MST3K Time Bubble Tour

I was a bit groggy when Susan and I set out to the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom to see Mystery Science Theater 3000:  The Time Bubble Tour.  When we arrived, the ticket takers and security detail weren't very organized, which put me in a foul (but temporary) mood.  It was a ritual akin to going through airport security:  Metal detectors and plastic trays to put in your wallet, keys, and phone.  A woman ahead of me had to inform the security guard that she had a hip replacement.  Upon hearing that my mood went from foul to (temporarily) grim.  This woman was probably close to my age, and she had had a hip replacement.  Generation X is getting older, frailer, and already in need of spare parts.

We boarded a spacious elevator with some of our fellow MSTies.  One woman was with her daughter and a friend discussing how her husband was off to see John Zorn do a live performance elsewhere in the city.  I am well familiar with Zorn's more notorious works, like Spillane, Torture Garden, and Kristallnacht.  The woman described her opinion of Zorn's work, which was diametrically opposite from her husband's positive estimation.  She said, "Just because it's painful, doesn't mean it's good."  She drew much laughter in the elevator, including from myself, a fan of John Zorn's painful music.
We finally settle in to our seats, and I'm embarrassed to say I was still in a bitchy mood.  I found the house music too damn loud (Painful and not good).  I text Susan the following.
THIS MUSIC SUCKS.
Susan reads my text, turns to me with a frown, and says with unmistakable annoyance,  "Sorry!"  I decide I've been bitchy enough, so...
The house lights come down and my mood turns on a dime.  I joined in with the enthused roar of joy that erupted from the crowd.  The limelight comes up, and the latest member of the Forrester Mad Scientist Family - "The Mads" - took the stage.  She introduced herself as Mega Synthia Forrester.  She announced her latest scheme for world conquest.  She intends to trap the entire audience in a "Time Bubble" along with the latest in the line of jumpsuited test subjects:  Emily Connor, played by Emily Marsh.  The character surname "Connor" is a tip of the hat to Sarah Connor, the heroine of the Terminator series.  This is, after all, a time travel story!
After Emily, we have the "Robot Roll Call," which introduces the stalwart test subjects for the last twenty four years:  Cambot, GPC (a more compact version of Gypsy), Tom Servo, and Crow.  All logistical concerns of how Emily, eats, drinks, and breathes along with other necessaries are dispelled with the calm reminder that it's just a show and we should simply relax and enjoy.  No, those aren't the lyrics to the actual theme song for MST3K.  I know that. You should really just relax!
Mega Synthia declares that the entire audience and cast encased in the time bubble have been transported to the year 1988 - the year Mystery Science Theater 3000 first aired.  The "movie experiment" was titled Making Contact - a film directed by a young Roland Emmerich who is famous for making the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day.  In an alternate timeline - a more rational timeline than our own - Emmerich would never have made another film after this fiasco.  We would have been deprived of the pleasure of seeing the unabashed whiz bang adventures of ID4, but tit for tat.
Making Contact begins with a funeral procession for the death of the father of our protagonist Joey Collins.  Joey is a weird composite of Henry Thomas' Elliot from E.T., Heather O'Rourke's Carol Anne Freeling from Poltergeist, Danny Lloyd's Danny Torrance from The Shining, and a skosh of Harvey Stephens' Damien Thorn from The Omen.  His slicked back hair, along with the flat affect on his face makes him absolutely ghoulish.
One night, Joey's mother Laura finds him under the sheets of his bed "pretending" to talk to his father on a GLOWING RED TELEPHONE.  One would think Laura would have been taken aback by the sight of a GLOWING RED TELEPHONE making its outline known under the thin sheets of Joey’s blanket, but meh, kids are kids and it's only natural that her bereaved son would make believe he was talking with his deceased father... through a GLOWING RED TELEPHONE. 
As it turns out, the boy is being deceived.  He is in contact with an evil spirit embodied as a dusty old wooden ventriloquist dummy with a joyless scowl and who can project Force Lightning like Emperor Palpatine.  Oh, there's more blatant Star Wars references down the road, believe me.
The child and adult actors are wall eyed, like the kids in Village of the Damned.  Their mockery of human presence is pure uncanny valley and as unsettling as the evil dummy itself.
The only character that exudes any human behavior at all is a toy robot named Charlie.  Charlie looks at the world through small, fearful eyes and you feel for him with every misadventure in which he gets entangled.  A scene where the dummy torments Charlie fills you with the dread that the poor droid may become scrap.  When Joey is in a similar dire situation, you're filled with the urge to go to the restroom for a pee break.
There are scenes where Joey exhibits telekinetic abilities a la Luke Skywalker, Danny Torrance, and Elliot from E.T..  The adults feign fascination and at first believe they are watching magic tricks.  Let's consider Joey's frame of mind:  He is bereaved of his father.  His mom behaves very much like Wynonna Ryder in Stranger Things.  He is being tormented by a demonic dummy who nearly kills his mom with a kitchen knife.  This kid could easily go off the deep end!  He could use his powers in a haphazard way that could hurt or kill the people he loves!  He has no strong role model.  No real parental guidance.  If Magneto got his hands on him, Joey would join the Brotherhood of Mutants alongside Sabertooth, Toad, and Mystique.
Weird activity abounds.  When Joey's teacher visits his household, the boy uses his burgeoning Sith powers to burn the man's hand.  What remedy is prescribed?  Joey's mother dunks the burned hand into a fishbowl and then drops ice cubes from the freezer into it!  When it becomes general knowledge that Joey is under some psychic attack, an army of researchers and paranormal investigators descend on his house like the scientists in E.T. just to scan the hapless boy's brain.
The film careens from one Spielbergian trope to another, and assails the viewer with a cascade of product placements from numerous 80s franchises:  Return of the Jedi, The Smurfs, Sesame Street, The A-Team, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Pac Man, and an unlicensed cameo from Darth Vader.
So where are our champion riffers during this wide awake nightmare of a film?
They haven't been slacking off, that's for sure!  Emily and the Bots fight back by pointing out the Spielbergisms and 1980s dreck the movie dives into.  During a host segment, GPC dons the dress of a housewife and frets over how she can take disparate scenes and characters from numerous kid's adventure films and mix them together into one cinematic goulash.  Tom and Crow come to the rescue, dressed as Hamburger Helper mascots, only to present themselves as Spielberger Helpers!  They demonstrate how you can take E.T., Jaws, The Goonies, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and splice them into some hackneyed monstrosity that only a fan of MST3K would be willing to sit through.  In another segment, Crow takes on the role of Joey as he sobs over who or what could replace his deceased father.  Emily comes to the rescue with a song and dance number called "Stuff!"  Our new host demonstrates how the accumulation of useless product placements and future landfill detritus can fill the hole in a child's heart for as long as he has disposable income.  Emily expertly segues into advertising MST3K merch that was being sold in the back of the theater at intermission.  Sure enough, at intermission, the MSTies descended upon the bric a brac like frenzied locusts.  Suze and I did not.  We have enough junk from a thousand different IPs with which we could waste our time.

"Americans love their junk.  It's not the junk that bothers me.  It's the love."
- George Santayana

In the second act, Em and the Bots are on a roll, zealously pointing out the omnipresence of slats in every door, fence, and piece of furniture.  At one point, they bring their golden throats together by singing riffs to the melody of "Carol of the Bells."  A little on the post season side, but how could one pass up the opportunity?
Permit me to backtrack to the first act where we had to witness the dummy creepily stroking a wooden post on a stairway bannister.  Crow gives voice to the depraved dummy with a deep guttural voice that exclaims how eagerly he strokes the post in orgiastic glee.  The audience ejaculated in kind with a roar of laughter.  I... sat uncomfortably in my seat, as if I was a child hearing low moans coming from my parents' bedroom down the hall.
There were points where the hokeyness of the film grew so extreme that I had to "tap out" from viewing the movie, bury my face in my hands and ask myself, "Sweet Quetzalcoatl!  Why am I WATCHING this shit?"  Then I would return myself to the loving embrace of Em and the Bots good natured ribbing and managed to make it to the anticlimactic end of Making Contact.
Let me remind you that this film was made by the guy who directed Independence Day.  Dwell on that, if you dare.
In the final host segment, Emily saved the audience from its entrapment within the Time Bubble by bursting it with... a SLAT, which foiled Mega Synthia's scheme.  Emily and the Bots join in a final song and dance routine where they praise the practical utility of SLATS.  The show came to a triumphant end amid the roar of the crowd.
As Suze and I wandered toward the nearest exit, my ears pricked up to an 80s tune I had not heard in decades.  It was an electronica by way of yacht rock ditty by Michael Sembello called "Automatic Man."  I made a mental note on having Alexa play the song for Susan when we got home.
Along with a fragment of the crowd, we wandered our way down seven flights of stairs before we exited onto the cold, brisk street.  The commute to Mom's house, where we planned to spend the night, was fairly quick.  We were rightly exhausted as we got inside, crawled into our bedrolls and dozed off, while visions of Charlie, the poor, put upon robot danced in our heads.

- JJB