MST3K: The Movie, not a quality film, but amusing

Warning: MST3K:The Movie (which is, apparently, the cool way to refer to it, rather than by the full title, Mystery Science Theater 3000:The Movie) is not the kind of movie that you go see for the wonderful acting or cinematography or other Film Studies-type aspects. It's just funny. Don't expect anything particularly artistic.

The basic plot is that this guy is kidnapped by a mad scientist and trapped with three robots on a space station. The scientist, inexplicably, forces them all to watch bad movies. The reason for this is unclear, but in any case the background plot is less than immaterial, as the main point is the bad movies that they are forced to watch.

The particular bad movie in question is called This Island Earth, a fairly normal 50s or 60s science fiction film in which a (non-mad) scientist is captured by aliens and forced to watch good movies. No, actually, they just take him to a sort of mad-scientist resort, and later to their own planet, where he gets to save The Day and The Girl and rocket triumphantly off into space at the end.

But the plot of the bad movie is also immaterial since the funny part is that the guy and the robots make smart-alecky comments at the movie the whole time. Apparently, they do this in order not to go crazy, as well as to foil the mad scientist's evil plan, whatever it, in fact, may be.

Now this is where the movie could either be incredibly funny or incredibly obnoxious, as anyone who's ever watched TV with friends/roommates/etc. knows. That is, incredibly funny, defined as you making fun of 90210 when your friend is agonizing over Brandon and Kelly's tragic love affair, or incredibly obnoxious: your roommate telling you all the scientific reasons why "that could never happen in Real Life, you know," while watching The X-Files. Or vice versa.

But these guys actually do make amusing comments about the great cinematic masterpiece that is This Island Earth and manage to stave off insanity until they have to watch Attack of the Pod People, or whatever the mad scientist comes up with next. So, if you're not expecting a tense, plot-driven thriller, a tender romance, a sweeping epic, a heartwarming, or even a meaningful-yet-incomprehensible foreign film, and are in the mood for an odd-yet-quite-funny movie with a lot of mad scientists in it, then MST3K:The Movie is the Friday night activity for you.