You're the Judge (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2013
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

A pair of horny teenage girls try to win over some cute boys by baking a cake for them.  When the boys refuse their cake, instead of assuming that they might be gay like a normal girl would, they get pissed and challenge them to a bake-off.  Challenge accepted:  and both teams head to their kitchens for preparation.  The girls follow their recipes to the letter, including the use of lots of delicious Crisco.  But since the boys didn't use Crisco their baking is of course a disaster.

I pondered about the intended use for You're the Judge while it was playing out.  The closest I can figure is that it might have been a film showed in Home Economics class to teach the importance of following baking instructions and the dangers of substitutions.  It doesn't really teach it very well, more or less detouring into the wonders of Crisco several times, but it's quirky and cute and it's decently made.  I imagine teenager girls of the 60's may have enjoyed it.

That said, the short displays a bit of an outdated philosophy of women bending over backwards to please their men.  The climax of the short has the girls switching their baked goods with the boys to save their egos, and to cheat a way into winning their affections.  This is a pretty lousy moral on several levels, because it teaches girls to be submissive and always let the man be superior.  In other flaws, its setup doesn't come off too well, as the jarring switch between dialogue to exposition narration playing over dialogue saying the exact things the characters are supposed to be saying brings back horrific memories of The Creeping Terror.  But it's hard to hate on something that for the most part is just trying to be pleasant.

"Huh.  Crisco was involved with this film?  Didn't show."

The riffing of this short is light-spirited.  It mostly just emphasizes what's there instead of making fun of it.  When Crisco is onscreen the boys make no short work in pointing it out.  They also take the boys incompetence to the next level by adding more blunders to their effort, my personal favorite being instead of using flower they used "the good cocaine."  When they go for a joke at the expense of the short they tend to be hit and miss.  Kevin starts out the short with a long and drawn out impression of Alice Cooper's "School's Out for Summer" which isn't really that funny, and portions with the girls baking tend to be a bit dry because they aren't as fun to make fun of as the boys.  But they do have a tendency to try and remind these girls that if they are so hot for these guys then they have other attributes that may get the job done.

You're the Judge is made for a bygone age of squishy teenage girls who believe nothing is more important than impressing the guys.  Times have changed and the Rifftrax version is made for the modern day of comedians who believe nothing is more important than getting a laugh.  You're the Judge isn't perfect, but laughs are given and a pleasant time is had by all.

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