1201-Mac and Me

Film Year:  1988

Genre:  Science Fiction, Fantasy, Comedy

Director:  Stewart Raffill

Starring:  Mac and him

MST Season:  12

The Movie

Witness the thrilling origin of that clip that Paul Rudd would always play every time he guested on Conan O'Brian.  Even when he was promoting Ant-Man.  ANT-MAN!  Imagine looking for footage of the latest Marvel movie and you get that shot of that kid in a wheelchair rolling downhill.

Mac and Me is a cheesy late-80's attempt to cash in off the popularity of Steven Spielberg's beloved family film E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.  Like E.T., Mac and Me follows a group of kids in the suburbs who befriend a lost little alien who is trying to find his family.

Now imagine everything that E.T. did right was replaced by a bunch of creative choices that elicit the response of "Oh Jesus Christ, why did you do that?!"

Mac and Me was an instant crap classic when it came out, bringing about a slew of negative reviews and many critics calling it one of, if not THE, worst movies of the year.  The movie was even nominated for Worst Picture at the Razzie Awards, but lost to the craptacular Tom Cruise vehicle Cocktail (which incidentally was riffed by Rifftrax).  So Mac and Me has a bit of a reputation, yet I hadn't seen it until it aired on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Yeah, it's pretty bad...I guess.

Mac and Me is more of a dumb movie than a painful one.  There are a ton of strange and bizarre hoops it jumps through to tell its derivative story.  I kind of admire that it jumps through as many as it does, with a sort of abstract, almost animated way of presenting the aliens, where they are living cartoon characters.  Mac and Me might even have been a better movie if they were animated characters, instead of people in really shitty suits.  Or maybe it would have just gone full-on Space Jam.  I don't know, but it's a kooky flick.

It's probably remembered most for its very aggressive product placement.  Most notably with McDonalds and Coca-Cola.  McDonalds is the setting for a fairly lengthy musical scene in the film (a good portion of it apparently is cut out of the MST version, mind you), while Coke is almost used as a prop.  The kids in the film almost always keep one handy, just in case the alien Mac is feeling down or hurt.  Then they bust out a Coca-Cola Classic and Mac is up and at 'em!

Drink Coke!  It'll cure what ails ya'!

It's a strange movie.  I didn't hate it, but I also didn't think much of it while watching it.  I think I see why it has such huge cult appeal, but I've seen too many movies like it or worse to think there is anything special about it.  I know it can't touch what I consider Mac and Me director Stewart Raffill's masterpiece, 1994's Tammy and the T-Rex, starring Paul Walker, Denise Richards, and a giant animatronic T-Rex puppet.  But maybe I was expecting too much for it to be genius on that level.

The Episode

Rejoice, MSTies!  Netflix has renewed Mystery Science Theater 3000 for another season...but on their own terms.  Our episode count in the previous season reflected a healthy Kickstarter campaign that overshot its goal and created bonus episodes to spare.  The problem is that Netflix is all about the "bingewatch experience," and you can't watch fourteen episodes of an hour and a half program in a single day (well, technically it's twenty-two hours long, so it's possible, but who's going to?).  Netflix will renew the show, but they want people to watch the entire season in a single day for...reasons, I guess.  So they just order six episodes and force a storyline to "encourage bingewatching."

I have...thoughts.

I do wonder if I should hold my tongue about this until my eventual season overview, but I think Netflix's "bingewatch experience" ruins the "television experience."  If an entire season of something was meant to be watched in a single day, it wouldn't be split into episodes.  Bingewatching can be a fun practice if I'm already familiar with a show and am doing it just for some me time, but when it's a brand new show, I don't see the merit.  Weekly episode viewing prompts discussion from the consumer and keeps a product in focus for a longer duration.  Pressuring viewers to watch an entire season in a single day can burn out interest and cause people to shift focus almost immediately.  This instant gratification demand that Netflix has created is why I try not to support the company if I can help it.  Netflix just...sucks.

That being said, new MST!  Yay!  I have to watch it all on release day or it will get cancelled, too.   Yay?  Oh shit, it's out on Thanksgiving and I have family commitments.  I have to watch it when I can and hope that's good enou.......oh.  Cancelled already, huh?  I guess I have nobody to blame but myself.

But here we are with the bingewatch season of MST.  The six-part marathon that wants us to watch all the episodes in a row.  How are they convincing us to binge though?  MST isn't exactly a binge show.  Episodes run too long, and it's hard to wrap arcs around watching a bad movie.  What scenario have they cooked up?  Why, it's a little thing called "The Gauntlet!"  Kinga is feeling particularly evil and decided that putting Jonah through one bad movie isn't enough.  Putting him through six in a row is better!  And hyping up the new season of MST we had cast and crew members daring us to run the Gauntlet with Jonah and the Bots!

First up, the E.T. knockoff with a McDonalds sponsorship, Mac and Me!

"It's just like that scene from Mac and Me where Mac came back to life!" - Crow T. Robot while watching Pod People

It's interesting to me that we've reached a point in MST3K where then-current pop culture references from previous episodes are now riffing fodder on it.  That particular quote above from Pod People was a comparison made by Crow making fun of a derivative scene, but he decided to say it's derivative of another derivative film (Mac and Me) when it should be derivative of the main source (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial).  Though while Mac and Me does feature a resurrection, it's not Mac that gets brought back to life, so that kind of ruins THAT gag.

Mac and Me lends itself well to the riffing format.  While the film is comedic, it's so absurdly embellished that is helps fuel comedy at its expense as well.  The slapstick is over-the-top and the budget is so low that the film goes to absurd measures to try and pull it off.  All of this revs up Jonah and the Bots, who latch onto the film' wackiness and throw some wacky jabs at it to play up its stupidity.  They also get a kick out of the film's absurd product placement deals, which even sees characters using Coca-Cola to help heal the alien life forms.

"Dammit nurse, this is a Pepsi!  It doesn't have the unique healing properties of a Coke Classic!"

Outside of the theater, there is not much playing up this "Gauntlet" concept other than the intro and the outro, so the episode mostly stands on its own.  However, interestingly they do a format change.  They dump the little Moon 13 breaks from the previous season, which were pointless so who cares.  However the big news is that they drop a host segment from the structure of the show.  Before I grab my pitchfork, I think it's important to look at what this does for the way the episode presented.  The classic format of MST split the theater into four segments, which helped everything play out in half hour chunks in a two hour time slot.  With MST on streaming, the previous format is a bit needlessly archaic, and by splitting the theater segments into three instead of four, it creates a three-act structure.  This might actually be the superior framing for the streaming era of the show, in my opinion.  What I do know for certain is that the format of the previous season didn't work.

Though to be fully transparent, I have a gut feeling the reason the segment was dropped was because Netflix thought it would "binge better."  Maybe it was the right call for the wrong reason.

But while we lost a host segment, we still have a good amount here.  Jonah and the Bots communicate with Moon 13 through a series of whistles, like the aliens in the movie, while they parody the McDonalds product placement and dance number later in the movie.  The Invention Exchange features the Mads new drug, while Jonah and the Bots create a spam and Pez hybrid called Spez.

And as for the payoff to last year's cliffhanger where Jonah was devoured by Reptilicus Metalicus, Jonah tries to tell his tale but nobody cares.  I love it!

Interestingly the opening to this episode is one of the few (only?) times Cambot appears onscreen, as Servo and Crow reformat him for more mobile cinematography.  And a Cambot in motion does look pretty good, let me tell you.  In fact, I like the brighter and softer production design in general this season.

During promotion of this season, Jonah talked about how Joel initially wanted Mac and Me to be the big closer of the season to end the Gauntlet on a high note.  Jonah convinced him to make it the premiere instead insisting that Mac and Me was too infamous of a bad movie and "People would have watched it first anyway."  I see both sides of the argument, though it feels to me like the worst movies of the Gauntlet come out right out of the gate and Mac and Me would have been better used as a punchier finale, as opposed to Ator, The Fighting Eagle, which is relatively tame for a bad movie (or they could have used Atlantic Rim for the finale, which is arguably the worst movie of the season).  But regardless of where Mac and Me fell during the season, it's definitely one of the more enjoyable and hilarious episodes of the Gauntlet.  Maybe even the best.  The Gauntlet never really produced a great episode in my opinion, but Mac and Me does come pretty close.

Good

PRETTY NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE!

The DVD and Blu-Ray

Shout Factory brought Mac and Me to Earth on the DVD and Blu-Ray box sets of Season 12:  The Gauntlet.  Audio and video were both pristine, and, while there were no special features on the disc, it shared a disc with the following episode, Atlantic Rim.  Those who contributed to a pledge drive fundraiser got a special collection with a bonus disc, deemed the Pledge Drive Edition.  My copy happens to be that particular set.