<\/p>\n
Nostalgia for extreme tackiness is surely one of the funnier outcomes of a cult film\u2019s success. (Does one sigh wistfully at such memories or smile through a grimace?) The gleeful cine-garbage factory Troma is, at 50 years and counting, now a hallowed name in outsider movie circles, with much of its reputation stemming from an \u201980s output that seemed appropriate for the Reagan era. That especially goes for its 1984 monster comedy \u201cThe Toxic Avenger,\u201d about a head-smashing vigilante forged from green chemical sludge. It was antipollution if you wanted to be charitable, but really, it was anti-everything. Haste plus waste, made for very bad taste.<\/p>\n
Now, of course, we all recycle trash in our daily lives. But does it work as a film principle? Troma aficionado Macon Blair, a key on-and-offscreen collaborator of Jeremy Saulnier (\u201cBlue Ruin,\u201d<\/a> \u201cHold the Dark\u201d<\/a>) and a Sundance-winning writer-director in his own right (\u201cI Don\u2019t Feel At Home in This World Anymore\u201d<\/a>), has taken up the challenge with his own \u201cThe Toxic Avenger,\u201d starring Peter Dinklage as this version\u2019s mutant hero, Toxie, and maybe the worst thing one could say about it is that it\u2019s well-made.<\/p>\n Cue the disconnect when, expecting to be offended by garish, cheap filmmaking, one realizes that so much of the Troma style \u2014 gratuitous gore, filthy mouths, blunt-force parody \u2014 is ubiquitous to any regular genre diet in film or TV. That leaves matters of artistic character and there\u2019s no getting around the fact that Blair has made the conscious decision that his \u201cToxic Avenger,\u201d though rude, violent and goofy to a fault, wouldn\u2019t look bad. It\u2019s even got appealing stars: Kevin Bacon, Elijah Wood, Taylour Paige. Is nothing sacred?<\/p>\n Read more:<\/b> The 27 best movie theaters in Los Angeles<\/a><\/p>\n But when even the biggest-budgeted movies now look terrible, everything\u2019s already upside-down. What Blair has assembled, then, is diverting homage-schlock: a one-joke Halloween costume you\u2019ll never wear again. Only this time, it asserts its environmental consciousness like a middle finger. The story\u2019s Big Pharma outfit, called BTH, is a full-on villainous entity now, run by rapacious CEO Bob Garbinger (Bacon) who\u2019s pumping consumers with harmful lifestyle drugs when he isn\u2019t hiring a dim-witted punk band to kill a journalist (Paige) trying to expose him. (A muckraking mentor, seen only at the beginning, is called Mel Ferd, a shout-out to the original Toxie\u2019s name.)<\/p>\n And yet things are also, in Blair\u2019s setup, anchored in emotional sincerity (gasp). Dinklage\u2019s affectingly drawn Winston Goose is no mere browbeaten BTH janitor \u2014 he\u2019s a soft-spoken widower struggling to raise a stepson (Jacob Tremblay). Winston has also been diagnosed with a terminal illness and medical insurance won\u2019t cover it. His Kafkaesque phone call about his employee plan is almost too realistic to find funny.<\/p>\n Trying to rob his employer one night with a mop dipped in toxic muck, Winston is shot and thrown into said slop. Instead of killing him, though, it transforms Winston into a disfigured creature (performer Luisa Guerreiro does the post-mutation suit work) with a removable eye, blood running blue, and \u2014 in a Tromatic touch \u2014 acid for urine. His gory dispatching of criminals notwithstanding, the mop-wielding Toxie becomes a community hero for calling out BTH as \u201cruiners.\u201d But it also puts a target on his splotchy, misshapen head, especially when Garbinger senses in his nemesis an exploitable biofuel.<\/p>\n Whether poking at superhero cliches (there\u2019s a choice post-credit scene) or trying to be kill-clever, it\u2019s all in dopey, gruesome fun, although, to reiterate, a \u201cToxic Avenger\u201d even normies can enjoy doesn\u2019t exactly sound like a true Troma tribute. Which may explain why its trashmonger founder (and original \u201cToxic\u201d co-creator) Lloyd Kaufman\u2019s cameo, late in the film, is him crankily muttering next to Blair, who looks just as peeved. They probably had a blast filming it.<\/p>\n