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DIRECTED BY: Macon Blair

FEATURING: Peter Dinklage, Taylour Paige, Kevin Bacon, Jacob Tremblay, Elijah Wood

PLOT: A mild-mannered janitor becomes an avenging superhero after being thrown into a vat of toxic waste.

COMMENTS: The idea of Hollywood types spiffing up an old Troma script for a polished take on the underground exploitation studio’s punk sensibilities is inherently intriguing. And although some might miss the Jersey grime and DIY nihilism, there’s enough of a novelty factor to the whole enterprise to make the new Toxic Avenger worth a look.

Right away, you can tell that little things like editing, lighting, and cinematography far surpass Troma‘s capabilities. Not to mention, of course, the acting. (If you can even name an actor from another Toxic Avenger movie, you’re a real fan.) Who wouldn’t be curious to see Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon, and Elijah Wood ham it up in Tromaville? Even the supporting characters with less name recognition, Taylour Paige and Jacob Tremblay, blow away most Troma performers, who tend to be broad comic caricatures who come across more through costuming and outrageousness than through line deliveries. The stars don’t sleepwalk through the project, either. Dinklage gives it his all, putting real pathos into Winston Gooze, snuffling in terror and even donning a pink tutu at one point. Bacon has as much of a ball as you would expect as a soulless and unscrupulous corporate huckster with his own mad science dungeon in the basement of his mansion. Wood is nearly unrecognizable as a pasty-faced, Penguin-like chief of security with a bizarre hairdo (he’s balding, but with one exceptionally long wisp of hair growing from the front of his crown).

The major tonal change is that this new Avenger sports conspicuously more heart than Troma’s cynical output. The script goes out of its way to show us that Winston is a decent man, whose only flaw is that he’s overly meek. A widower, Winston takes his responsibility as sole provider for surly teen stepson Wade seriously. Maybe he lacks the courage to stand up to a slumlord who’s harassing his grandmotherly neighbor, but he will instinctively risk his life to save her cat from an oncoming car. When he’s diagnosed with an unspecified fatal illness from mopping up toxic waste all day to feed his family, and then denied lifesaving care by healthcare bureaucrats, he generates legitimate sympathy. And the Avenger’s ultimate targets—corporate scallywags poisoning the populace, not just teen bullies as in the original—make for a noble cause. Paige’s J.J. is an activist, a legitimate self-sacrificing idealist in the usually everyone-for-themself Tromaville. Whether these changes represent a welcome humanizing touch, or a sellout of Troma’s laugh-while-burning-society-to-the-ground ethos, is a matter of personal taste. I think it generally works.

What the remake keeps from Troma is the reliance on comic violence and gore, which is in fact amped up to even higher decibels. Yep, arms get yanked off and heads split open aplenty, and the finale sprays megagallons of blood. The makeup also hearkens back to Troma’s glory days; the Avenger has an inarticulate rubber mask, and the chief baddies (a “horrorcore” band called the Killer Nutz) feature characters like a giant chicken with a mohawk. The comedy, however, misses even more than a Troma production. I didn’t hear a single hearty laugh ringing out at a lightly-attended screening, only occasional muffled chuckles. The humor is not transgressive or politically incorrect in the slightest; targets are kept safe (who could be offended by making fun of health insurers or narcissistic CEOs?) The mostly PG-13 jokes are similar to, but not quite as funny as, those in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. It would have been nice to see the script go a little harder; one of Troma’s few virtues is their willingness to be equal opportunity offenders.

In the end, the new Toxie is neither the disaster nor the success it might have been. At a minimum, it fulfills what the project promised: a look at what the 80s superhero spoof might have looked like with a reasonable budget. It corrects some of the original’s shortcomings, but abandons some of the outsider charm in the process. Next up: a big budget remake of Pink Flamingos with RuPaul as Divine, Pedro Pascal and Laura Dern as the Marbles, and Lizzo as the Egg Lady.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a weird, messy, heartfelt little beast that finds a surprising amount of soul beneath its buckets of blood…  Against all odds, The Toxic Avenger has grown up, just a little, without losing the sense of gonzo fun that made him a cult legend.”–Nicolas Delgadillo, Knotfest (contemporaneous)