Why Doesn't Cathy Eat Breakfast?/Petaluma Chicken (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2008
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

We have a double dose of shorts action today as the boys beef up a runtime for the briefest of brief shorts (...or...short-shorts ::runs away) by combining two to limp all the way to the seven and a half minute mark.

First up is Why Doesn't Cathy Eat Breakfast?  Instead of accepting that she might just not be hungry, a narrator harasses a poor girl all morning asking why she won't eat breakfast.  TELL ME WHY?!  I MUST KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!!!!!!!  But nope.  She just smiles and glares.

I'm pretty sure this was meant to be an attempt at a discussion piece for kids, in hopes that they'll give the teacher theories on why Cathy won't eat in the morning.  While I'm sure the point of the film is that there is no correct answer, I have to really wonder what exactly is the reaction they're going for?  Why does this bother them so?  Breakfast is said to be the most important meal of the day, but it's not going to kill Cathy just because she doesn't want to eat it.

My other theory is that it's for really, really stupid dairy council workers trying to get their profits up by coming up with asinine ideas to get kids to drink more milk by eating more breakfast.  This possibility almost makes the film more amusing.

But if Cathy's not eating breakfast, that means more breakfast for us.  Let's taunt her by making the WORLD'S LARGEST OMELETTE!  In this ancient short called Petaluma Chicken we watch a chef with a giant spoon command an army of women to create this omelette.

What you see is what you get here.  I don't really have much to say about it, except such a stylistic and goofy contrast to the previous short is hilarious.  The short is chopped to hell and has little to no context, so I have no idea why it exists or where it came from, all I know is I'm glad it's here.

For the Cathy portion there are a lot of riffs on the blatant milk advertisement in the short, as they underline each use of the substance with their own "Delicious milk!" comment.  They also take aim at the persistent narrator bugging this child, as well as giving their own theories to the titular question ("Not since my bypass.").  When the short never answers it's own question, one of my favorite Rifftrax lines is uttered:  "What?!  No Country for Old Men had better closure!"  But there's not a lot of time for diversity here, and the sameness of the jokes grow stale for a while, but when Petaluma Chicken starts there is no choice but to change it up.  The short is so weird that they can't help but question their own sanity while watching it.  I'd say both shorts are pretty good, and together they work quite well to bring out an overall positive experience.

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