OUR RATING:
“How Did This Get Made?” is the award-winning comedy podcast that celebrates bad movies with three professionally funny people spending many hours exploring topics like.. .Why “Fast Five” doesn’t make any sense. Comedians and actors Paul Scheer (The League), June Diane Raphael (Grace and Frankie), and Jason Mantzoukas (Big Mouth) break down the very best of the worst films ever made, which is a polite way of saying they get paid to watch movies that would make film school professors weep into their lattes.
The premise is simple: three adults with functioning brains voluntarily subject themselves to cinematic torture, then spend considerable time and energy explaining why “The Room” wasn’t actually a misunderstood masterpiece. But be warned, if having educated friends who insist on ruining your guilty pleasure viewings by pointing out every plot hole, continuity error, and questionable acting choice, albeit in an entertaining manner, this podcast might not be for you.
Paul Scheer brings the energy of someone who cannot believe movies like “Geostorm” exist in our timeline, approaching each film with the wide-eyed wonder of an anthropologist discovering a new species of terrible. His incredulous reactions serve as the perfect audience surrogate for anyone who’s ever wondered how Hollywood executives greenlight projects that seem designed to offend the very concept of storytelling.
June Diane Raphael serves as the group’s moral compass and voice of reason, which is hilarious considering she’s discussing movies where the plot hinges on a character’s ability to outrun an explosion in high heels. Her feminist lens cuts through the ridiculous machismo of many bad action films, providing commentary that’s insightful and brutally funny as she examines the bizarre gender dynamics of movies that clearly think women are mysterious creatures who exist solely to be rescued or to inexplicably fall in love with the male lead.
Jason Mantzoukas approaches each film like a detective investigating a crime scene, except the crime is against good taste and the evidence is a two-hour movie about sharks in a tornado. His ability to find the most absurd details and spin them into comedic goodness is matched only by his infectious enthusiasm for absolutely losing his mind over the most ridiculous plot points. When Mantzoukas gets excited about something stupid in a movie, it’s like watching a kid discover the world’s worst Christmas present and somehow loving it anyway.
The show’s format is designed to maximize the comedy potential of truly awful cinema. Rather than simply mocking bad movies (which would get old quickly), the hosts approach each film with curiosity about the creative decisions that led to such spectacular failures. They’re not just laughing at these movies; they’re trying to solve the mystery of how hundreds of people could collaborate on something so fundamentally broken and somehow think they were making art.
“How Did This Get Made” transforms the usually solitary experience of hate-watching terrible movies into a communal celebration of cinematic failure. The hosts create a safe space where it’s okay to admit you kind of enjoyed “Con Air” while simultaneously acknowledging that it makes absolutely no logical sense. They’ve turned guilty pleasure viewing into an art form, complete with detailed analysis and passionate debates about whether Nicolas Cage’s character would realistically survive that particular explosion.
The podcast also serves as an inadvertent film studies course for people who would never voluntarily take an actual film studies course. Through their discussions of pacing, character development, and narrative structure (or the complete absence thereof), the hosts accidentally educate their audience about what makes movies work by examining in excruciating detail what makes movies spectacularly fail. It’s
In the end, “How Did This Get Made?” succeeds because it treats bad movies with the same level of serious analysis that pretentious critics reserve for Bergman films. The joke isn’t that these movies are bad. The joke is that they exist at all, and that somehow, despite their obvious flaws, they still manage to entertain us in ways their creators never intended. It’s a celebration of the beautiful absurdity of human creativity, even when that creativity produces something like “Jack and Jill.”
Where to listen to How Did This Get Made?
Episodes.fm | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro
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