OBSERVER: Rourke’s Reviews
The Toxic
Avenger
(MA). 102 minutes. Opens in selected cinemas August 28.
Shot in 2023, this slick but deliberately trashy remake of the 1985 cult classic finally sees the light of day, fully uncut and intact.
Pulled from a potential release apparently due to its graphically violent content, a new distributor has given audiences a chance to see what all the fuss is about, and despite a game cast, the result is, overall, a disappointing mess. Peter Dinklage stars as Winston Gooze, who is getting over the death of his wife, while also trying to raise his teenage son Wade (Jacob Tremblay), who feels isolated and alone after the loss of his mother, and is an outcast at school.
Winston works as a janitor at a large corporation who pump out fake health products which are dangerously toxic, overseen by CEO Bob Garbinger (Kevin Bacon).
The business is in decline, and Bob owes a lot of money to local gangsters.
Winston is in deep debt too, and thinking about the future of Wade, decides on a plan that will see his life seriously changed, as he is transformed into the Toxic Avenger.
The 1985 original (which actually premiered at Cannes in 1984) was a surprisingly goofy and funny blend of comedy and over-the-top gore, made by Troma studios, known for gross, low-brow horror/comedies that regularly missed the mark.
Three sequels and an animated TV series followed, but the first film always remained the best.
The new version wants us to care about Winston and Wade, which might have been fine if the humour complimented this attempt at tenderness amongst the mayhem.
However, writer/director Macon Blair (who faired better with his directorial debut, I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore) decides to take the humour into Naked Gun type parody, aggressively letting the audience know at every stage that this is self-knowingly stupid stuff, and this jars heavily with the father-son story.
While definitely gory, it is no more graphic than other horror films coming out today, and it’s rather amusing that the film has even managed to secure a lesser MA rating here in Australia.
The cast help one get through the bumpy tonal changes and frequently backfiring gags.
Dinklage (and Luisa Guerreiro, who plays Toxie after the transformation) brings more to the role than it deserves, while Bacon is having fun as the main villain.
The Toxic Avenger 2025 promises to be a fun, wild ride, but Blair’s wrongheaded approach undermines that fun, resulting in a film that becomes at first frustrating (there is the occasional giggle), then ultimately unsatisfying. Interesting to see if this achieves the same kind of cult status as the original.
RATING – **½
The
Naked Gun
(M). 85 minutes. Now showing in cinemas.
A combination of reboot and sequel (like the recent, abysmal, I Know What You Did Last Summer), this well-intentioned comedy offers very little in way of laughs, leaving a committed cast high and dry.
Liam Neeson is Frank Drebin Jr., the son of the cop played so memorably by Leslie Nielsen in the hilarious 1988 film and its spotty sequels.
A cop himself, and part of the Police Squad department his father worked for, Drebin Jr. is just as dumb, if not more so, than his predecessor.
A plot involving a device that will turn the public into lunatics, sees Drebin try and take down the main villain (a well cast Danny Huston who then has nothing to do), while finding potential romance with Beth (Pamela Anderson, who tries hard with poor material).
Co-writer/director Akiva Schaffer (who also made the equally misfired Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping) throws everything at the audience, with a constant stream of one-liners and sight gags, so many of which land with a thud.
Neeson embraces the chance to make fun of his tough guy persona, but the script is weak, so his (and Anderson’s) good-natured work never really succeeds.
Even at 85 minutes, this new Naked Gun seems to mark time, and one hopes this time there are no sequels.
RATING – *½
Aaron Roukre