2009 Rifftrax in review

[Mighty Jack]

Lets do it again!
This was last year’s discussion 2008 Rifftrax in Review

2009: What were your favorites? Your most hated?

For me: This was actually more difficult for me than last year. I didn’t really have a top 10. It was more like a top 7, with a whole bunch of okay to decent efforts all smooshed up thereafter. Rifftrax 09 offered up a lot more variety in the movies, and that was welcome. But that didn’t translate in a flood of knockout trax humor wise.

The normally reliable Shorts were actually hit and miss this year and I hated the practice of splitting some of them in half.

Rifftrax presents was in the toilet, with the exception of 2 exceptionally funny people.

Rifftrax also hit the theaters in 2 winning shows. Plan 9 was especially fun for me, I was in a great mood, the show had a lot of variety and the house was packed!

And there was iRiffs, eh… not my thing.


My Favorite features…
10 . Carnival of Souls, 9. Empire Strikes Back
Nope, The Room didn’t make it. It was okay but too one note and didn’t live up to the hype. Souls didn’t hold up well on repeat viewing, nor did Empire. But there were better and more varied laughs to be found in each… and hell, I had to come up with something to flesh out a top 10. These were the best I could find.

8. Casablanca
A nice experiment: The guys riff on one of the greatest films of all time, and that’s the problem… even though I’m very familiar with the movie (it’s one of my all time faves) I still focused on the story and found myself wishing the quipsters to shut up and be quiet. There are excellent riffs, I applaud their effort and feel they did nice enough work to warrant entry on the top 10 - but I don’t think I’ll ever listen to the ‘trax again, the movie is simply too compelling.

7. Footloose
Janet and Cole are the best riffers this side of the classic crew of SOL. They have their own goofy style and great chemistry together. Footloose was a ton o’ fun!

6. Dragon Wars
I didn’t find it a riot start to finish, but when it hit the funny bone, it hit hard. Lots of great references - and call me twisted, but the moments where they indulge in some black humor, had me in stitches.

5. Fast & Furious
Razor sharp quipping on a dumb, dumb movie. I couldn’t understand a damn thing Mr. Potato-head said, but caught every biting joke offered from our riffers.

4. Voodoo Man
This took me back to the MST days, the riffing, the film; it just felt like a trip to riffings golden age. The movie offers up so many riff opps and MK&B don’t disappoint. It’s so nice to see Bella and John in a riffed flick again.

3. Titanic
Though there are a few dry spots (which is what I expected from a film this long) the scales tip more often toward the hilarious

2. Ghost
Rifftrax Presents didn’t fare very well this year but thankfully Cole and Janet were on the job, and they were even funnier this time out. Ghost was consistently hilarious and one of the best releases from Rifftrax this year -PLUS, unlike numbers 9 and 10 – this one only got funnier on repeat listens.

1. Twilight
This not only proved to be the very best of the year, bit one of my all time favorites, ranking right up there with “Missile to the Moon”. The movie is so corny and silly that it was just asking for the punch lines MK&B heap upon it.


The Worst:
1. Tron – absolutely one of lest funniest things I’ve listened too, from anyone, anywhere.

2. The Running Man – A few funny bits at the start, but they kept repeating the same ideas and jokes over and over and over… it got tiresome. Plus a lot of the humor was infantile and lacked a clever edge. It bored me and I haven’t attempted their Ghost Rider yet.

Apart from Presents, Mike, Kev and Bill disappointed with Star Trek. Loads of miss opportunities and overall uninspired, lazy work.


Those are my thoughts, what are yours?

[giofav]

My quick top 10:

1. The Room - Awsome.
2. Twilight
3. Titanic
4. Planet of Dinosaurs
5. Tranformers 2
6. Fast Furious
7. Jaws
8. Voodoo Man
9. Dragon Wars
10. Maniac

[BoB3K]

Dec 29, 2009 3:56:42 GMT -5 Mighty Jack said:

and I hated the practice of splitting some of them in half.

Agreed. I actually haven't bought any of them because of it. Why not just put the whole thing up and charge $1.99?

I actually don't watch shorts too much because they are, well, too short. I've always loved shorts, but it turns out that they just work better as an appetizer before a movie, as they were shown on MST3K. I watched all of the xmas shorts together, which was fun, but maybe got a little old by the end.


I liked all of the fully mixed ones. It's a tough call between Planet of Dinosaurs and Voodoo Man. PoD had cool dinosaurs and a lot of 70s cheese to make fun of. Voodoo Man was more MST3Kish, and with a lot of good lines. Maniac was fun but slightly off-putting in its age and creepiness.


As for RiffTrax proper:

I really liked Red Dawn with Joel. Great movie choice and really good riffing. I'll go ahead and call this my favorite of the year.

I liked Twilight and Eregon, and would recommend them to anyone.

I liked the Room a lot, except that the riffing itself was only okay in comparison to the movie itself. Plus the R-rated-ness of it is a negative for showing it to friends and family.

I haven't watched Casablanca yet, but I plan too.

[Trumpy's Magic Snout]

A bit of a frustrating year Rifftrax wise for me thanks to an almost complete unavailability of PAL versions of the riffs. Don't know why but it has meant costly drawn out importing to see stuff. As such I've realised I haven't seen too many.

Ones that did stand out were Dragon Wars, The Room, Voodoo Man, Planet of the Dinosaurs and the two Cole Stratton/Janet Varney trax Ghost and Footloose. Then of course there's Twilight a movie that so deserved what was coming to it. It's in many ways the worst movie out of that list, but then I'm not a teenage lassie. I also really enjoyed the Rifftrax Live DVD. That was great fun. I agree the shorts have been a tad hit and miss this year and I also thought Joel McHale done a good job on Red Dawn although it wasn't a stellar Trax for me.

Now that the Xmas period is out of the way I just need to wait for the extreme weather that has hit us to shift and I can go about getting the DVDs imported for Drag Me To Hell, Star Trek and Transformers. It's a bit frustrating as all three are available cheap in my work but I've tried the Audacity changing the speed trick and it didn't work too well. I do have the DVD's for Matrix, Casablanca and Titanic I've just been a bit lazy in getting to watch them.