Film evaluation on steroids after LSD, acid and shrooms where the film under scrutiny has characters who have acquired the same pharmaceuticals.

I'm a big fan of B grade sci-fi schlock like "This Island Earth" but have never actually seen that film yet, though it's been on my watch list for a while now. So imagine my surprise when this flick offers a two-fer, so to speak, with the Mystery Science Theater folks offering their hilarious send up of that movie. The only trouble is, I had a hard time focusing on the 'real' movie because of all the zany commentary offered by Mike Nelson and his robot cohorts, Servo (Kevin Murphy) and Crow (Trace Beaulieu). I can see how this might not appeal to a lot of movie watchers, but one of the things I enjoyed most about the spoof was the multitude of cultural references made regarding other celebrity figures and situations of the era, like Prince's bedroom, Salvador Dali, Baywatch, Ted Kennedy and the alien's resemblance to Leona Helmsley. The best was the Buddy Ebsen reference, I almost hit the floor with that one. The thing is, the movie is kind of hard to rate using IMDb's system because it's difficult to separate "This Island Earth" from the general mayhem afforded by Mike and his crew. If I were grading the original sci-fi classic itself, I'd probably go a '3' or a '4', while the added commentary makes it all the funnier, bringing my evaluation up to a '6'. So in the interest of averaging things out, I'll call it a '5' and leave it at that. With the understanding that I'll seek out "This Island Earth" to stand on it's own merits at some point down the road. I'll be ready to come up with my own one-liners by then.

Mike Nelson and robots Crow T. Robot, Tom Servo, and Gypsy are orbiting the Earth. Evil scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester forces them to watch the movie 'This Island Earth' to break their will before submitting to him. They ridicule the bad movie as they watch it.

This is based on a low-budget TV show. I've never seen it but it certainly isn't necessary for one to see it before seeing this movie. The concept is pretty simple. The jokes from the characters sitting in front of the movie screen are sometimes good. There are a few good laughs but mostly, it's a series of mild wisecracks. 'This Island Earth' is not the most horrible movie. There are some silly 50's sci-fi designs to ridicule. It's a lot of little chuckles. Outside of sitting in front of the screen, the crew has some adventures. It's nothing that funny. It might be more appealing to fans of the TV show. This is a relatively short movie. It feels like a TV episode and fans of the TV show would probably love this.