Best Worst Movie

I didn't really know what to expect from this documentary. Maybe I watched Troll 2 when I was young but I for sure can't remember it, like I can't remember any of the worse movies I watched. I watched a lot of extremely bad movies, all waste of my time, but after watching this very well made documentary you kinda want to watch Troll 2 just to see what's the fuzz about. But reason came to me and I won't. The documentary shows a couple shots every now and then and it's obvious it's painful to watch so that's already enough for me. This documentary is just well done, contains a lot of funny moments and for that alone it's worth a watch. It's more about the cast than about the movie itself, and that doesn't really matter as there are some weird people in this cast, all worth watching. The director of Troll 2, the Italian Claudio Fragasso, seems to be a bit strange as well. I guess it all makes sense if he made the worst movie ever, even though I'm sure there are way worse movies.

I had never seen Troll 2 before this film, but decided to watch it before viewing Best Worst Movie. After I saw it, I immediately watched the documentary as I was now hooked and had to know the story behind Troll 2.

Now, I liked Troll 2. As a connoisseur of "bad" movies, Troll 2 has it all. I keep putting "bad" in quotes because they are only labeled that, and in my mind are not REALLY bad. They are wonderful. And that's exactly why Best Worst Movie is wonderful. It celebrates with love the awesome earnestness of strange film making that is Troll 2.

It catches up with many of the film's stars and the highlight is George Hardy, the leading man in Troll 2. He's a living Ken Doll - you can't believe how sincere and likable he is. (I recently met George, and let me tell you, he is really the nice person he portrays.) At one point in the doc, George and the documentary's director (Michael Stevenson, who played the little boy in Troll 2) are on a mission to show the film to George's hometown. George, who is a dentist in his non-acting life, has known these people for years. But most them are not aware of this illustrious Hollywood moment he had in 1989. George goes door to door, handing out fliers, and acting out moments from the film. Even though many of his neighbors stare blankly as he repeats a classic line from Troll 2, he gives the moment his all - smiling and laughing the whole time. You know then that this is a man who loves to exist in a world where he can tell people to see a movie he starred in that most actors would remove from the IMDb page.

I can't do justice in this review the documentary's many great moments because the reality of those scenes have to be seen. But what you take away from this film is that the love true cinephiles have can breath life into films and give them meaning never meant by a filmmaker.

And this is the amazing magic of movies - like a good novel, they continually have new meaning. THAT is what makes "bad" movies - or any movie for that matter - a classic.

The Best Worse Movie, is a look at the making of the film Troll 2 and its journey from being crowned the "worst film of all time" to a cherished cult classic. Troll 2 is a perfect example of the "so bad it's funny" category. Very few movies get everything, I mean everything so far from right, except for Troll 2.

The Best Worse Movie was made by the child actor from the film, he manages to find all of the cast and discusses with them how the movie changed there lives. It was funny to see the reaction from everyone involved who either wrote the film off as an embarrassment or just a good laugh. Except for the Italian director of Troll 2, who still regarded the film as a masterpiece.

I was very shocked how much I enjoyed this documentary. I enjoyed it as much as "King of Kong", and really enjoyed the story of how a film can go so wrong in every department. It goes to show how beloved some of these terrible campy 80's movies are today with the Nintendo generation.

Rating= A+

UPDATE: After watching this documentary, I went out and watched Troll 2, and yes, it was as bad as they say.

The actors just hoped for the best with Troll 2, at the time of shooting called Goblin (named for the name of the town in the film, 'Nilbog', get it?). The script was awkward, the creature effects shoddy, and most of the Italian crew, including director Claudio Fragasso, and nobody really knew what would happen with the movie. No theatrical release, straight to video and HBO, and when people saw it (save for the director, who still thinks it's a good movie, and the actress who played the mother, Margo Prey, who thought it was a solid "actors" movie) they knew how bad it was... and that included what is now the director of the documentary on Troll 2, Michael Stephenson, who played the lead kid/protagonist in Troll 2. He goes back to visit all the actors in the film, what they're up to, and then confront them with an astounding fact: Troll 2, in small-certain circles, is a big, big deal.

One of the main keys here is that the documentary works kind of like a cross between American Movie and Overnight, only it's all taking place many years after the fact. You have the 'characters' who are kind of nutty (the guy who was actually in a mental asylum and let out one day to play the store clerk in the film, Don Packard), and the ones who just tried to put it aside and get on with a career without Troll 2 (Connie Young as the daughter Waits in the film). And then there's George Hardy, who is like the anti Troy Duffy: instead of an obnoxious jerk, Hardy is the guy everybody likes (which could be to a fault, but who cares) and has that nice, sweet, all-American disposition working as a dentist and always with a smile or a laugh. And when he finds out Troll 2 is such a cult, he not only embraces it, he goes with it on tour!

This is also a wonderful treat for those film fans who know what it's like to find a movie so-bad-it's-fun like Troll 2. We see them here at the screenings that take place midnight all across the country, from New York to Los Angeles and cities in-between (most touching is the first screening that happens almost underground at a comedy club of all places and where the first real rise of Troll-mania happens). Stephenson gets what it's like for these people to be such fans, and that the cast (save for Prey who doesn't show up cause of her sick mother, and the director who is bitter about the guilty-pleasure love) gets what kind of audience loves Troll 2. As a cult you get the guy who tattoos Troll 2 on his arm. You get the people wearing their hand-made t-shirts. You get people who drive six hundred God-knows-how-many miles for a screening. And of course they all know all the words.

Stephenson captures what a phenomena like this is like, and at the same time the bittersweet coin of sudden "fame". Hardy goes all the way to Britain to promote Troll 2, and it's a little staggering to find out a) he didn't see if, you know, there were actual FANS of the film willing to go to conventions for it like they did the screenings in the states, and b) people don't seem to automatically find it cool all the time to be the "worst movie ever made" (smile). This also happens in Dallas at a convention we see, albeit the one time Hardy loses the admiration (at least from me) is when he slams the people who come to horror conventions, without realizing how horror audiences can be at such places, or that, you know, Troll 2 is still and always will be a big film for some, and for others they'll have a blank look on their faces.

Which, at the end of it all is fine for someone like Hardy, a genuine real-deal of a man who is fine with his dentist practice (albeit he is now acting in a few intentionally crappy movies like Ghost Shark 2), and for the director Fragasso and his co-writer wife who continue to berate the cast's friendly bashing of the film and the production, since, well, they think they did a good job with the movie (at one point, kind of unintentionally funny, Fragasso ponders why the audience laughs at the parts that "aren't meant to be funny", while also pointing out that the audience "saved" the movie from obscurity). Stephenson gets the human angle of everyone in the movie and understands them, even someone who could have been painted as a crazy like Margo Prey (who for some she may be anyway). And for such a movie like Troll 2 to get mainstream attention, if just for a little while, it's a swell treat for a movie so hilariously s***ty.

Moral of the story: You can't p*** on hospitality, I WONT ALLOW IT!

The film Troll 2 has become something of a cult item in the last five or six years. It's one of the movies that truly defines the term 'so bad it's good'. It's a consistently ridiculous film that is so very amusing because it so clearly never intentionally tries to be funny at any point. Its mixture of earnest endeavour, cinematic hopelessness and general strangeness aligns it alongside the much-loved yet utterly inept work of Ed Wood. It's really a very rare occasion for any film to achieve the very specific anti-brilliance of Troll 2. So with this in mind, it only seems right that a documentary has been made to celebrate its existence.

It focuses mainly on two things. The people involved in the making of the film and the audiences it has subsequently attracted. What it doesn't do – and this is a mistake in my opinion – is tell us how the movie came to be made in the first place. It doesn't even answer the question that many people find the most obvious – why is it called Troll 2 when there aren't any trolls in it? I think the story of Troll 2 warranted a little more historical context and background info, as much of the facts are fascinating in themselves.

That said I did enjoy Best Worst Movie and think it's great it was made at all. I remember back in 2005 Michael Stephenson the director and child star in the film frequented the IMDb boards with other cast members and he did say back then that he was planning on making this very documentary. I must say I thought it would never happen but fortunately I was incorrect. George Hardy, the father in the film, emerges as a real star; a very likable man who seems to have lapped up his bizarre fame. Although the real main man of the piece turns out to be director Claudio Fragasso. Every time he was on screen was gold. He was a living embodiment to what made Troll 2 so entertaining in the first place, i.e. committed artistic seriousness and a refreshing lack of irony. Fragasso truly believed that Troll 2 was loved so much because it was a complex family drama. Although he at least didn't go as far as to compare it with Casablanca as Margo Prey did without any sense of jest. Prey was clearly a disturbed woman. But then so was Don Packard, the man who played the drugstore owner, he in fact was an out-patient at a sanatorium when the film was made. So this is surely an example of fact being as strange as fiction. Well, almost.

Best Worst Movie is ultimately a perfect accompaniment to Troll 2 itself. The documentary somewhat strangely does not really focus on the content of the film itself. There are numerous clips of course but they're never commented on and many of the best parts are bizarrely not featured in the first place. This would perhaps be more of a problem if you didn't have the movie itself to enjoy afterwards. Ultimately Best Worst Movie is a look at a group of people who were inadvertently involved in making a movie that not one of them could have imagined in their wildest dreams would go on to become something of a cult classic. It's a strange story but one worth knowing about.