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“Bad food is bad. Bad books are bad. Bad movies are not always bad,” critic Scott Weinberg tells us in Best Worst Movie, an absorbing and surprisingly well-reported look back at the immortal 1989 trainwreck, Troll 2. It's directed by Michael Paul Stephenson, who appeared in the film when he was ten years old.
Any cinephile knows the truth of Weinberg's words. It’s mediocrity that’s the real drag — your Bride Wars, your Rush Hours, any film in which Matthew McConaughey plays a lead role. But a truly, guilelessly, unironically inept film is a rare and precious jewel. No wonder, then, that Troll 2 is, as Stephenson shows us, the organizing document and doctrine of a surprisingly diverse and fervent cult. We visit Troll 2 parties. We watch people in homemade costumes compete in the Trollympic Games.
How bad is Troll 2? It’s got a perfect 0% on Rotten Tomatoes (though one suspects some ballot-box un-stuffing here). A video store we visit in the film stocks it in the “Holy Fucking Shit” section. And yes, the clips we see from it are glorious.
But what makes Stephenson’s doc a winner is the fact that the humans who put their all into Troll 2 are a strange and lovable bunch, in on the joke or not to varying degrees. In the mostly self-aware column is Dr. George Hardy, the film’s square-jawed but wooden hero, now “the Patch Adams of dentistry” as a neighbor in his hometown of Alexander City, AL calls him. Even his ex-wife says he’s a prince of guy. He’s energetic and effusive apparently every moment of his life except when he’s trying to act.
In the “blissfully ignorant” column we find Troll 2’s Italian director, Claudio Fragasso, who happily shows up for the conventions but doesn’t quite get that his film is beloved for its camp rather than for its Arthur Milleresque insight into domestic affairs. "Troll 2 is an important film that examines many serious and important issues, like eating, living and dying,” Fragrasso tells us. “It talks about the family, and the union of the family, resisting all of the things that want to destroy this family and see it dead. People want to eat this family. In Italy, we call this a parable."
Best Worst Movie (93 min.) screens tonight at 8:45 and tomorrow at 8:15 p.m. Tickets are available here.
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What, no mention of Ed Wood or MS32K?
Hey, thanks. For the personal mention *and* for giving this great doco some press.