The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Once I'd seen The Room, Netflix had become aware that I was willing to watch notoriously bad movies. Netflix has also been plying me suggestions for documentaries. Put those two things together, and you get an interesting recommendation: Best Worst Movie.

Have you ever heard of Troll 2? I hadn't. Made in 1990, it's another movie "lauded" in some circles as the worst movie ever made. Certainly, it sports a dazzling pedigree. It's rated 0% at Rotten Tomatoes. It ranks in the bottom 100 at IMdB; in fact, before people latched onto it as "hilariously bad," it was in fact the worst rated movie there.

The protagonist of Troll 2 is a young boy of around 12. And now, as an adult, the actor who portrayed him decided to make a documentary film about it. And it stirs up a surprising variety of thoughts in just 90 minutes.

Literally, the first five minutes of the film takes place in a dentist's office. I wondered briefly if Netflix had sent me the wrong disc. Then I began to resent the filmmaker's slow burn to the obvious reveal: this dentist of today was an actor two decades ago, featured in Troll 2. So not the best note to start the film on.

But things turned around quickly. This dentist, who portrayed the father of the family, along with the young boy now grown and making this film, both came across as likeable people. And they "got it." As they take you around the country to fan screenings of Troll 2, they have no illusions. "Yes, our movie was terrible," is their message. "But it makes people laugh now, and that's great with us."

You learn about the strange pedigree of the film. It has nothing at all to do with Troll, the movie you would think was its predecessor. In fact, there isn't even a single troll in Troll 2. It was made by an Italian director, Italian writer, and Italian editor -- all certain they knew what life was like in America circa 1989. One fan of Troll 2 describes the result quite wonderfully in the documentary: it's as though aliens from another planet saw a human film, and then tried to make one of their own.

The documentary takes you through this modern day cult reaction to the movie, and you see that it can have a very positive impact. We meet another actor from the movie, who was an actual mental patient at the time, and today is recovered, yet still not fully settled with himself. When he goes to a Troll 2 screening and receives rapturous applause from hundreds of adoring fans, it's clearly a positive force in his life.

Then you get another side to the tale, as the documentary turns to those Italian filmmakers I mentioned. It's culture shock in pure form: they clearly think they made a good movie, one they still stand behind. The director himself basically says, "if you don't get it, screw you" -- and part of the movie seems to be his journey toward a new attitude: "maybe you're laughing when I didn't mean it, but I still made you feel something, and that's good enough for me as a director."

After that, the movie took me on a guilt trip. We meet the woman who played the mother of the family, and she seems like a complete loon. She seems like she might currently be a mental patient, and she looks like she's been through the skin stretching procedures in Brazil. And she thinks that her movie holds up today along Casablanca. She thinks it's timeless, filled with wonderful performances, and has a deep message about the importance of family. "Wow!" you the viewer delight, "This is hysterical!"

Except then you follow the dentist as he goes on a tour to some science fiction and horror conventions, and discovers that outside of these fan screenings of Troll 2, no one knows who the hell he is. And it clearly gets to him, and it's sad. You're made to realize that he really does wish, deep down, that he could have been an actor, and that this Troll 2 cult following was a wave he was riding to recapture lost youth. When it was the crazy skin lady with the delusion, you were laughing. Now it's this poor dentist you really liked. Not so funny now, is it? Shame on you.

Or wait a minute! Not shame on you, shame on the director -- this punk kid of Troll 2 now turned punk director of Best Worst Movie. He's totally exploiting his fellow actors! And yet, they all agreed to be exploited. Oh hell, what am I supposed to feel watching this documentary?!

So, a pretty impressive array of thoughts and feelings for one breezy documentary about a horrible movie. And make no mistake -- Troll 2 looks absolutely dreadful. As for Best Worst Movie, though, I think I'd rate it a B. It's a film with shades of Trekkies, and yet also something truly distinct.