I may have enjoyed this book a bit more if I was familiar with more of the subjects discussed inside. Several of the films I'd never even ehard of. The writing is funny, but it can get a bit old periodically, especially in the second to last segment which (haha) deals with "The Blair Witch Project." Mike Nelson's going on about how the witch trying to make friends with the students was trying. I have to say, his history of the names that the witch has been known as through the years was funny, especially since it addresses the differences in name between the actual town of the filming and the fictional area of the movie.

Read the excerpt here on Amazon, which pokes fun at the movie "Volcano." The rest of this book is more of the same, looking at TV shows as well. Nelson even critiques "MST3K: The Movie" which is the best part of the book.

There's some great moments here, but you really have to be familiar with the topics and, as I try to avoid a lot of bad television, do not.

Check out Nelson's "Mind on Matters" and "Death Rat" before picking this up. I finished "Death Rat" last week. Thoroughly enjoyable.

"Movie Megacheese" is a perfect book for a rainy day:it's hilarious,and Mike Nelson has tried-heroically-to transfer his snarky remarks from his Mystery Science Theater 3000 to the book world.

Mike Nelson provides insights into "The Saint" (why doesn't Val Kilmer's character use the alias St.John Eudes?),"Action Jackson" (explaining why the hero doesn't have the surname Paulson or Thibedeau),and "Star Trek:Generations" (the villain dresses like Sting&wants to get hit by a dryer spark). His comedic assessment of Food Network is as relevant as ever-though Rachael Ray and Bobby Flay are notable omissions. His digs at Emeril Lagasse are worth the price of the book. Bam!

Mike Nelson's take on "Bridges of Madison County" is a disappointment,but his send-up of "Patch Adams" pretty much sums up the current state of Robin Williams' career (though "Happy Feet" and "Night at the Museum" weren't made yet). "Movie Megacheese" is mostly humorous,and it works as bite-size comedy. Unfortunately,it's too short. Considering how many awful movies have been made since the book first came out,it's time for an extended edition or a sequel.

Being a rabid MST3K fan, I must confess this book was a bit of a letdown. Maybe my expectations were too high. There is humor here, but there were way more half-smiles than hearty laughs, and some of the swing-for-the-fences jokes definitely ended up in the catcher's mitt. Whenever you can guess the punchline before finishing the sentence, things are a little stale. I couldn't recommend paying retail price, but if you find it used like I did, you'll get your money's worth.

Having watched Mike on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" for many years, I had an idea of what to expect. Yet, "Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese" blew me out of the water with its laugh-out-loud reviews. Nelson is a gifted writer with a sharp tongue and an even sharper rapier wit. My only complaint is that he doesn't do enough of these! Who wouldn't pay $20 to see him tee off on "Gigli" or "Norbert"? We need another hit of the 'cheese, Mike! Overall, an enjoyable read from cover to cover!

Thanks in large part to my exposure to "Mystery Science Theater 3000", I am now a stark-raving-mad cheeseball cinema aficionado. So it was a no-brainer that I'd eventually get around to reading former MST3K host Mike Nelson's essays on several big-budget cheddar-fests that the show could never hope to afford licensing rights to. I figured buying a copy of Mr. Nelson's book (from Amazon, `natch) and reading it would be the best way for me to pay the guy back for making me laugh occasionally at his not-half-bad-or better quips and put-downs. Sure, it took me over five years to finally up and get the book, and used from one of the Amazon Marketplace dealers no less. But hey, better late than never...

Most of the movies Nelson takes on go about as far back as the mid-80s to just before the tome's 2000 publishing date. He goes after a few of the usual suspects ("Anaconda", "Independence Day", and "Action Jackson" are but a few examples), as well as a few not-so-obvious flix ("The Bridges of Madison County", "DragonHeart"). He even goes so far as to use the horrid "Batman & Robin" (which he declares is "not the worst movie ever", but "the worst THING ever") as a springboard to rip into the entire Burton/Schumacher "Batman" franchise in one essay. In some cases he teams up two or more particularly cheddary flicks that are connected by a theme, like "Action Jackson" and "Stone Cold" because of the movies' main stars' former careers in pro football.

But it's not just movies this former Satellite of Love co-denizen takes apart with his usually straightforward but occasionally rambling manner and incendiary wit that occasionally enters the realm of naughtiness, but rarely in a particularly overt manner. As opposed to, say, a subtly overt manner. Or (horror of horrors) an overtly overt manner. About the worst you can expect from him is the reason he is now "(unable) to eat any smoked pork products" since seeing Kevin Bacon's goods in "Wild Things." And I can't say I blame him. Kinda makes me wonder if he swore off loaves and fishes after seeing Graham Chapman lettin' it all hang out in "Monty Python's Life of Brian", doesn't it?

The second-worst you can expect from Mr. Nelson is his description of the cast-off crud coming offa Clint Eastwood's character during a shower scene in "The Bridges of Madison County." While the words he uses to describe the "soupy gray runoff" of shower water that contains "all manner of skin oil, dirt, dander, and body hair" aren't particularly nasty or obscene in and of themselves, their overall arrangement and vivid power of description meshed together in a hellish literary tag-team kept me from finishing off the steak dinner I was eating whilst reading that particular passage. Eh, I could stand to lose several dozen pounds, anyway...

Also hit are notable TV shows that were running at the time, like "Xena", the Kvin Sorbo "Hercules" series, and "Savannah". The latter show has Mr. Nelson visualizing the anguish that producer Aaron Spelling's going through with the show's relative lack of success compared to the Spelling-produced contemporaries "90210" and "Melsrose Place". An anguish he tries to eliminate by tossing a few more additions to his obscenely opulent estate. "Do you realize how many rooms he has to build on the South Wing to begin to stanch the wound?", Mr. Nelson asks the reader. Quite frankly, I don't think I can even begin to realize such emotional torture, nor would I want to...

Also given their just desserts (so to speak in the former case) is the Food Channel and Cartoon Network. It's pretty apparent from his writings that Mr. Nelson actually enjoys the Food Channel, but isn't too keen with Cartoon Network, which had a lotta Hanna-Barbera shows on heavy rotation at the time the book was published. Although he cites "Speed Racer", "Woody Woodpecker" and "The Smurfs" as examples of the CN's crappiness, I'm pretty sure it was the Hanna-Barbera stuff that really pushed him over the edge. Mainly `cuz just about alla Hanna-Barbera's `toonage sucks razor blade-studded hot coals smothered in Tabasco sauce. Well, that and he lets the reader in on the lameness of "Scooby-Doo", "The Flintstones", and "The Jetsons." `Course, in the five-plus years since this book came out, CN's line-up hasn't really improved all that much; I'd much rather endure Yogi's umpteenth insipid pic-a-nic basket pilferage than watch five seconds of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force"...

Anyhoo, Mr. Nelson also takes it to several notable Hollywood personalities whose contributions to film have made many folks rather cynical and jaded about the moviegoing experience, myself included. The woodenness of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Keanu Reeves (his response to Reeves' role in "Speed": "... (a) member of the L.A. bomb squad?! I wouldn't trust this man to sell me a stamp."), the hilarious yet awful screenplays of Joe Eszterhas, and the existence of Carrot Top are but three among a crop of (usually) rather obvious, riffed-on-to-death targets that even the most third-rate of third-rate standup comics abandoned years ago for fresher material. Like William Shatner's infamous method acting for example.

On the upside: at least the author admits in his bash of Carrot Top that the pastime of Carrot Top-bashing has become a rather hackneyed and tiresome one... but after viewing "Chairman of the Board", he just can't help it. And I can't say I blame Mr. Nelson, though I must admit his shots at the fire-tressed prop comedian are ironic in a way, seeing as how he ("he" as in "Mike Nelson", not as in "Carrot Top") replaced Joel Hodgson on MST3K, who was himself a prop comedian, and took advantage of his mad skillz to assemble those silly doo-dads he'd show off to Dr. Forrester and Boob-Tube Francis during those "invention exchange" sketches. `Course, it'd be more ironic, not to mention downright hypocritical, if Nelson were a prop comedian himself while ripping on Mr. Top. Thankfully, his parents ("his parents" as in "Mike Nelson's parents", not as in "Carrot Top's parents") apparently gave him enough hugs and applied a tiny bit of corporal punishment on him when he was a lad, thereby sparing the world the agony of another Gallagher-wannabe...

As for Nelson's writing style: in some ways, it's reminiscent of the stuff he'd come up whilst locked in the SOL's screening room with his AI-endowed compatriots. While both Crow and Tom Servo had the ability to throw out an intellectual and/or esoteric reference or two, Mr. Nelson's references were by far the most intellectual and/or esoteric. Which is the main reason why I laughed at the robots' put-downs far more often than I did Mr. Nelson's. Fortunately, I was able to grok about 92.34% of these sometimes-laugh-out-loud-funny MENSA-level put-downs... which was about the rate of grokkery I had when I came across similar sometimes-laugh-out-loud-funny MENSA-level put-downs in this tome. Still, that 7.66% that I needed Google to figure out-- and had me letting out a staccato "D'oh!" whilst smacking the palm of my right hand to my forehead when I finally figured it out-- has been playin' hell on my self-esteem for a few days now...

But seriously: while I got a pretty good laugh at times from "Movie Megacheese", there were a few areas where Mr. Nelson's efforts at humor read like a cross between Larry King's insipid USA Today columns, and something Dave Barry would come up with whilst trying to overcome a really bad case of writer's block. Which is almost as corny and unfunny as Dave Barry withOUT writer's block. I mean, okay, every once in a while he'll will toss out a quip in his weekly column that gets a light chuckle from me. And his annual "Stupid Christmas Gift Guide" is kinda amusing in its own dumb little way. And that Harry Anderson sit-com that was loosely based on Barry's columnar ramblings had a few cute moments. But is he really all that and a side of curly fries? I think NOT! I will admit, however, that he's a little bit funnier than the Sunday comics... but that's only if the Sunday comics doesn't carry "Garfield." Otherwise, all bets are off.

But, I'm getting away from the main subject matter at hand, sorry about that. I go on weird tangents some times... which is something Mr. Nelson also does on occasion in "Movie Megacheese", albeit not to nearly the lengths that I do in some of my product reviews. He also throws out an agonizingly drawn-out (albeit usually amusing) analogy on occasion, like Dennis Miller without the smarm, and with only a small fraction of the obnoxious pomposity. Fortunately, the book's truly laugh-out-loud bits-- of which there were more than a few-- more than made up for the groan-inducing corny parts.

Bottom line: if you're into trashy movies & TV shows, as well as the personalities who have made those movies and TV shows so memorable (no matter how hard you try to forget), and you actually enjoy watching "Road House" for its cheeseball appeal whilst believing that Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey are demons set forth by Satan to destroy the genre of slapstick comedy as we know them, you might do well to pick up a copy of "Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese." And may be even read a few pages while you're at it...

`Late