Troll 2 (Fragasso 1990)

An infomercial for bologna sandwiches with a few structural discrepancies that can easily be overlooked. B-

Blondie: B-? This is blasphemy. This movie is better than Children of Men? This movie, featuring an extended scene in which 'Creedence Leonore Gielgud,' a descendent (or queen?) of the Druids with connections to Stonehenge (is that it in the back of her forest/church/house?) seduces a teenage boy using a cob of corn, black thigh-highs, and the promise of popcorn? I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP, as evidenced by the screen shot below.

After writing the above review, Slothy told Blondie that this is the type of film that an 8-year-old would make for his class project, to which Blondie countered that this is the type of film that an 8-year-old, having never seen a horror film, would make, drawing on the rumor and suggestion of horror he'd seen in the R section of his local video store and snippets of late night USA Network stolen when the babysitter wasn't looking. It's pure projection of the mind of the young -- poorly rendered monsters (dressed in burlap sacks without moving jaw parts) speaking a language that's really just garbled English, the type of noises you make to scare your friends at a slumber party. Vegetables are evil, there's a ghost of a kindly grandparent, sex is abstract and evil and the provenance of your older sister, and the day is saved by a bologna sandwich. Or is it? Because SPOILER ALERT: The mom turns to vegetable matter and is eaten by goblins, leaving our young protagonist (himself a boy of approximately 8 years) to fend for himself.

Troll 2 has developed a cult following for purity of badness -- supposedly 'the Best Worst movie according to the documentary, filmed by the now-grown protagonist and released this year. And yes, the film is bad -- plummeting to the depths of badness that beg it to be graded on an absolute value scale. An F becomes a A. Or, if I read Slothy correctly, a D- becomes a B-. Because the film, while bad, is really just making the ideological gestures of most film more transparent. Sex = weird; evil = nebulous; parents = impotent; kids = innocent; teenage girls = slutty.

What's amazing is that for all its absurdity, Troll 2 is still aesthetically and formally sound. There's a three-act structure; it was filmed using expensive cameras, proper sound equipment, and edited with care. The music, while synth-heavy, is overlaid properly, and the acting, while poor, is still blocked correctly. Which is all to say that form is no guarantor of art, as exemplified by Troll 2 and ratified by Invictus.

Slothrop: Did Blondie just add a parenthetical director's attribute and year of production after Troll 2 in the Blog post title? Implying this soup was made by a human being and not a goblin? Did she not watch this film? Or is she a goblin? And after careful consideration, the film wasn't as good as I thought it was, hence the updated grade: C+

Slothrop: Nope. Humble apologies, goblin-auteurs that made this. It was even better than I originally suspected for, it turns out, it lingers. B

Koko: I wrote an insufferable tirade on the problem of form only to realize that every time I use language I should be fined by the word police. So I deleted it. But consider:

• Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, and Lethal Weapon II: formally sound movies
• "Evangeline" and Idylls of the King technically accomplished poems
• Early Beatles formally superior to late Beatles
• Necromancers who fish the afterlife at $9.99/min: masters of the short con

So Blondie is right: form is no guarantor. Neither is technique, which can easily be copied. And as for lingering, so do the following plagues and vexations:

• Flu
• Taste of old ham
• In-laws
• Hangovers
• Herpes
• Streptococcus pyogenes
• Space madness
• Bagpipes

Slothrop: What we have here is a failure to communicate and so Slothy will hereby speak slowly and clearly and tell alls y'all what the problem is. The claims are as follows:

• Troll 2 is good despite having no form, like vomit. Actually, it is good because it has no form. (Slothy)
• Troll 2 is bad despite having form, like vomit if vomit can be said to have sui generis form. (Blondie)
• Form itself is suspect. (Koko, who as per usual, is out of her element)

From where Slothy is reclined, it appears that Blondie did not actually watch this film (odds are she was in deep mid-summer-hybernation). To say that it has sound form is to say that Children of Men was philosophically trenchant. This argument is at a stalemate unless we can, like reasonable furry animals, agree that Troll 2 is not formally sound. As in, there are egregious mistakes all over the place, like a three year old writing a sonnet--maybe a few of the syllables fall in the right place, but mostly not. For Blondie to say that it was "aesthetically sound" makes me think she's had her eyes gouged out and is currently taking some wonderful hallucinogens, the voices of which whisper to her that candy-apple-green paint spewing all over the place for an hour and a half is pleasing to the eye.

As for Koko's thumping, yes, form itself is suspect, especially when used to cover up vacuousness (again, see Children of Men). But Troll 2 presents a unique problem: can a film be good because it is so formally disastrous? If form is sort of a negative in our intellectual equation, then its absence creates a positive, no? e.g. (-) x (-) = (+)

Now, why Koko's all uppity regarding lingering, Slothy does not understand. Slothy likes to slowly undress the ladies, let their desires linger before sumptuously and thoroughly satisfying them. Koko presumably prefers to sit on her mates while thumping her chest and sign-languinging that they get the job done quickly because she's got a red sweater that needs tending.

Koko: I never said anything about form itself being suspect, you spider monkey. I merely agreed with Blondie that formal competence does not equate with aesthetic value. Stop straw manning me, Sloproth.

Slothrop: A spider monkey is a term of endearment when uttered by a gorilla. Thanks for loving me despite all my rhetorical buffoonery, Koko.