add something more than the sound of their own voices saying, quite literally, the exact same things that anyone who isn't a moron has already noticed. Maybe all this proves, though, is that The Room is SUCH a bad movie that even the true professionals can't do it justice. I did love those guys's Sixth Sense mashup. (Thanks for the tips, Josh and Ryan.)
Posted by Lindsay at 4:30 PM in Cult Hits
Tags: Rifftrax | The Room | Tommy Wiseau
Yuck. RiffTrax for The Room simply shouldn't exist. You can't improve on perfection. Duh.
Score = 0
Aww, I think it's funny. But my love for Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy is ancient. And I haven't seen The Room in its entirely yet, so we're still in the awkward getting-to-know-you phase (though I'm hoping this will change when I finally get to a screening on June 27th).
Score = 4
EntireTy. I feel like every post I've made this week has some sort of error in it. Blee blah.
Score = 0
Mr. Show, the Simpsons, MST3K (sort of). videogum is channeling my DVD shelf. i do like like Rifftrax (not as much as Cinematic Titanic), but unless the movie is straight up old timey B-grade magic, you should probably watch the movie without commentary the first time. i'm waiting to see The Room in NYC in July. super excited.
Score = 1
I duuno, maybe you should get the DVD first - I went to a screening in boston a few months ago (for viewing #5) and the audience drowned out the best lines with their renditions! disappointment abounded.
Score = 3
This is exactly why going to see The Room for the first time at an NYC screening was such a mistake on my part. I felt exactly the same way.
Score = 2
I dunno, this is pretty damn funny. Still, I am an eternal MSTie.
Score = 4
To be fair, bad movies aren't these guys' job anymore -- unlike MST3K, Rifftrax is for pretty much all new movies. The Room is really an exception for them, since they generally do blockbusters.
Having never seen The Room (gasp), I thought this was pretty funny, since it plays like any awful sub-B-movie they would have ripped down for Mystery Science Theater. It's more interesting than hearing them riff over The Dark Knight, to be sure.
Score = 3
I don't spend much money on Rifftrax, but I have to jump in and defend the crew on this one. Maybe in a movie that has comedic value on its own like this, it doesn't work so well, but they're the only reason I was able to get through Indiana Jones 4.
Score = 3
Short story about my IJ4 (Injependence Day) viewing experience: my friends and I, as I understood it, are going to go watch it with some drinks in our system. By the time we get to the theater I am the only person drunk of all five (or so) in this group. I spend the movie:
a) sleeping
b) talking far too loudly about, maybe among other things, John Williams' score, particularly the crappy salsa music that is supposedly helping to signify that they are supposedly in Peru
At the end I try to jump over a row of seats and hurt my leg. It is bruised for a few days.
Score = 1
Though I am an original Room-ite, and as such you'd think I would be disappointed, I have to say that hearing the voices & writers from my adolescence-- having commentated, nay, blessed the likes of Manos: the Hands of Fate and The Touch of Satan-- tackle The Room is ... pretty much all I could've asked. I'll be watching it tonight, and to me, the clip definitely does it justice. We'll see just how many bases they cover in the full experience.
Signature graceful MST3k addition: "--and she was too nice and she stole stuff."
Score = 5
I've seen The Room, I love MST3k.....and I actually enjoyed this. I don't know if I'll buy the Rifftrack just yet, but I think it's fun and add's a different kind of humor to The Room.
Score = 4
Yeah, I think this kind of ruins The Room experience. These guys don't really add anything funny, but I never liked Mystery Science Theater either. So, there you go.
Score = -8
I love mst3k but I feel that this rifftrack(did I use that correctly?) is unnecessary.
Score = -1
I'm a huge MSTie, but I don't find Rifftrax all that funny, which is unfortunate. however, "The Film Crew" is really great, which is basically Mike, Bill & Kevin doing MST3K without puppets (and not on new movies, which, for some reason, doesn't have the same allure as the old crappy ones).
Score = -1
MSTies are now being compared to fans of Clay Aiken? Ouch. I don't think the Rifftrack is unneccessary and I don't think they were that late to the party. Many people are just discovering The Room and if you watch it without the Rifftrack (as you should) and then want to hear some of your favourite people do what they do best, why not? Or as Tommy Wiseau would say "why naaaahhhht?"
Score = 6
You're right. No one can be as funny as the thoughts in your head.
When you go see this in the theater people are yelling TERIBLE, unwanted jokes. This is better.
Score = 1
All this.....it's TEARING ME APART!!!!
Score = 1
Hey, here's a ProTip for ya: If you don't like the commentary, YOU DON'T HAVE TO WATCH THE MOVIE WITH THE COMMENTARY. Problem solved. Don't worry about it.
Score = 1
You should take a look at this clip from a live showing in New York. Leaving the comments to the people in the crowd certainly doesn't look like a more enjoyable option: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOcba7AnF3o
Score = 2
Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett can talk over ANYTHING in my life as far as I'm concerned. I coulda used them at my grandmother's funeral. I rented Twilight because of Rifftrax and there's no way could have slogged through that thing without it.
Score = 1
One of the things I loved about MST3k was that I could still mostly hear the movie. I like RiffTrax but they are so loud it's hard to follow along.
Score = -1
To be fair, when I first discovered MST3k a million years ago, I was annoyed that these dorks kept talking over the alien invasion robot movie :-|
Score = -1
"Maybe all this proves, though, is that The Room is SUCH a bad movie that even the true professionals can't do it justice."
i don't know, they did a great job with troll 2... and all those awful movies on that TV show they had. i'll give it a shot.
Score = 1
I don't much care for the clip, but you should check out the interview they did with the guy who plays the guy who shows up near the end to lambaste Lisa at Johnny's party. http://blog.rifftrax.com/2009/06/12/rifftrax-interview-with-the-rooms-greg-ellery/
Score = 0
There is a bit of dissonance there, to be certain, but I dunno, it was still funny to me. Their "The Happening" Rifftrax was the best thing to ever happen to M. Night Shyamalan.
Score = 0
Speaking as a diehard MSTie and a big fan of Rifftrax as a way of getting me through movies I would never watch untouched (i.e. The Happening, Twilight, any viewings of Indiana Jones 4 after my first), I think the reason that this doesn't really work for me personally lies in the fact that "The Room" is one of those rare movies that's really, truly so bad that it's pretty damned funny, and so riffing it is akin to riffing a comedy... It just doesn't work very well. There's a reason you won't find any Rifftrax for comedies (aside from the original "Little Shop of Horrors", which is technically OK due to its being not funny in the least), and why MST3K only ever did one "comedic" film during the 10+ years it was on the air (that being "Catalina Caper"),
Score = 0