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One of life’s great pleasures is watching a terrible film with a group of friends, and I genuinely love bad movies<\/a>: Give me “Plan 9\u00a0from Outer Space,”\u00a0“Manos: The Hands of Fate,” or “Hard Ticket to Hawaii” and I’ll make a case for why they are five-star cult classics. There are limits, however, and even I must draw the line at\u00a0“The Garbage Pail Kid Movie,” one of those rare cinematic disasters with a 0% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes. One thing I will say is that no fault lies with its young star, Mackenzie Astin, although maybe he should’ve taken his dad’s advice when the role came along.<\/p>\n Perhaps the movie seemed like a good idea at the time. The Garbage Pail Kids were the hottest trading cards on the playground in the mid-’80s, a grotesque and irreverent parody of the more wholesome Cabbage Patch Dolls. The cards sold over 800 million units\u00a0and Astin not only counted himself as a fan, he saw the live-action adaptation\u00a0as a chance to make the leap to the big screen after finding success in\u00a0NBC’s sitcom “The Facts of Life.”<\/p>\n Astin’s father, John, best known as Gomez in the original “The Addams Family”<\/a> TV show, smelled trouble coming a mile off and offered some advice\u00a0(via Mental Floss<\/a>):<\/p>\n “The contracts were signed by the time my dad had a chance to look at the script. He did everything he could to get me out of it. Like, ‘Dude. This is not a good idea, son. I know what I’m talking about.’ But the ink was dry.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Astin Senior’s judgement was sound. “The Garbage Pail Kids\u00a0Movie” has gained notoriety as one of the worst films ever made, and his boy was stuck right in the middle of it.<\/p>\n\n