The Case of Tommy Tucker Parts 1 & 2 (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2009
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

In the most curious case since Benjamin Button, a ten-year-old over actor kid named Tommy Tucker is said to be the safest boy in town.  But one day he is hit by a car and sent to Traffic Safety Hell Island where he wishes to join for all eternity.  But will his town be safe enough without him?  Does the world need Tommy Tucker?

This is undoubtedly one of the worst and least effective safety short films I've ever seen on MST or Rifftrax.  It is so ridiculous in the cheap, transparent sentimentality it shoots for that one can't help but shake their head at it.  The premise is about as goofball as you can get, as the afterlife is portrayed as being a world devoted to safety (X Marks the Spot has nothing on how safety obsessive this afterlife is) and those who are unsafe are cast out to be mutated into hybrid beasts called "gnome-skulls."  I really hope this isn't a religion of some kind.

"The kid actually died choking on the scenery he had been chewing."

Dragging the short down to its impossible depths is Tommy Tucker himself, who looks and feels like an ego inflated child actor that they plucked out of the school play circuit in town.  His performance is so hamfisted and irritating that I don't blame the driver for running him over.  And the character by itself is just as bad as well, as he is a child who apparently has the town wrapped around his pinky and obsessed with safety.  DANCE PUPPETS, DANCE!

I guess the point of the short is that one man, no matter how small, can make a difference.  The problem is that Tommy Tucker just isn't a compelling character and the production itself can't sell it.  This safety short is so grating that I might just be unsafe to spite it.

The Rifftrax version is split into two parts, with part one ending about eleven minutes in during a classroom Q&A when a young girl worries about getting her clothes dirty if she has a safety accident.  My version is spliced together on the DVD they offer through their website, but I think it overall plays better as a whole.  The riffing is consistently strong during this short, which certainly helped prevent me from shutting the irritating thing off and sitting through twenty-two minutes of Tommy Tucker winds up being a breeze.  It would be difficult for me to choose the superior half, but I feel part two just barely outranks the first, with it being a bit more in the swing of the short and Tommy's painful "Pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaase send me back" monologue fueling the boys.  But you can't go wrong with either part, so why not buy both?

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