Did you mourn the day that Mystery Science Theater went off the air? Rifftrax is a new Mike Nelson project that doesn’t quite recapture the full glory of MST3K, but should fill at least part of that MST3K-sized hole in your heart.

Rifftrax works like this: Mike Nelson and his team (which includes one or two cronies from the MST3K gang) record an MP3 commentary to a movie. You pay a few bucks, download the audio file, and play it alongside the DVD on your computer. (They just released a Windows-only movie player that automatically synchs their commentary and the DVD without you having to do it manually—I’ve used it a few times and it seems to work fine. Manually synching the movie and the audio commentary is do-able but can be a bit of a pain.)

The Rifftrax commentaries, like MST3K, spend most of their time mocking the movie in question. The quips range from lowbrow cracks to esoteric pop-culture references, so a typical commentary features everything from poop jokes to references to Zeno’s Paradox. In general they are quite funny; not every gag works, but they throw enough of them out there that you’re bound to laugh at something. if you thought MST3K was hilarious, you’ll find Rifftrax amusing; if you thought MST3K was the stupidest thing you’d ever seen, well, you probably won’t love Rifftrax either.

There are really two big differences here from MST3K. First, while several of the same team are involved, the actual characters from MST3K (Mike and the robots) are gone, so there is no familiar overlay of the robots sitting in movie seats watching the film. Secondly and more importantly, the movies Rifftrax mocks are mostly major Hollywood productions, rather than B-movie trash. This creates situations where the Rifftrax guys are mocking films that are actually pretty good (such as Raiders of the Lost Ark). As a result, some of the old MST3K charm is lost.

They’ve compiled quite a list of movie commentaries to date. Here are the ones that Angry Teti and I have watched, with a rating for each:

• Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace: 3.5 stars. Amusing, but I’ve spent so much of my life deriding this movie that I’m hard to impress when it comes to Phantom Menace mockery.

• Night of the Living Dead: 4 stars. This was a good one, suffering only because there was only one commenter (Mike Nelson). Commentaries are more amusing when there’s some banter between the commenters.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark: 4.5 stars. I was wondering how they’d manage to successfully mock a movie I consider one of the great action films of all time, but they really made me laugh.
• Lost, Season 1 Episode 1: 3 stars. I wasn’t overly amused by this one, but Angry Teti had a higher opinion of it. Perhaps it’s because she’s a much bigger Lost fan than I am. I suspect that Rifftrax commentaries are more amusing the better you know the movie in question.

Overall, we’ve found Rifftrax to be a pleasant way to pass an evening, and a nice way to get a few hours’ more entertainment out of DVDs you’ve got sitting around the house that you’ve already watched 50 million times. Definitely won’t be to everbody’s taste, but it’s well worth giving one or two a listen.