The Time Bubble Tour!

2022 is looking to be a great year for MSTies. Season 13 starts up in just a few months, and to finish off the last year and start the new one we have the latest MST3K Live show, The Time Bubble Tour! And I can hardly believe I’m writing this, but as hilarious as the last two lives shows I’ve attended were, this one may have been the best.

 

Part of that may lie with the choice of movie to riff. Considering the previous movies chosen for the live shows included a film about a giant brain controlling people through self-help TV and a martial arts movie about a kid who is befriended by the ghost of Bruce Lee, it’s saying a LOT that Making Contact may be the strangest of them. Directed by a young Roland Emmerich, Making Contact is about poor Joey, who’s dad has recently passed away. Luckily, Joey seems to be able to communicate with him via a magic red telephone. Also, Joey is somehow developing telekinetic powers! And he finds and evil doll in the run down house next door! It’s… you know what, I’ll just let other professional movie reviewer Brandon Tenold of Brandon’s Cult Movies explain.

 

Suffice to say, the movie is a bonkers mishmash of Spielbergian tropes and visual style, and it provides plenty for Emily and the Bots to riff on. There’s the numerous ways the movie apes Spielberg’s style, what with its atmospheric lighting and copious special effects, the “Goonies” like presence of other kids (who are actually bullying Joey!) and the way the movie seems to transition from “talking to dead dad” to “evil ventriloquist dummy shooting lightning” with little explanation. And the cast and crew pounce on everything I think it was Conor McGiffin’s Tom, saying, during said dummy electrocution, “Raiden Wins. Little things like the prevalence of slats in the movie become great running gags and even feature into the host segments at the end. There’s a series of jokes Emily and the Bots dub the cast of kids things like, “Jim Henson’s Stranger Things Babies!” There are even just plain clever jokes, like one bit of synchronized singing as they make up a song to the tune of “Carol of the Bells” about the movie when a reel to reel is played (which got plenty of applause) to what may have been one of the funniest things I’ve seen from MST3K, as the evil dummy strokes a wooden beam its sitting next to, causing Nate Begle’s Crow to made lewd comments about how smooth and strong it is, even when the camera cuts away, he continues, “Oh yeah, it’s so good. You can’t see it but I’m still doing it!” It goes on for a solid minute and I was literally crying with laughter.

The host segments in between aren’t wont for hilarity either. The Spielberg aping leads to the “Spielberger Helper” sketch, where the bots in Hamburger Helper hand costumes present different Spielberg movies as mixes for directors to add to their film. Then there’s the way that Joey’s room is just littered with 80s ephemera, from Smurfs toys to a Return of the Jedi bedsheet, which leads to an all-time great skit in “The Bootleggies”, where the bots make official knock-off toys, from “Letgoes!”, building blocks that let you build anything you can imagine, once, to the more disgusting things like “Rainbow Blight” and, my favorite, “Slonky”, the Slinky that wets itself. It’s as clever as the show gets and absolutely slew me. Even the Time Bubble itself, an invention of Yvonne Freese’s Mega Synthia’s, leads to a fun bit where the movie is done in silent film style before reverting back to normal.

My biggest complaint with these live shows will remain that they’re not recorded so I can’t relive them, effectively making these lost episodes. But the highest compliment I can pay the show is that, after seeing the live crew so many times, and now with Emily hosting on her own, I can’t wait to see how their episodes of Season 13 turn out!

 

Random Asides:

-He’s not listed in the credits, but I swear to God that’s Joe Leahy, “Our Announcer” from Freakazoid! as the TV announcer in the movie.

-I wish I could remember what the Bots’ rhyme for Slonky was, but it began, to the tune of the Slinky theme song, “What pees down stairs…” And I missed the rest because I and the entire audience were laughing too hard.

-The follow up was even better, as Emily makes the Bots apologize, leading to this exchange:
Bots: “We’re sorry.”

Emily: “For what?”

Bots: “For pushing the limits of good taste until they snap like an over-stressed flight attendant.”

-I really hope they release clips of the “Making Contact” song Emily and the Bots sing and Crow’s “Mahogany Wood” bit. They are seriously killer.

-There were quite a few solid video game references in this one, from the “Raiden Wins” bit above, to when the kids are exploring the dilapidated house and Emily says, “We’d better find all the bottlecaps we can before a deathclaw shows up!” to, as the kids are lost in the random labyrinth at the end of the movie, Emily also says, “I never liked the shadow temple.”

-This one featured what may have been two of the darkest jokes ever featured on MST3K, and they happen near the end, so spoilers if you haven’t seen it yet: the first is when it appears Joey has died, as as his mom comes into view, one of them, I think it’s Tom, says, “Better luck next kid.” Then, soon after, as Joey opens his eyes, seemingly awake and fine, I believe it’s Crow who says, “I smell burnt toast.” Just… muah perfectly dark riffs.