THE WORST WE CAN FIND - Christmas Advent Calendar: Day 18 - MAC AND ME

 

Back to MST3K with the first episode of The Gauntlet. It’s the story of how Ronald McDonald brought the world together in a Sears with Coke products, entitled Ant-Man.

Mac and Me (August 1988)

Program: Mystery Science Theater 3000

Air-Date: November 22, 2018

 

The original movie poster and the MST3K streaming artwork. Note how they made Mac look much more appealing here than in the movie.

Plot: Mac is a young “Mysterious Alien Creature” and if that doesn’t make you quietly pick up your popcorn and head over to the other theater to see A Fish Called Wanda, then you get what you deserve.

Mac and his family of naked aliens are sucked up by a space-probe from a planet they are on. Imagine if the writer had taken too many drugs during the alien landscape scene in The Man Who Fell to Earth and you’ll get the idea. The probe arrives back on Earth and Mac, his sister and his parents are vomited back up by the probe. They are dead after having been stuck in a space-probe for months, if not years, without food, water, or air. Just kidding, they’re alive and the negligent parents of Mac instantly run amok, destroying plenty of things and probably killing a good number of people, while Mac heads to the road and causes an accident that should have killed at least a young boy and his father, but somehow doesn’t. 

William H. Macy in a role that will surprise you.

The traumatized Mac sneaks into a car with Eric (Jade Calegory), a boy in a wheelchair, his brother Michael (Jonathan Ward), and their mother, Janet (Christine Ebersole). They are in the process of moving into a new house, which Mac quickly begins destroying because he’s an alien being from a desolate world and obviously the last of their kind due to their dangerous ways. Eric eventually catches on that there’s an alien in the house and with the help of Michael and a neighbor girl they capture Mac and try to understand what he wants after Mac has large binges of Coke (reminder to self: insert “Hollywood producers with large binges of coke” joke here later). They figure out that Mac is wanting his family who we see dying out in the desert. And what a joyous scene for kids in the audience. It is too. 

Mac steals some poor kid's toy and wrecks it, while letting loose a bunch of neighborhood dogs, because that's the kind of bad news Mac is.

The … um … guys in suits who may be working for the government, begin investigating and Eric tries to sneak Mac out in disguise at a McDonald’s, where there appears to be a gas leak, as everyone is tripping inside, including Ronald McDonald. The government-looking guys appear and give chase through a Sears, but eventually lose Eric when Michael and others manage to lift them into a van and drive away.

They find Mac’s family and gives them life-sustaining Coke products.  At a gas station, the teenagers go to a liquor store to buy Coke, while the aliens break out of the van and go into the supermarket. (Leave it to teenagers to think going to the liquor store is a better idea for drinks.) The police arrive and blow up the market as well as shoot Eric (you’re not supposed to know that, as it was edited out of the U.S. version of the movie, so just assume he got caught in the explosion). Mac and family bring the kid back to life, the government gives them all citizenship and a car, and the film ends with the alien family driving down the road and warning us that they will be back.

They won’t.

Favorite Riff: (mother finding Eric has died outside of a fiery store caused by cops randomly shooting at aliens) “I can’t believe that my son and my husband died in the exact same way, in the exact same spot!”

Thoughts:  You know you’re in trouble when the people behind the movie promote it in interviews as being not at ALL like E.T., and their alien is totally different because he “wants to get back to his family” and “has powers.” Right.

Of course, it’s an obvious rip-off of E.T., down to the family unit the child alien finds and even the escape from the government on wheels. And just like E.T. having product placement, Mac and Me does the same, only by the truckload. We have Coke instead of Reese’s Pieces, a birthday party at McDonald’s instead of Halloween to disguise the alien, a trip through Sears, and a cop just straight-out shooting the kid instead of a type of bonding seen in E.T. causing the boy to die. Tied into that are aliens with non-emotive faces who seem to just being wanting to cause destruction instead of trying to understand things, and it’s just pretty repulsive all the way through. (As least E.T. is innocently causing problems at one point in that movie, and no doubt from drinking alcohol; Mac seems to be a bad kid looking to watch the world burn.)

Something positive for a ram chip? Well, the kids are actually pretty good actors, and Jade Calegory, who really did have to use a wheelchair due to spina bifida, is very good for someone who probably did not have a lot of screen experience. And it will live forever in the hearts and minds of anyone who saw Paul Rudd on the old Conan O’Brien show. There is a final riff in the movie that references Christmas, so it works for this Advent Calendar. Oh, and they never did the promised sequel.

 

Still not as disturbing as what we saw in the movie.

The Riffing:  The was the first episode of the Netflix second season, which was done in a manner where viewers were supposed to indulge in a traditional “Turkey Day” marathon of episodes like MST3K fans had done many times in the past. The only difference was that it was six new movies instead of a dozen or more of the older ones. Returning to the program where all the regulars, although the set for the mads were stripped down to just a small background and featured only Kinga, Max, Synthia, and a handful of the boneheads on the Moon 13 set, unlike the larger crew seen in the first season.

As a fan, it’s a shame they didn’t do much more with the theme of Kinga marrying Jonah, as that could have worked into the entire season (imagine a storyline with Kinga’s idea of a honeymoon was simply to continue the experiment of Jonah and the bots but in “honeymoon locations” and then a quickie annulment when Jonah refuses to go mad at the end of the marathon). At least the program took note of the cliffhanger and tried to resolve it somewhat (although why Jonah would return to the bots after escaping Repitilicus is one for the fanfic writers out there). Interesting to note the “Travel Cambot” looks like Kinga stole some designs for her later cambots in the 13^th season. Also nice to see the sketches between bits of the movie tie into the film (especially the McDonald’s parody), and the ending that finds Jonah and the bots being brought down to Moon 13 to build on to the movie vault helps sets up things to come, which is a nice twist in the setup of the show.

Everyone meets once again, as the Gauntlet sets up the storyline to come.

Mac and Me makes for an excellent first episode of the second season, and is a recommended one for fans of the original show who want to see an episode or two of the new one to see if it’s to their taste.  In fact, I would go so far as to suggest it’s one of the better MST3K episodes done over the entire 30 year run of the series. It’s still available on Netflix to see, so if you have access and haven’t had a taste of the bitterness that is Mac and Me, check it out!