After years and years of frantically thumbing through the racks at DVD retailers, you can now breathe a big fat sigh of relief that The Garbage Pail Kids Movie has finally oozed out of the cinematic gutter and slunk onto digital disc. However, if youre not batshit crazy then you shouldnt need to read a review to know that you should treat this disc like its been pissed on by a rat, spewed on by a tramp and used to scrape the dried on skidmarks from the bowl of a public bog. Think that last sentence was unnecessarily grim? Well its nothing compared to the reality of the film itself.
In short, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is a great big steaming pile of cheap, charmless eighties wank. Too lazily put together to be nostalgic and with a plot that hops, skips and jumps past the so-bad-its-good territory, its so shockingly, schlockily dreadful that it makes Troma films look like big-budget Spielberg flicks. In short its not very good.
Based on the trading card series of the same name (which itself was a controversial parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls), the film follows Dodger a 14-year-old kid who works at a small antique store for an eccentric magician. When a local gang of bullies burst into the shop and attack Dodger, a mysterious rubbish bin is knocked over and before you know it, a gang of freakish, bad-mannered alien children emerge and run amok. Naturally they set about not only helping Dodger sort out the local goons, but they also help him design clothes in order to win the affection of a girl whos a good few years older than him and about three feet taller. Its bloody weird to say the least.
Its pretty infuriating too especially as the film could have been elevated to tongue in cheek cult status had the writers actually thrown a few gags in or even aimed it at an adult audience and thats where the main problem lies. Despite having a wealth of dirty, disgusting characters at their disposal, they tactfully steered clear of going down the route of bawdy, cartoonish comedy and instead sidelined what could have been their most interesting characters in favour of following a kid as he uses haberdashery to try and bag himself a girl.
While it all sounds family friendly, it manages to avoid being entirely suitable for children as well. Featuring scenes of violence and even one bit where the object of Dodgers affections, Tangerine (no, its not a joke), gets him to do her bidding by playing with her nipple, it just goes to show how little thought actually went into the production.
With dreadful performances from everybody bar Mackenzie Astin (who plays Dodger in blissful ignorance of just how crap the film is) and bizarre costume effects that are just too naff to even allow you to suspend disbelief for a second, theres pretty much no reason why you should watch let alone own this dire stinker.
On the plus side, there are no extras to prolong the agony and its only likely to appeal to the families of the cast members and people who want to see what Adam West was raving about on Family Guy. Still, as far as films based on trading cards go, its definitely top ten material.
Overall Verdict: A shoddy, unfunny mess of a film thats totally devoid of charm despite having the right ingredients for a minor cult movie. Shame.