MickeyBad Movie- Jolly Good Show
Incompetence in the right place can be comedy gold- of course, incompetence in the wrong place can be as funny, depending how bent one's sense of humor is. When any given task is attempted by people who are manifestly incapable it leads to the sort of bizarre, extreme and awkward situations we are used to laughing at, be it the Comedy Channel or C-SPAN.
I've always loved sci fi, and growing up I would always be sure to catch the rare sci fi TV series, and even stay up to all hours Friday night for the occasional late-late-late showing of movies that they wouldn't bother showing at a time when anyone was still awake (this was before VCRs; you watched it when it was broadcast or you didn't watch at all). Hollywood has never had a reputation for really understanding sci fi, and many of their attempts have been less than successful. In fact, it's been suggested that Hollywood helped to inspire Sturgeon's Law (From the late sci fi author Theodore Sturgeon): 90% of everything is crap.
My appetite for the weird, the strange and the rubber masked resulted in my seeing a lot of seriously bad movies and TV shows- to the point where I developed a taste for extremely bad sci fi, much like some people develop a taste for limburger cheese. No one who doesn't share our taste for it will ever understand, but the stench is a part of what endears it to us.
Which brings up one of my all-time favorite shows, Mystery Science Theater 3000. In short, evil mad scientists maroon a test subject in space and attempt to break him by showing him spectacularly bad movies. These aren't merely poorly-conceived movies, or substandard cinema: These are weapons-grade, crime-against-humanity deep hurting bad movies.
What made the show wasn't just the incredible depths of anti-talent the movies brought us, but the wisecracks that Joel (and later, Mike) made during the movies with his robot pals Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot. Making fun of bad movies may not sound like a particularly compelling premise, but between the soul-numbing badness of the movies and the sparkling wit of our heroes as they endured the experiments, it worked.
The show was cancelled late last century- but like many of the classics, the spirit lives on. We still have magnificently bad movies like Starship Troopers to snipe at, we have weaseling politicians on CNN to lampoon and poorly-conceived advertising campaigns to mock. The Peter Principle states that people will keep being promoted until they reach a position they are incompetent to fill- and then stay there, doing their job incompetently. Incompetence is all around us, and at one time or another on virtually every TV channel- so go ahead and laugh at it. After all, what other useful function can all that incompetence serve?
I've always loved sci fi, and growing up I would always be sure to catch the rare sci fi TV series, and even stay up to all hours Friday night for the occasional late-late-late showing of movies that they wouldn't bother showing at a time when anyone was still awake (this was before VCRs; you watched it when it was broadcast or you didn't watch at all). Hollywood has never had a reputation for really understanding sci fi, and many of their attempts have been less than successful. In fact, it's been suggested that Hollywood helped to inspire Sturgeon's Law (From the late sci fi author Theodore Sturgeon): 90% of everything is crap.
My appetite for the weird, the strange and the rubber masked resulted in my seeing a lot of seriously bad movies and TV shows- to the point where I developed a taste for extremely bad sci fi, much like some people develop a taste for limburger cheese. No one who doesn't share our taste for it will ever understand, but the stench is a part of what endears it to us.
Which brings up one of my all-time favorite shows, Mystery Science Theater 3000. In short, evil mad scientists maroon a test subject in space and attempt to break him by showing him spectacularly bad movies. These aren't merely poorly-conceived movies, or substandard cinema: These are weapons-grade, crime-against-humanity deep hurting bad movies.
What made the show wasn't just the incredible depths of anti-talent the movies brought us, but the wisecracks that Joel (and later, Mike) made during the movies with his robot pals Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot. Making fun of bad movies may not sound like a particularly compelling premise, but between the soul-numbing badness of the movies and the sparkling wit of our heroes as they endured the experiments, it worked.
The show was cancelled late last century- but like many of the classics, the spirit lives on. We still have magnificently bad movies like Starship Troopers to snipe at, we have weaseling politicians on CNN to lampoon and poorly-conceived advertising campaigns to mock. The Peter Principle states that people will keep being promoted until they reach a position they are incompetent to fill- and then stay there, doing their job incompetently. Incompetence is all around us, and at one time or another on virtually every TV channel- so go ahead and laugh at it. After all, what other useful function can all that incompetence serve?
