You Can’t Piss on Hospitality!
Every once and a while a time comes when someone needs to prove themselves a man. Even women have to prove it. I’ve had a couple moments like this in the course of my review “career”. One was a little movie called Thankskilling, and others are movies like Twilight and Hannah Montana: The Movie. These are moments when my friends attempt to test my resolve by recommending a movie that they think I may not be able to make it through. But I haven’t met the movie yet that could conquer me. My friend Forty and I used to make it a habit to scrape the slimy black goo from the bottom of the film industry, and I assure you that I’ve made it through movies that are worse than any movie most of you have seen. Fabio decided he would throw his hat into the fray, recommending a movie so bad that I had already heard of it, and knew many things from it, because of how awful it was. Can this movie defeat me? We’ll see in my review of Troll 2, written by Rossella Drudi, written and directed by Drake Floyd, and starring Michael Stephenson, Margo Prey, George Hardy, Connie McFarland, Robert Ormsby, Jason Wright, Deborah Reed, Darren Ewing, David McConnell, Jason Steadman, Mike Hamill, and Gary Carison.
The Waits family is all set to take a vacation to the small town of Nilbog to try to get away from their problems. The youngest child, Joshua (Michael Stephenson), is constantly seeing visions of his dead grandfather, Seth (Robert Ormsby), and the daughter, Holly (Connie McFarland), can’t get her boyfriend, Elliott (Jason Wright), to ever come see her without his friends in tow. Josh’s grandpa also told him, in one of his visions, a story about Trolls that get people to eat green goop that turns them into plants that they then eat, so he’s also worrying about that. But that’d be pretty unlikely unless they were in a really shitty movie. Well the Waits family heads out to Nilbog with Elliott – and his friends – following close behind. When they arrive, the townspeople are a little bit weird, and they all seem obsessed with getting them to eat for some reason. Elliott and his friends also encounter a strange woman that lives in a chapel named Creedence Leonore Gielgud (Deborah Reed), that is also fairly obsessed with getting them to eat green stuff.
This has got to be one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever watched, but it’s far from the worst one. I’ve seen movies that I’d classify as “unwatchable”, and this one is watchable. It might just lower your IQ for doing it, but you can watch this movie. If you’re a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (as I am), you might find this movie very similar to movies that they’ve mocked in the past, particularly Hobgoblins and Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders. But I’ve also never watched either of those movies without people that are really good at making fun of movies making it more tolerable. All that being said, I would say the story isn’t really the biggest problem with the movie. There are plenty of stupid things to be found in the story, and a lot of things that don’t make sense, but this movie has a bigger problem on its hands that will come up later. Let’s talk things that are stupid. First, the entire character of Elliott. This chick Holly is dying to throw pussy all over this guy if he’ll just show up anywhere without his friends, but he can’t muster it. I like my friends a lot, but they don’t stand between me and some tang. And I’m pretty sure any one of them would understand that. It could be something like, “Hey man, are you still coming to my mother’s funeral? It’d mean a lot to me,” and I could respond, “Oh, about that. I was GONNA go, but I met this chick and she was pretty cute and wants to fuck me, so I was thinking…” and I feel they would respond, “Dude, why are you still talking and not knocking the bottom out right now?” That’s what friends are for! I think they even wrote a song about it. The parents are also very stupid. Not only do they let their kid run up to a homeless hitchhiker with hygiene problems because he thinks it’s his dead grandfather, but they also don’t make great decisions for themselves either. Although, pretty much anyone in this movie is super trusting when it comes to food. The family is totally willing to eat all the stuff that was left in the house they’re vacationing in, one of Elliott’s friends actually eats a green hamburger given to him by the Sheriff, the mom was going to eat a cake brought to her by a creepy lady that broke into her house and talked about how “appetizing” her daughter was, and they almost eat food given to them by the creepy villagers that don’t join them in eating, opting instead to stand around them clapping their hands and cheering creepily. Food is really important to this movie too. Quite possibly the stupidest thing to be found in the ending, but fuck spoilers on this. Here’s a spoiler: I’m going to tell you not to watch this movie. But the trolls are temporarily defeated because Josh eats a double decker bologna sandwich. …Yup! So fuck you movie. But, technically, that’s not how they actually defeat them. That just makes them all stand back and yell as they do what they do to actually defeat them, apparently unable to do anything else. How they ACTUALLY defeat the trolls is by putting their hands on a rock and looking constipated. But even I’m not without my share of stupidity, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. You may already have figured it out, but I was extremely embarrassed to find that I didn’t actually figure out that Nilbog is Goblin spelled backwards until the movie told me.
The dialogue is pretty awful in this movie, but it still isn’t what I’d call the movie’s main failing point. The first thing that occurred to me by way of dialogue happens right in the beginning, as Grandpa Seth is telling Josh the story of the trolls and the little mother fucker won’t shut his gundamned mouth long enough for Seth to finish a sentence. It was like Fred Savage in the Princess Bride to the power of 10. The next stupid line I caught was really blunt setup, as Josh’s mother was talking to him about how Grandpa Seth was dead and she says something like, “And for me, his daughter, blah blah blah.” That is the most blunt and obvious information drop I’ve seen in a while, and completely unnecessary because it doesn’t matter who Seth was the father of. And for me, the writer of this review you are currently reading, I felt it was retarded. Speaking of which, when Holly knees Elliott in the nuts for something, what is your justification in making him say, “Are you trying to make me a homo?” Is that how it works? All this nature/nurture argument has been solved by Troll 2! It’s actually a kick to the balls that turns you gay. Also, that little fuck Elliott was already a homo. If only his friends would give him the deep dickin’ so he could stop stringing this poor girl Holly around as his beard. I also got really annoyed when the family started singing “Row Row Row Your Boat” while driving to Nilbog, and I found myself hoping – as the camera looked out the front windshield – that a car crash like The Descent would happen so I could start hanging out with the real family I would have to spend time with. Also, at one point in the movie, THE TROLLS ARE DEFEATED BY A BOLOGNA SANDWICH! Fuck you, movie!
The look of this movie was also hit and miss. One thing that kept occurring to me was all of the “product placement” in the movie. I put that in quotes because I’m positive that Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Batman, and GI Joe didn’t want anything to do with this movie. That being the case, how were they able to put all of that stuff in here without getting sued? Some of the visual stuff in this movie was actually not that bad. The masks of the goblins were a little spooky and I would consider them fairly well done were it not for the fact that they didn’t articulate at all. That also wouldn’t be so much of a problem if they didn’t also try to make the goblins talk occasionally. I also thought the look of people turning into plants was actually fairly well done, but the scene of one of Elliott’s friends dragging another of his friends that was turning into a tree and standing in a pot like a household plant was just goofy. Also, they had a whole thing in the movie about the milk and how it had apparently gone bad, but they probably should have left the milk out for a little bit longer. I could barely tell that it was supposed to be bad, even as they were pouring it. And, even worse, the kid eats a bologna sandwich to defeat Trolls, so there’s that.
The performances are, in my opinion, the worst thing about this movie. There is MAYBE one character in this movie that even comes close to “acting”. I’ve always felt that one of the most obvious signs that someone can’t act is when they separate contractions into separate words. Things like, “It will be awesome,” and, “I am going to eat a bologna sandwich,” are just not how real humans speak. Michael Stephenson was the only person in this movie that really came close to acting because he seemed able to convey mania and fear pretty well, and that was most of what was required of him. So the rest of the cast gets to be showed up by the youngest person in the movie. Deborah Reed wasn’t what I’d call “bad” in her performance as Creedence, but she was WAY over the top. She couldn’t see the top from where she was. And hopefully her eyes bug out and she dies in the icy blackness of space because of how over the top she was. I didn’t mind her that much because she seemed like she would’ve been attractive, but they covered that up with gross teeth and wrinkle makeup, and even added lips full of cold sores for some reason near the end. She did have one little bit of time that she used her powers to turn attractive, so that was nice. I don’t remember his name – and I don’t care – but whoever the nerdy guy that got turned into a tree took it way too well that a girl was bleeding green and turning into a plant right in front of him. The people that I would say were the worst actors in this movie (and it was hard to pick) would be Jason Wright as Elliott and Connie McFarland as Holly. They were the King and Queen of breaking up contractions, and Connie didn’t even seem all that interested in participating in the movie. I’m not positive, but I think Connie McFarland might have grown up into Kristen Stewart. Also, how does this movie not have boobs in it?! I don’t have many rules in life, but if you’re going to make me sit through a movie this shitty, the least you can do is give me a couple of boobs to look at. Or you could give me a bologna sandwich. Not for hunger, but for protection.
It comes as no surprise to anyone that Troll 2 sucks in stereo, but it is not the worst movie I’ve sat through, so it can at least use that in its defense. The story is stupid, and the dialogue is generic and blunt, but some parts of the visuals were not that bad. The thing that bogs this movie down most of all is the people in it, as all of them should watch this movie if they ever think they should try acting again. It’s not your calling. That and the bologna sandwich. The ending of this movie can suck it. And so can the rest of the movie. I wouldn’t recommend you watch this movie at all, but if you’re a fan of making fun of bad movies, this movie is a perfect candidate. It’s kind of fun in how bad it is, but still really bad. Troll 2 gets “You start a fire, I’ll distract them with this” out of “A double-decker bologna sandwich!”
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