This experiment starts out pretty weird. I mean, the gags are good and plentiful, and there are even some real zingers here and there. It's chaotic, though, and doesn't follow any sort of order or structure. It works, but only just so. I think there could have been some sort of throughway between a debate, jokes of boards and the mads doing construction for... some reason.
Then there's the Irkle gag and it... works? The laughter is pretty good for a while, and the additions of people to the laughter was getting some chuckles, but again, why? This episode clearly didn't have anything in mind for its skits. I kind of prefer the Scifi storylines. Seeing Kevin Murphy as Santa again was fun though. This goes on for two whole skits all the way up until Torgo doesn't get it.
The skits don't get much better and it's really not a great gag with the guy and the big ears. There's just really a lot of fluff to go around and that's really a lot to say about the film.
San Fransisco International
An airport has a great deal of misadventures occur... and some guy wants to commit a crime so he makes the pilot delay a flight. Hilarity ensues.
What makes this movie bad?
This is not what you would consider your typical bad movie. This is just a movie that is so disjointed, much like the episode itself, that it makes the movie itself pretty boring. Not only is it boring, but it just goes off in unneeded tangeants that only serve to make this... very strange TV Pilot only more uninteresting and hard to pay attention to. It's not so much that people have a bad attention span, in this case anyway, this is just more of a background noise type of TV movie.
The worst parts are when they know that they're just gigantic wastes of time. Some kid finds out his parents are getting a divorce. The scenes of him in the plane are already not great to watch, but it's only compounded by the visage of a very clear blue screen/green screen/whatever color they used. That's bad enough, but then there's a very clunky, clumsy plotline of some guy getting punched in the eye. Apparently, punching people in the eye just isn't a big deal, because they just make it sound like another day. There's a lot of boring talking and they let him go.
The central plotline isn't terrible, and the acting isn't horrible, so the movie isn't "bad".
The Riffs
The riffs weren't great, but they definitely got the job done. The best parts come from the absurdity of the crime being committed. The smugness of the main character-ish, who seems to pride himself in scaring the absolute devil out of their investors, just gets riddled with riffs of the best nature. The priest, though, probably stole the spotlight for his brief time on screen. Some of the scenes really go along with the jokes, but there are some dull periods here as well. It's more hit than miss, but that is about the the theme of the entire episode.
The Episode
If it wasn't quite clear, San Francisco International may have gone on to be a decent show, but it was a very Silver Medal episode. Everything from the skits, the movie and the riffs just went middle of the road with everything. It's fun to revisit and even has some really good jokes, some of them will have you rolling. The way they make fun of the kid in the plane and the divorce can just have your ribs in dire need of space. It's a good episode to watch but it's not one you want if you're recommending MST3K to a newbie or someone looking for a masterpiece. Espeically not if they're looking for one of the real stinkers of movies. The rest of the show is full of far worse.
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