RIFFTRAX: SHARKNADO

The Rifftrax trio of Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett seem to do their best with the worst -- cracking their best jokes and making their oddest observations when given truly terrible movies -- and Sharknado provides them with plenty of comedy fodder.  Rifftrax Live!: Sharknado has the MST3K veterans tackling last year's biggest "so bad it's good" Syfy Channel original movie -- with terrific results.

Before jumping into the fun of killer sharks thrown about by a killer tornado, the evening featured the short "Springs" (where a man's wish summons a springy demon who makes life hell by removing all springs from the universe), a preview of the next Rifftrax Live! event: 1998's Godzilla, and some pre-movie fake items (MOVIE MISTAKES: Megan Fox as April O'Neil) and songs about sharks.  And after that fun, we got to all enjoy some comedy professionals mocking a movie with washed-up actors (plenty of jokes about Ian Ziering's Beverly Hills 90210 days and Tara Reid's, well, everything), horrible editing (rainy to sunny changes all the time, and different beaches treated like they're one place), and idiotic plot (not the least of which is stopping a tornado by throwing explosives into it).

Someone thought riffing on Sharknado was too easy -- but that's part of the fun!  The stars didn't have as much to do with Night of the Living Dead because that movie is so good, but an abundance of quality slowing them down wasn't a factor here.  There's an Australian-sounding Tasmanian, characters who forget characters killed in front of them seconds later, bizarre writing (when Ian shouts at someone in the middle of the ocean "Get out of the water!" the Riffers add, "Levitate or something!"), and Tara Reid's attempts at... acting?   Sure, some of the jokes can be juvenile, but Rifftrax Live! Sharknado made something good out of a Syfy Channel original movie -- and that's not something you can say too often.

Overall grade: A-
Reviewed by James Lynch