news
Hot Docs 2009: Best Worst Movies
Today’s Listings:
1 p.m. – Orgasm Inc. (Bloor)
6:30 p.m. – Carmen Meets Borat (Bloor)
9 p.m. – Defamation (Bloor)
9:15 p.m. – Ascension (Innis Town Hall)
11:45 p.m. – Best Worst Movie (Bloor)
After the jump, a review for tonight’s screening of Best Worst Movie.
Best Worst Movie (Michael Paul Stephenson)
BY ASHLEY CARTER
If you spent one childhood summer starring in the most straight-faced, perfectly bad film ever made, one that failed on every conceivable level but somehow managed to claw its way out of bargain bins and back into your life via the VCRs of hipster geeks everywhere nearly twenty years later, why wouldn’t you continue the cash-in with a movie about the experience? Best Worst Movie is a surprisingly thoughtful insider’s view of the burgeoning cult success of Troll 2 (a 1990 straight-to-video embarrassment-for-all-involved made with an English-speaking cast of non-actors and an Italian director, a movie that has no “trolls” in it, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Troll 1). Directed by the all-grown-up child “star” of the film, it’s told almost like a survivor story as he travels the globe tracking down the rest of the cast and crew–who are largely unaware and utterly confused by their newfound fame–for a reunion tour of the film to sold-out audiences across North America (the Bloor Cinema screening makes a wee cameo). For fans of Troll 2, catching this film is a no-brainer. Best Worst Movie is almost as hilariously psychotic a doc as the film it’s detailing. Though it flirts with becoming self-aggrandizing, it ultimately avoids this by candidly showing the limits of such a niche cult status through some awkward scenes where even those whose heads have been blown up the biggest are forced to realize how minor their brand of fame is. 3/5
Best Worst Movie screens tonight at 11:45 p.m. at the Bloor and on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the ROM Theatre.