Conor writes:
One of the things we like to do here at RiffTrax (during those rare moments when we’re not absorbed by our frequent, mandatory company-wide Schnappi sing-alongs) is to challenge ourselves. Sure, it’s easy enough to make hay out of a bear-suited Nicholas Cage, but what really tests one’s mettle is to see how he reacts when he’s staring down the business end of THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE. Yes, our respect and admiration for “Casablanca” is unbounded, but if our motto—We Don’t Make Movies, We Make Them Funny—is to have any meaning at all then it must be tested by fire. So we offer you this, our first in a series of RiffTrax Challenges, where we step outside our comfort zone (our comfort zone, by the way, is a large rumpus room here at RiffTrax Towers, with lots of bean bag chairs, thick shag carpet and a huge supply of Cheddar ‘n’ Bacon Easy Cheese) for our equivalent of a corporate “team-building” exercise. (We tried the more traditional rafting expedition but lost half our staff. We think it was at a Mobil Station in Bakersfield, CA.)
Will Mike, Kevin and Bill triumph? Merely survive? Suffer a huge smackdown by an angry, gargantuan Sidney Greenstreet? Join us for our first ever RiffTrax Challenge to find out!
The riff will be out Tuesday, June 2. Free sample here.
My own thoughts: I’m part of a private riffing group and one of the things we do is get together on weekend nights and riff whatever is on Turner Classic Movies. That has meant we have riffed a lot of truly great movies, and while back we did riff “Casablanca.” Now, I’m with Conor: this is probably one of the three or four most captivating, enthralling movies ever made, and Bogart, maybe the best, most natural actor ever to come out of old the Hollywood system, is flawless in it, as is just about everybody else.
But. What we’ve found over the years is that a movie doesn’t have to be bad to be riffable. It just has to take itself very seriously. And “Casablanca” definitely does that. The result was a memorable riff: plenty of things to riff on, even as we enjoyed a truly wonderful movie.
I’m looking forward to this one.