The Toxic Avenger Unrated

This doesn’t start well, indeed after about ten minutes I thought it was just going to be “Tyrion Lannister” does “Bruce Banner”. Well I was quite pleasantly surprised as it takes those foundations and, with it’s tongue firmly implanted in it’s cheek, and with him suitably armed with his newly radio ... active mop, we set off on a crime caper with a difference. Kevin Bacon’s “Bob Garbinger” runs a big chemical company that routinely churns out enough gunge into the rivers and streams of the city to give Julia Roberts and Albert Finney enough work for a lifetime. “Winston” (Peter Dinklage) is trying to rear teenage stepson “Wade” (Jacob Tremblay) whilst holding down a menial job in one of those plants. When he gets a terrible diagnosis from his doctor, he thinks he has company health insurance - but when platinum turns out not to be all it’s cracked up to be, he decides to ask his boss to intercede. That just sees him rather savagely treated and dumped into a drain where, well let’s just say it isn’t envy that has turned him green. Meantime, we learn that all in his garden isn’t exactly rosy for “Garbinger” either, so with hoodlums chasing him and his wacky brother “Fritz” (Elijah Wood doing his best impersonation of “Gru”) organising a kid-napping it falls to the irritated “Toxie” to save the city, nobble the baddies, rescue “Wade” and maybe even stop his eye from constantly popping out of it’s socket on a great big stalk! This is quite an entertaining parody of many things super-hero with shades of Hammer and John Carpenter thrown into a mix that is held together amiably by a Dinklage who looks like he is enjoying himself. He even manages to rescue a cat! The scenario serves to remind us of just how cavalier we have been and still are with our environment in the name of convenience and though Bacon isn’t really at his best, he and his band of “Nuts” provide plenty to swing a pretty lethal sponge-on-stick at! High brow it isn’t, but when “Winston” discovers the astonishingly corrosive powers of his own wee…! Mindless and enjoyable, and I liked it in the end. Wouldn’t bet against a sequel. read more

My quick rating - 7.0/10. Somewhere in the cosmic video store of nostalgia, my 12-year-old self just did a cartwheel in parachute pants. I grew up rewinding the original Toxic Avenger on worn-out VHS until the tracking lines looked like snowstorms over Tromaville. So when Hollywood whispered “remake ... ,” I braced myself for PG-13 sterilization and emotional damage. But bless Macon Blair’s radioactive heart—he didn’t just do it justice, he hosed it down in glowing sludge and handed it a mop. Our new hero is Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage), a terminally ill janitor who gets baptized in toxic goop and comes out looking like a meatball with abs and a Costco-sized case of trauma. Dinklage doesn’t just play Toxie, he owns him. He swings that glowing mop like Excalibur dipped in biohazard, and suddenly I remembered why deformed vigilantes matter: because nothing says “hero” like ripping someone’s intestines out while trying to make it to parent-teacher night. And can we talk about the casting? Kevin Bacon as the corporate tyrant who drinks villain monologues for breakfast? Chef’s kiss. Elijah Wood pops up as his gremlin-esque brother, looking like he crawled out of a vat of expired hair dye and cryptid rumors swirling in the time warp. Their private death squad, the Killer Nutz, is less “elite mercenaries” and more “fetish convention meets meth carnival,” which is a compliment in the Troma-verse. Nice touch naming the crusading reporter Melvin (Shaun Dooley)—a blood-splattered wink to the OG mop-wielder himself. And Taylour Paige as J.J., Toxie’s ride-or-die, holds her own with a mix of badassery and the facial expressions of someone who’s just seen a spleen used as a yo-yo. How about that son, Wade (Jacob Tremblay), busting out some moves on the dance floor? Leads me to my next point. The humor? Alive. Mutated. Proudly infectious. The girls’ dance troupe shaking it to an aggressively inappropriate song had me choking on nostalgia. Speaking of, if the music budget really landed on “Hall of the Mountain King” instead of “Gutter Ballet,” shortly after, in the street. That is Troma logic, baby. Or a joke I am not getting. I salute the chaos. Now, the gore. Oh, the gore. Heads get pop-quizzed off with a mop. Limbs fly like bargain-bin confetti. Practical effects hold hands with CGI the way drunks slow-dance at weddings—awkward, sloppy, and perfect. It still feels like a B-movie dipped in beer money and glitter vomit, exactly where it belongs. Blair doesn’t sand off the edges—he sharpens them. This isn’t some sanitized “modern reimagining.” There are still tits, cameos, filth, goop, indignity, and heart—because even under ten layers of melted skin, The Toxic Avenger is still just a guy trying to save his kid and be the world’s scariest father-in-law. Is it better than the original? No. But it’s not trying to be. It’s leaning into the glorious stupidity, raunchy enthusiasm, and gleeful carnage that made Troma what it is. Unlike the neutered Hellraiser reboot crimes we recently had to relive, this one embraces the cheesy, sleazy, bloody mayhem and dares us not to grin. Also: Lloyd Kaufman cameo? Check. Post-credit joke about a billion-dollar box office to finance a sequel? Beautiful. Gratuitous nudity because “this is Troma”? You bet your irradiated butt. What else can I say? It made the 12-year-old VHS warrior in me scream, “I TOLD YOU SO,” and the adult me kind of wants a glowing mop. Now with 30% More Mop-Based Dismemberment! read more