A Badger's Bad Day (RiffTrax Shorts)e

RiffTrax Year:  2011

Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

A badger gets sprayed by a skunk.  There.  That's the plot.  Now he can't smell other animals and he's hungry.

A Badger's Bad Day is supposed to be a cute little nature film for kids, but personally I never liked films like these when I was a kid.  Seeing the cute little animals get hunted set my nerves on fire yet I would have felt guilty about the badger not getting any food because I didn't want him to starve to death either.  As the short ends, all the cute animals are alive and we still have a smelly, hungry badger and I would have been absolutely miserable.  But he has skunk juice in his nose so...funny?

There seems to be some attempt to make A Badger's Bad Day a quasi-sequel to Little Lost Scent.  Not only is a skunk a plot point, Bill uses it as an excuse to dust off his angry persona of Gregory the Skunk.  Mike even offers a bit of an asterisk to that joke informing the viewer that they'd be best to check out that short to fully enjoy the joke.  That's a good way to sell two shorts for the price of one.

Is there funny unique material to this short that doesn't hinge on the knowledge of a skunk short that came out a year prior?  Luckily yes.  A Badger's Bad Day is solidly amusing stuff with lots of cute animals trying to eat each other and Mike, Kevin, and Bill giving them all little voices and making light of how cobbled together this short is in general.  They also tend to get confused at the narrators inconsistent descriptions of the badger's predicament, as the badger can seemingly smell at some points or is completely hopeless in others, causing Mike to wonder why his senses other than smell are seemingly completely useless.

The animals are the stars and there are plenty of animal related gags in the air, especially in reference to pop culture counterparts.  A coyote is discussed by the narrator, resulting in Mike quipping "This was filmed before the Acme company made the coyote's life way easier."  We see baby bunnies make a getaway from the title badger, but Kevin notes grimly "The bunnies would go on to die in Warship Down."  It's funny stuff, and while the badger is having a bad day, that doesn't mean we will by watching this.

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