Coffeehouse Rendezvous (Rifftrax Shorts)

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

♪♪"Oh, I'm a teenage teen and I'm in my teens!  I'm a teenage teen and I'm really mean!"♪♪

Coffee.  Won't you?

This appears to be some sort of college promotional short made by a church to encourage students to socialize in the warm, friendly environment of a local coffeehouse and not the drug, sex, and violence filled streets (though I imagine one of the bathrooms is reserved for all of those at the coffeehouse).  It's a very static production, filled with people who say to the camera that they're having a good time with the most dead and soulless looks in their eyes.  Meanwhile actual coffeehouse footage is blurry, quick edited, and focuses on a lot of ill-framed closeups of people, making the coffeehouse look like the most unappealing place in the world.

Okay, I get what this short is selling, but it's sales pitch needs work.  Everything they try and do to sell the coffeehouse to us just makes it seem like the most boring place on Earth.  But what really annoys me about how boring this short is is that Mike, Kevin, and Bill get dragged down with it.  There is some killer stuff sprinkled throughout this short, as every once in a while they latch onto one of the talking heads and random images and go to town on it, but the short is such a fuzzy wave of random images and dull monologues that they sometimes really reach for something to make fun of in the whirlwind that doesn't already sound like a joke they've already made before.  Coffeehouse Rendezvous is long and repetitious, and the riffing feels long and repetitious as well, making this one cup of coffee that's hard for me to stomach.

I this is a Rifftrax fan favorite, but I find myself unable to jump on board.  I did get a good laugh at the "Mike, is that you?" and "Kevin, is that you?" bits and the like, but this short just doesn't anchor my attention and it gives me a headache.

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