Buying Food (Rifftrax Shorts)

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

This short film is in particularly rough shape, with a lot of picture dust and an off-center frame.  If I were to come across it in a grocery store I'd probably pass it up for being of a lesser grade.  This short taught me how to do so.

Buying food isn't as simple as mom makes it look.  You can't just get in there and buy everything in sight.  You need to practice restraint and purchase only what you need in the immediate future.  This short shows off the terrors of impulse buying and how to prevent food waste and spending too much money.  There are also lessons on picking out what type of food is best for you and your family, though my family just tossed whatever in front of my face and said "Eat it or starve, dickhead."

I imagine this short was made for home-ec classes of years passed, as these were lessons that were taught to us in high school.  What's taught in this film didn't change much between the fifty years since this short was created and my educational failure, so it's still relevant in a way.  If I were to criticize anything about it it's that when it asks us to identify the difference between Grade-A stock and Grade-C stock through visuals, which is absurd in a black-and-white instructional short (as the riff points out "Grayer doesn't always mean better").

One gets the feeling that Mike, Kevin, and Bill think this short is a tad rudimentary.  They almost seem to think it's hilarious that they're riffing on a short about buying food in of itself.  As the short gets more in-depth about impulse buying our boys have fun mocking the stupidity of the subjects, and the indecisiveness of latter lessons in product discerning.  While they come off a bit condescending in this short, the results are fairly funny.  Sometimes gags are simple and obvious, but they get results.

Thumbs Up

👍