Re-Evaluating Bad Movies

Day Three:


Film Year: 2008
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Anna Kendrick, a teacher who looks like Tony Shaloub but disappointingly is not
Riff Year: 2009
Riffers: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett
Selected Short: Going Steady?

It's the most important decision you'll ever make: should I eat the rest of this BK Stacker, or just trust my vague feeling of nausea and quit while I'm ahead? But put that aside now and let's talk about the third most important decision you'll ever make*: should I go steady? The answer, of course, is no. But the short Going Steady doesn't settle for such easy answers. Instead it probes the question through the tortured angst of Marie, an insecure girl with "offbeat" good looks who can't shake her Jeff habit. Jeff, for his part, is a flannel-clad Lothario, prowling the high school hallways and leaving nothing but the shattered husks of broken-hearted bobby-soxers as his terrible toll. Otherwise, very polite young man. In the powerful third act, Marie confronts Jeff, and the reaction is as explosive as anything Judson T. Landis has ever done!
Mike, Kevin and Bill learned everything they know about life, about love...and about laughter....from Going Steady.

*The 2nd is "should I take advantage of the zero percent financing on the hedge trimmer I want to buy?"

How can you tell if you’re going steady?

No seriously, I need to know.

::turns around:: HEY PHYLLIS! ARE WE GOING STEADY?

Phyllis: NO! GET BACK TO YOUR INTERNET PORN!

And there you have it! A sure fire way to find out if you’re going steady. Of course, the characters in this short have no clue if they’re going steady and get advice on what going steady exactly means. It’s a quaint short that fakes paternal advice to teenagers, basically.

The riffing is solid, mocking the lunkhead characters to great effect. The simple story is beefed up, and the advice portions are made goofier and questionable. Even if you don’t get to second base, this short makes going steady fun!

And now our feature presentation…

RiffTrax was caught up in the Twilight frenzy, and not surprisingly, given that we are staffed almost exclusively by 13-year-old girls. So when we heard rumors of the feature film—the whispers of John Goodman being cast as Edward were especially worrying—we sent so many texts beginning "OMG!!!1!!!!11!!" we nearly shut down our SMS service.

At the movie's premiere we were there among the throngs, shrieking with girlish glee when Robert Pattinson got out of his limo (it turns out we had mistakenly gone to the premiere of The Changeling and were actually shrieking for John Malkovich, but the point still stands.) And when it was finally released on DVD we ruined our first three copies by hugging them too much.

But we've overcome these obstacles to give you the best RiffTrax for a sparkly-emo-vampire film that we know how to make, and we say with as much humility as we can muster, that's a pretty darn good sparkly-emo-vampire RiffTrax! Turn off that Ashley Tisdale download, tell the clerk at Hot Topic you'll buy that hoodie later, and cozy up with Mike, Kevin and Bill for the mopiest RiffTrax ever!



There was a heavy debate as to whether or not Twilight was “Halloween” enough to include in this marathon. It is by genre a romance, but at it’s heart it’s a really crappy monster movie. Or at least that’s how I’m justifying it.

But really what it boils down to is that I’m having a Rifftrax marathon, and I’d never forgive myself if I left out my favorite Rifftrax, horror movie or not. Unfortunately that probably means I’m peaking early, but at least my thirst for Twilight mockery has been satisfied.

Twilight is that love it or hate it fad that we all have some sort of opinion on. We’re either in the camp of “SWOON” or “KILL IT WITH FIRE!” I was a steady boyfriend throughout half of the series’ run, so I unfortunately got to see two of these movies in theaters. It was interesting seeing my girlfriend’s split personality, as I heard her complain endlessly about the series being butchered for the big screen (like, you know, ALL young adult readers seem to do), but as she sat down to watch it the girlish glee emerged and she started squeeing with the rest of the fawning ladies of the audience.

She thanked me numerous times for taking her to see them. Once i made the mistake of telling her that I didn’t hate the movies as much as she thought I did. She responded enthusiastically by asking if I wanted to borrow the books from her. My response was an instant and heavy “NO!”

I actually wasn’t lying. Twilight is awful, but I thought the core idea of a more “folklore” take on vampires and werewolves had promise. They just botched it. But even after screwing it up, damn it’s funny. These movies are horrendously padded, poorly acted, feature trashy “not so special” effects, and are wholly empty experiences served as just a fantasy gateway for lonely women who want to see Bella as an avatar instead of a character.

Mike, Kevin, and Bill expressed initial reluctance at tackling Twilight for Rifftrax, as they felt the angsty teenage romance was out of their core audience’s demographic. They however underestimated the sheer amount of people who wanted to see this movie made fun of. What they found in this film was a match made in heaven, far more than Bella and Edward could hope to be. There is SO MUCH to mock in this movie, and the long pauses, stifled sentence fragments, and dead air assure that there is plenty of time for the riffers to get their jokes in. An all time favorite joke amongst me and my friends is during the patches of silence where the boys just simply say the word “Line?” as if the characters were in a high school play. It’s a running gag so funny that they bring it back in their riffs for all four sequels.

To me, this is perfection. It ranks right up there with the best of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I recommend this to anyone who dislikes the movie and is unwilling to sit through childish parodies like Vampires Suck or Breaking Wind. My childish parody is hands down the best of the bunch.

Day Nine:


Film Year: 2009
Director: Chris Weitz
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Anna Kendrick, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning
Riff Year: 2010
Riffers: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett
Selected Short: How Much Affection?

It's a question we ponder every time we tip the pizza guy: How much affection? Is it necessary to set the box down before embracing him? How long do you hold him, knowing that he has other deliveries to make? Can lower tips be compensated for with more affection?

How Much Affection? sadly touches on none of these issues; its Pizza Guy advice comes from the "30 Minutes or Free" era and is therefore quite out of date. What you will find in this short are dates that end in tears, sandwich making and a stern reminder of the potential Gerber-eating consequences of Too Much Affection.

Riffers Mike, Kevin and Bill differ wildly in their estimates of How Much Affection, but mostly because Bill insists on measuring affection using the metric system.

Sex is a terrifying and evil thing that must be stomped out at all costs. This twenty minute short from the the 1950’s aims to do just that. Here we have two teenagers on the verge of making whoopie, but torn apart by vows of abstinence. Will having sex destroy their relationship? Honestly with the way the short portrays them as uncomfortable around each other makes me think it would actually SAVE it!

But sex will bring babies upon the world. Babies are miraculous burdens that lead to misery. If you have one, you’re life will be ruined, but you will insist it’s the greatest joy you have ever known as you die a little every time you see that fake smile in the mirror. This is another moral the short tries to throw in your face.

The short is one of those ambiguous “you decide what’s right” messaged films that will clearly be disappointed in you if you make the wrong choice. The right choice for me is to watch it with Mike, Kevin, and Bill. Their riffs are steady and workmanlike, but sometimes hit their target of the old-timey values that make this short amusing today. Back then love was only for those who could keep it in their pants. As for today?

Well, how about that orgy?

And now our feature presentation...

Twi-Hard. A once proud word that has been shockingly cheapened by over-use. It used to mean something. These days, any given twelve year old girl with Team Edward wallpaper on her iPhone can be the star of a "Vampire Fever" cover story photo in USA Today. It's not right. Just because some soccer mom blows two months of grocery funds on an elaborate face tattoo replicating the iconic "Cullen baseball" scene, that DOES NOT make her a real Twi-Hard, okay? It's something you earn. It's something you live.

Forgive our emotion on this issue, but it's just that Mike, Kevin, and Bill are probably the biggest Twilight fans on the planet. Just survey Kristen Stewart's file of restraining order requests, and see which names pop up the most (Stephenie Meyer's file is alarmingly similar). So it should surprise no one that these three sparkly warriors trekked to the theater dozens upon dozens of times to feast upon the sweet succulent cinematic nectar that is New Moon. After the fourteenth viewing, the girl at the ticket counter was unable to make eye contact with them, muttering something about "grown men" under her breath. The pimply popcorn vendor filled his friends' inboxes with texts like "OMG third time today," while the theater janitor constantly fought the urge to beat them with his mop. In a word: epic.

But the shame they endured, along with the suffering of their long-neglected wives and children, is your gain. Thanks to these endless, obsessive, life-destroying viewings, Mike, Kevin, and Bill are able to present this RiffTrax of New Moon on the eve of its DVD release. Let's just hope that, now that the ride is over, they can put their lives back together once and for all (they're not making any more of these movies, right?).



Surely you didn’t think I was only doing one Twilight movie, didn’t you? Haha, you dumb bastard, it’s all or nothing. We’re going the distance, baby.

(Oh, I’ve wasted my life)

What can I say about New Moon? Well, if I say nothing else about it it’s a much prettier movie than the first one. The flick has some gorgeous cinematography and does some neat camera tricks. Objectively is it a better movie than the first? Well…………

Sorry, this is a long Twilight character pause, so give me twenty minutes and I’ll finish that thought.

The first Twilight movie is about a mopey girl who eases her depression with a fascination with a boy at school who happens to be a vampire. New Moon is about a mopey girl who eases her depression with a fascination with a boy at school who happens to be a werewolf. Sure there are new concepts of world building sprinkled about in this movie, and if you’re really into the mythology of Twilight that might be engaging, but this is essentially the same movie we’ve seen before. And in the end pretty much nothing happens in this movie. We meet werewolves and flaming vampire kings. That’s it. And this is the longest movie in the series.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

This is an inconsequential story that exists because people will buy it regardless of whether it’s good or not. It’s padded, bloated, boring, and a complete waste of time. From a technical perspective I can’t call it the worst Twilight movie, but in many ways it’s the easiest to resent because it exemplifies everything wrong with the franchise.

“Complete sentence?.......NO! She’s oh for fifty!”

Easing the boredom is this quality Rifftrax. One thing I will say right off the bat is that it’s not as good as the first one, not even close, but when the laughs peak the highs are just as gutbusting. Kristen Stewart’s stammering and just plain weird performance in this film is ripe for the mocking and the boys play with it like Jacob with a chew toy.

One thing for me that brings this Trax down is there are quite a few gay jokes in this one. There are a few homoerotic gags in the first, but New Moon is positively saturated with them. I don’t find this too much of a detraction, since they’re not hateful and are sometimes funny if they strike at the right moment, but they play like a safe go-to joke when nothing better is offered. The moment where these could be the strongest is during the Volturi scenes at the end, because these guys are the perfect match for this humor, but by the time we get there we’ve heard so many similar gags that they feel tiresome.

But overall New Moon is a worthy successor to the crown jewel of Rifftrax. It has moments where it lags often due to the bloat of the movie it’s linked to, but laughs await those who brave it. I’d suggest the first film for anyone who wants to sample Twilight Rifftrax over this, though.