The world is safe! Or is it?

I just got back from the Rifftrax Live Show.


When we arrived at the theater we saw some concert that was muted for the usual radio ads played before the coming attractions. It was odd and we almost turned around and went looking for the right room. Eventually we got the fake pre-movie title cards that the other Rifftrax Live Shows have had. They also showed the sponsor and their stuff many times, but they still used the unrelated radio ads. While they were advertising for NCM Fathom you could hear a Jay Leno bit.

So at 8:00pm sharp the show started. You could see the (large!) TN theater where the show was filmed. It was silent for a little bit where I watched it till we finally heard the live sound. Some woman introduced the show. After a little banter we got straight to the short, Flying Stewardesses. Although I think the movie was stronger, this short featured the best gag of the night, a Snakes on the Plane reference. I guess it's been long enough that it doesn't seem so played out. The short is an instructional film about women learning how to be stewardesses. It contains the kind of sexism you'd expect. We got to hear the pure loathing for Fort Worth and saw the secret of stewardesses: They can also sail. Sorta.

After that we got to watch a couple shorts by Something Awful . com and a couple songs by Johnathan Coulter. The shorts were ok, but I couldn't hear much about the first one. It came at us so quickly and the crowd drowned it out. The berry commercial was much easier for me to follow. The songs by whoever were ok, but the highlight were the people singing along. Coulter sounds familiar but I can't place him, but apparently there are people who know who he is and the shots of the TN theater showed a few women singing along, which became funnier as they were shown again and again.

Finally we got one last song before the movie about made up plans 1-8. Mike showed us his flute nose skills. The feature presentation was after that. I'm impressed that these three could riff a whole movie without a break. I assumed there would be at least one break in the show. I also enjoyed the times they momentarily showed the guys on the left side of the screen in boxes. Occasionally they started pointing (or dodging) reacting to the movie. A good compromise between sticking their heads in the film and not appearing at all.

The biggest laughs I got from the film is whenever the detective showed up. The way he handles the gun is hilarious by itself, but the "Pow!" sound effects the guys added were great. Really, that by itself was worth the money. The riffs included a very gratuitous MST3k callback when Mike gave a Tor solilquy that ended with, "TIME FOR GO TO BED!"


I hope they do this again in the future. Heck, I hope CT follows and try to do their own cross country live show. I give this experiment a 9 out of 9.