Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese

Michael J. Nelson

Quite a surprise this book turned out to be. I've been a lifelong non-fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000; the movies were often fun, but the skits in the middle made me throw things at the TV. So when Mike Nelson pops out a book of reviews, despite recommendations from friends (whom I have long suspected of being closet MST3K fans), I did approach it with a good deal of trepidation. Now I'm wondering, how did the writer of this book come up with a show as profoundly and steadily unfunny as Mystery Science Theater 3000?

Despite some obvious blunders in the movies he chooses to attack (and those will likely vary from person to person; Mr. Nelson is not, oddly, the first person with whom I am acquainted who believe Se7en to not be one of the best movies ever made. The poor, deluded fools), this compendium of reviews, rantings, reflections, and other assorted skullduggery is laugh-out-loud funny more often than not. If I could write reviews half this good, I'd have already dethroned my arch-nemesis, Harriet Klausner, as the Ruler of the Amazon Universe. (But Mike Nelson wouldn't make it at Amazon, either. Nary a review to be found here is under a thousand words, even if you cut out all the extraneous stuff about nose hair, jelly beans, nuclear weaponry and its effects on the African Rhododendron, hippo lovin', and other assorted amusements. But I kid with the reviewer.) Surprisingly, despite his share of easy targets (he accurately notes that bashing Carrot Top, for example, has become a national sport), Nelson is also willing to take on some overblown, overrated windbags that have long needed air taken out of them (e.g., Basic Instinct).

Anyone can do comedy with bad movies, though. Ebert once said bad movie reviews often write themselves, and how true he is. What truly surprises about Nelson's compendium of collagen-crusted crap is its eruditeness. Nelson thinks nothing of dropping in an oblique reference to Zeffirelli, throwing in a paragraph on Aquinas, tossing off a nod to the horrible, and yet oddly annoying, Road House. These things appear in places where they should never, by the light of all that is moly, ever be. (Speaking of, how many movie reviews have you ever seen make reference to molybdenum? There's one here!) And yet somehow, he makes them fit. This just adds to the humor.

Surprisingly wonderful. I'm now wondering if I should be approaching Ebert's I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie with trepidation. Nelson may have put me off serious reviewers for life.