"Cavalcade" & A Tribute to Secret Agent Super Dragon (MST3K Sepecial)

The Short

At long last, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has enough clout that it can feature a Best Picture Academy Award Winning film.  Kinga should be proud.  That film is Cavalcade, the 1933 film that tells a generational saga of life in England...

Hold on a second...I'm being told that this Cavalcade is actually something different.  It's actually an industrial short showcasing various livelihoods in rapid succession (a "cavalcade," if you will).  We get to see those great American workers as they build communication towers and automobiles, work with lead, and, most importantly of all...ostrich racing.

Cavalcade is just a ten minute salute to American ingenuity, hitting you so hard with constructive achievements and moving onto the next one before you get too bored.  It has a sort of "Gee whiz!" enthusiasm underlining it that might get someone curious about one subject or another.  Basically these sort of shorts accomplish what can be done in a quick YouTube video today, except you don't have to search through all the cat videos and engagement grifters to find it.

Still...those ostriches came out of nowhere.  Is that still a thing?  I might change careers if I can get in on that.

On the riffing end, we have a bit of a surprise, as for some reason this short is selected for Pearl Forrester and Dr. Lawrence Erhardt.  A curious selection to be sure, but a welcome one.  The former Cinematic Titanic performers of Mary Jo Pehl and J. Elvis Weinstein hit the theater to show off their chops and they hit a home run with what is easily the best short the Gizmoplex has offered yet!  Mind you, these Gizmoplex shorts haven't quite been series highlights (as Court Case has been the best one so far, and that was only fairly good), but I will say that Cavalcade successfully brings in that classic short flavor into the theater and it offers up a lot of retro outdatedness to successfully mock.  Mary Jo and J. Elvis are quite exceptional here, offering up quality quips that bring plenty of belly laughs.

"The Paradox of Lead."

"If it's so dangerous, why does it taste so good?"

If I were to nitpick one thing, I'd say the ostrich segment, while funny, never takes off with its brazen oddness.  It feels like it should be the epic and memorable conclusion, but it winds up just more of the same.  I guess I'll have to settle for this being quite funny instead of hilarious, though what Cavalcade does make me desire is to see more of Mary Jo and J. Elvis in the limelight.  These are two exceptional talents and Cavalcade shows off just how much they bring to this franchise.

Thumbs Up

👍

The Livestream

I've been doing what I can to keep my finger on the pulse of these new Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes and special events, but this one was cursed.  I was all set and prepared to watch it the night it streamed live, but my internet completely collapsed from under me.  I tried to get it steady throughout the short, of which I was initially under the impression that it was Joel and Emily in the theater because I was only seeing frames of it and not hearing dialogue.  The minute I finally heard a riff I finally realized that it was actually J. Elvis and Mary Jo and I was missing something special.  But my internet would not cooperate and I had to give up for the night.  Since I had already missed the short and I'm not too fond of Secret Agent Super Dragon (review here), paired with how the last few tribute events only offered DVD bonus features as the aftershow, I retired for the night instead of watching on my phone.  I finally watched what I had missed during my lunch breaks during work that week.  I missed a great short and an improv RPG event, and now I was irritated.

Making matters worse was I was going to watch the event in full this weekend for review, but my laptop completely went belly up, which means I'm typing all of this on my phone until I can get it fixed and you better appreciate me right now because this suuuuuuuuuuucks.

Anyway, tribute event.  Excellent short, not so great episode, excellent aftershow.

Listen, the episode selections for the tribute shows aren't going to please everybody.  I'm sure there are some fans who aren't crazy about some of the episodes already selected and are probably ecstatic that Super Dragon is at the center of attention here.  This event is for them.  And whether of not I think Super Dragon is that good or not, there is some interesting presentation experimentation going on.  Instead of the "surgically enhanced" look that Pumaman was going for, they do play around and try to work the episode into filling HD screens in a way that might please more people.  This time they do something similar to what old Disney Blu-ray discs would do for movies like Snow White and Dumbo and add theater curtains to the side of the picture where the full frame black bars would be.  This is a smart use of it, because it would look good in the Gizmoplex virtual theater, adding to the Gizmoplex experience.

The added new content with Jonah and the Bots sees them mocking the jazzy Secret Agent Super Dragon theme host segment, relating the Bots still hear from Mimzy the Atomic Powered Robot, and Crow claims he has given up screenwriting to grift books on screenwriting to people who think they can do it.  Emily and her Bots have a segment, where Emily is being given spy gear by her Bot quartermasters is a fun idea, but the weird decision to constantly have the group change their accents in extremes (shifting from suave British to Cockney to Scottish ect) makes it very odd and a little unpleasant.  The show concludes with a new rap from Ross Bryant, the brilliant mind behind Mother Crabber, who takes Joel and the Bots' failed attempt at a theme and builds an actual song around it.  It's no Mother Crabber, but it's fun.  And there is even a bonus surprise, as they advertise our next episode, The Shape of Things to Come, and it's introduced by that classic Comedy Central announcer from the 90's, Penn Jillette!

Thrown in are some pre-recorded segments of Emily, (Kelsey's) Crow, and (Conor's) Servo thanking select Kickstarter backers, and Crow also reads a fan letter.  Whether this is the new way they're doing the name reads, I'm not certain, but I think it's an improvement over the stop-and-halt way they were doing it during the livestreams.

It's also possible they're just doing this specially for this stream because they wouldn't have been able to during tonight's show, which is a special role playing game called DIY Spy hosted by Tim Ryder, who puts rookie spies played by Emily, Conor, and Kelsey through hypothetical scenarios.  Like a lot of improv, it can have its ups and downs based on what the performers have to work with, but Emily, Conor, and Kelsey are game to see everything through to the end.  Emily is the MVP of the night, who brings us a character named Missy Livingston, who is obviously inspired by the Cockney homeless Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady.  Emily is seemingly the most mentally prepared and the most suggestive, throwing out more ideas of how to proceed than her teammates.  She seems to know that she is overwhelming the stream a bit too, sometimes refraining herself so Conor and Kelsey can influence events as well.  But Emily's ideas are so colorful and interesting that most of the time they'll default to what she suggests.  If nothing else, it makes me want to see a performance of My Fair Lady starring Emily.  Conor's character is Danny Landon, who is an excitable and nerdy rookie, while Kelsey goes femme fatale, puts on a ridiculous sunhat, puts on your stuffy southern belle accent that we heard so much in Demon Squad, and names herself Miss Chevious (get it?).  It can get a little confusing telling "Missy" and "Miss" apart as Tim refers to them, but whatever.  It's just fun and games.

Biggest laugh of the night goes to Emily (of course it does), who describes how she's going to use a bicycle pump to create and EMP grenade, which causes Conor to turn red in the face and fail at stifling his laughter.  Emily makes matters worse by seeing just how much she's affecting Conor and continually pumps it to make him laugh harder.  Flub of the night also goes to Emily, who says on air "Have you seen this shi...Have you seen this?"  I heard that, Emily.  You're on notice.  Random moment of the night goes to Kelsey, while they're assigned to eat sentient enemy pickles, who just reaches off screen, grabs a jar of pickles she happens to have lying around, and starts eating.  Now that's method.

After a couple of stale livestream events which just gave us an episode and a DVD bonus feature most MSTies have already seen, this event was a breath of fresh air.  It was fun, it was creative, and it was out of left field.  It also shows that they can still surprise and delight and just deliver a good old fashioned good time.  I don't know if they have anything else unique coming up, but this was certainly one that promises exciting things.  And all of this built around an episode I don't even like, so kudos.