Farm Family in Summer (RiffTrax Shorts)

Riff Year:  2017

Riffers:  Bridget Nelson, Mary Jo Pehl

Say hello to the Farm Family!  They are a family of farmers (OF COURSE) who go about their daily lives during various seasons as a film crew films them because they probably desperately need the money.  I assume father uses some of that cash to buy equipment in this very short.  The exhaustive chores today involve milking cows and...more milking cows.  The kids go to a fair too.  That's not daily farming life, but it happened.

Farm Family offers a peek at quaint, old fashioned living for hard working farm America for city folk to watch and pretend they admire while secretly being thankful they get weekends off and smaller priorities.  Farm Family in Summer is more festive than other entries as the kids actually squeeze some fun in between their chores by playing at the fair.  The fair does fit into the subject of the short by the skin of its teeth though, as the kids show off their cows and father looks at farming equipment, so no rest for the wicked.

This is the first of the Farm Family series seen on RiffTrax, though I suspect that Bridget and Mary Jo either riffed them out of order or in a single studio sitting.  Mary Jo accidentally outs them at the end of the short by referencing two other Farm Family shorts they've seen but haven't been released yet.  Oh well, not important.

However Farm Family in Summer is a very sleepy short, and Bridget and Mary Jo feel a bit like they're running on fumes and aren't sure what to say anymore.  It would make sense if they had hit other shorts in the series with the best they have only to be winded by this installment.  There are some fun jokes to be had, such as Bridget wincing as the cows get milked and some fun quips at fairground attendees.  However, the short is dreary and Bridget and Mary Jo sound tired.  It ends up as an affair that we feel like we need to get past for better material in the future.

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