1st Annual Mystery Science Theater 3000 Summer Blockbuster Review

MST3K has done a wonderful job over the years taking the trashiest movies and turning them into loads of laughs. In this special edition, however, they review and critique the summer awards for 1997. You have to admit, in that year, except for Titanic, there weren't a lot of good movies. Classic of all was their take on Starship Troopers.

This time around, Mike and the bots riff on modern blockbusters. This is a gem for those of you who might want to see what it would be like when they take on a little less cheesy fare. I never saw Contact or The Fifth Element, so I'm not sure of their degrees of cheesiness, but Batman and Robin deserved everything that hit them. The villains also occupy the theater for a while, which is interesting, but Pearl is really the only one who gets going. I don't remember them showing Titanic and Starship Troopers, though. This was followed by one more Blockbuster Review, featuring Ever After, Halloween: H2O, The Truman Show, etc. Good fun. Anyway, 10/10, short and hits the mark every time.

This was the second of three MST3k shows where they did major mainstream movies instead of the normal obscure and forgettable "films". However there is probably a very good reason they didn't do more of these: they're not very funny. Mike & The Bots spend most of the segments trying to explain the film or the situation in the scene instead of doing their normal riffing. Plus there are unnecessary cameos by the villains of the series who just added nothing and come off as a little more than annoying particularly Bobo coming into the "Men In Black" segment. Has it moments but there are MANY more episodes of MST3k that are funnier. 4/10.