Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return Season 1 Review

Netflix has once again brought us a great classic with the revival of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The show is based around a test subject getting captured and then forced to watch terrible movies. He creates some robotic friends to help with this process and they also assist with the heckling of films. Jonah Heston (Jonah Ray) is the latest test subject having been captured by Kinga (Felicia Day) and Max (Patton Oswalt). All around, everyone is fun and completely embraces their wacky hosting roles very well. This helps to make the purely silly background narrative have some meaning and while nothing is taken serious, it's a good time.

Jonah is the heart of the series giving us commentary throughout horrible films and making them into something enjoyable. He's also given some breaks within the episodes as they run about a hour and a half each. These segments are often fun whether that's some tunes, invention exchange or advancing the background plot. It's very much something new while still capturing the soul of the original being a continuation as opposed to a reboot. The season goes over a variety of interesting films and I certainly enjoyed watching most of them.


That aside, some of the films were the worst ones I've ever watched in my entire life. Even the fun filled comedy couldn't get me through a couple of them and that was towards the later movies in the season. I actually really liked some of the films despite them being shown as bad finding them actually alright with the commentary adding some extra life. It's a good way to get some lost or unknown movies available for people to watch and I find that aspect really interesting. There were films about massive hilarious claymation monsters, bad Sci-Fi and some horrible mythological ones. I guarantee that you haven't heard of any movies in this collection so it's something fresh to watch without any thoughts going in. The groups also worked really well together whether that was Heston with his robotic pals doing their skits or Day and Oswalt hatching evil plans in the background.

The Conclusion

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return was a great watch, it's got original terrible movies to view and commentary that makes them enjoyable. Some laughs were more intense than others, but that's to be expected when seeing a whole film get heckled. The background content was also original and fun with many of the jokes across the entire season being very funny. It's definitely up to the times with a simple, yet charming humor that works well. There was also a good variety within the presented jokes and it never felt like it was getting repetitive or that certain jokes were being recycled. I really do hope that Heston gets locked away for awhile as I can't wait for more awful movies to watch!

Review for Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return at Home with Streamed Viewing

Rating Overall: 8.0