Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Troll 2 Review: Part 2

Read the first part of the Troll 2 review before reading this one!


The mastermind in question is this lady, who is incredibly hammy, dressed like a Tim Burton-vomited-out gothic caricature, and who I am convinced is trying to win a contest for Mugging Into the Camera the Most, but is still more subtle than Catwoman from Batman Returns.


She serves them some drinks – because yes, I’d take drinks from a lady who looked like that! – and then watches as the unnamed girl turns agonizingly and slowly into a plant. She then invites the dorky 80s kid to drink his drink too…yes, because I’d totally drink something after watching my companion turn into a plant in front of me…while trolls come out and devour her. This prompts perhaps the most famous scene from the movie:


Such great acting is just unheard of in other movies…OK, OK, being sarcastic about it is pointless; it's been done a million times before. The scene, just that twenty seconds, is just so fascinating though. According to the Wikipedia page, the actors were all instructed to say their lines exactly as written, even though they were all in terrible Engrish and written by people who didn’t know the language. And it didn’t help that all the actors had basically no experience. But even THAT doesn’t explain the absurdity of scenes like this! I want to know how they physically told this kid to talk like that! You would think even foreigners would have a general grasp on how people talk, enough so that your scene doesn’t come out…well…LIKE THAT!

I digress, though, as there are still more horrors and amazements to come in this film…like when Joshua and his dad go into town to buy groceries and discover that everyone in town has gone to the Mass and the store is closed. The dad sits down in a chair and…immediately falls asleep.


What, do you have narcolepsy? I kinda doubt it. I think this guy is just a flat out moron. The kid doesn’t even notice! It’s like “aw, snap, dad randomly passed out again in public…at least it’s not like the time when he did it while on the toilet…” And the kid notices that Nilbog is Goblin spelled backwards. You’d think a bunch of goblins would be smarter than to name their town after what they secretly are. I guess goblins are morons.

Why is he even looking in the side mirror anyway? Does he just like looking in side mirrors from outside a car? What a weird kid.

So Joshua, being the smartest boy alive, decides to sneak around and go invade their morning mass. He sees them talking a bunch of gibberish about vegetarianism or something, and ends up getting caught. They try to force him to eat some of their green nasty-ass gunk which will turn him into a plant, but his dad comes in at the last second, begging the question of, what kind of father passes out and lets his kid wander around unsupervised for like 20 minutes? When he asks what they’re doing, the villagers say they were going to feed Joshua ice cream. Yes. They were feeding him ice cream. While holding him down and surrounding him like a cult of creepy pedophiles. Like an idiot, the father buys it and doesn’t question a thing. Well, then again, he DOES apparently just talk to random homeless men all the time too. I guess the family is used to it.

Meanwhile in the other plotline (seriously, Troll 2 has multiple plotlines…COMPLEX?!), one of the other doofuses goes out to buy food because they were morons and forgot to bring ANYTHING of their own…he gets accosted by a crazy madman in the grocery shop who mugs to the camera almost as much as the villainess from earlier. But not quite. No cigar, crazy general store man! You lose!

Even though this guy was just some mental patient on release for a few days, it's startling how he just seems like a normal member of this town, in the context of the movie. They're all nuts!

Speaking of the crazy villainess, she comes back in the next scene as the doofus is lured to her house and finds the first doofus turned into a tree-man hybrid, trying to free him. She catches them and kills the second doofus, and “punishes” the first with a chainsaw…still better than any Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequels! In fact, I’m just going to pretend this scene was the real TCM 2. It’s much less mind-numbing than the real one. I digress, though…what really makes this scene is more camera mugging! Yay!

I don't even think this lady was given direction. Well, aside from "more crystal meth than a Def Leppard concert."

Then we get some fun times at a house party where all the house guests bring food labeled ‘EAT ME’ and other asinine things, and of course it’s all very green and non-meaty. Grandpa comes back again, and actually turns real this time, which is never explained. He somehow summons a lightning bolt and kills the leader of the goblins, revealing him to everyone as his true goblin form…really, though, it’s just bizarre how everyone acts like they’re not even that surprised. I mean I guess they’re a little surprised…but it’s more the “oh, hey, an old friend unexpectedly dropped in” sort of surprised, as opposed to the “oh my god, he turned into a freakish aberration of nature!” sort of surprise…movie, why do I even try?

The father and Holly go and get Elliot from the camper and beat the shit out of him, threatening all the while that he BETTER GIVE UP THOSE DAMN FRIENDS OF HIS OR ELSE! Which, I guess, isn’t hard now, seeing as he only has one left. I can see this familial bonding ending well in the future, though. Probably with lots of lawyers, court appointments, crying, black eyes and 911 domestic dispute calls.

"Aw, but I just want some time with my fri---"
"NO! No friends! Your life will consist of your marriage and nothing else!"
"...can I have video games?"
"Kid, I'm gonna kill you with a rusty chainsaw."

The last dork is left on his own to hang out in the woods I guess; hope Elliot at least left him the keys to the camper just in case. He’s approached by the villainess of the movie, who transforms into a mildly hot woman who she guesses he’d like to fuck - if you're wondering how she transformed, just stop. You're using too many of your brain cells on this. They don’t have sex so much as re-enact a Z-grade porno and then make out while chewing on a Corn on the Cob...well, whatever turns you guys on; I ain't gonna judge.


And then...

Ah the popcorn-hangover...always a pain the next morning.

Popcorn. POPCORN!!! Nothing but popcorn. Why? You could write a book and not decipher the reasons why! You could fill the walls of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with the reasons why! I might as well just write any old nonsense here; that’d be about as good as anything this goddamn shit-ass-crack baby of a movie could conjure up! Don’t ever have the indecency to ask me WHY when it comes to this movie! Don’t even let it cross your mind! And do you know what’s even “better”? We never see the kid again! This is his last scene. Movie, I could shishkebab you with a broadsword right now.

The main characters all spend the last 15 minutes running around like chickens with their heads cut off, clearly not really going anywhere but away from the trolls goblins – c’mon, you’ve gotta have some kind of strategy! Go for the door! That's all you need to do! Grandpa comes back again but this time he only has 10 minutes for some unstated reason. He eventually disappears and is not seen again...why? Because his 10 minutes were up. Why were his 10 minutes up? Because. Just because. Stop questioning me!!!

Oh, and Joshua literally saves himself in the end by eating a bologna sandwich…yes, a bologna sandwich factors into the climax of Troll 2. Are you surprised? I think in order to be surprised, you’d basically have to have slept through the rest of the movie until now. Apparently it's because it has meat in it, and so the goblins are all repulsed by it. Suck it, vegetarians!

"I've got bologna and I'm not afraid to use it!!!"

The ending is a silly scene where they go home and the mom gets killed by the trolls goblins…look at the green plant-ooze at the end; it still has boobs just so you KNOW it’s the mother!


That’s how we end…on green melting boobs…truly an image that will stay with the fans for generations to come.

PHEW. That’s Troll 2. I’m not even sure what else to say. I’ve been rendered speechless…and frankly my fingers are getting tired. What I just watched…I mean, it was something else. Something totally alien to my previous perception of films. What could have gone into its creation? What would the actors have to say about it? I have so many unanswered questions about this…isn’t there like, a documentary or something that could possibly help put this movie into context both past and present?


Yes!

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