Troll 2

Watch Movies TV -***DISCLAIMER*** The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion (or other commenters), that's fine. To each their own. These reviews are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay. 4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching! The movie that won't piss on hospitality.

Troll 2 – 2 out of 5

Troll 2 is probably the quintessential “so bad it’s good” cult classic B-movie.  It has all the watermarks of a truly successful and entertaining bad movie and so much more.  It has absolutely nothing to do with Troll (read my review of that one here) and it has endlessly quotable terrible moments.  I discovered the film when RiffTrax released their riff on it years back and I recently realized that I’ve only watched the film in this form for over a decade now.  I’ve never actually watched the film without jokes being told over it and I decided to change that.  The only real difference is this time I was making the jokes and having a great time doing it!

Without the RiffTrax you can also really appreciate the film's inherent eroticism.

Nilbog is populated by men who 100% have
"Blue Lives Matter" stickers on their pickup trucks.

Joshua (Michael Paul Stephenson) is just your average kid but with one glaring difference:  He is constantly visited by the ghost of his grandpa (Robert Ormsby).  His deceased grandpa warns him of evil goblins looking to eat his family by turning them into planets (makes sense).  Joshua’s father; Michael (George Hardy), decides to take the family; his wife Diana (Margo Prey) and daughter Holly (Connie Young), on a month long vacation to the small farming town of Nilbog where they will trade houses with a family there.  They are followed by Holly’s boyfriend Elliot (Jason Wright) and his friends who hope to meet single Nilbog ladies while Elliot tries to batch up his rocky relationship with Holly.  Once at Nilbog, Joshua discovers a nefarious plan from the townsfolk and a witch living there by the name of Creedance Leonore Gielgud (Deborah Reed) that involves transforming them into food for the evil goblins—Grandpa was right!  Now it is a fight for survival and a mad dash to get out of Nilbog alive!

Wait a moment, Nilbog is Goblin spelled backwards!!!  What a twist!

If you like goblins replacing trolls in your movie called
Troll 2 then, gang, I have the film for you!

Troll 2 is in no way a good movie.  It is outright awful.  The acting is atrocious, the story barely flows and makes sense, the makeup effects are cringe-y and it is loaded with tons of filmmaking goofs like flubbed lines, visible cameras and crew members and tons of editing mistakes.  However, like a great bad movie that is fun to watch, all these terrible qualities comes together in the right way to make it fun to watch.  Sometimes bad movies are unenjoyable due to filmmaker apathy as you can feel the production just doesn’t give a shit about what they are farting out and when a production goes out of its way to be cheeky and bad it robs itself of its natural charm (this latter reason is why I Sharknado stopped being fun but, ironically, the former reason is why the first one was good—these are fluid rules that are not set in stone).  Troll 2 kinda/sorta feels like the director wants to make a good movie but also kinda/sorta looks like he doesn’t care and this results in the film being a blast to watch.

It's annoying that this film tries really hard to sell the idea that this character is
somehow "cool" but it's worth sitting through it for the iconic scene he later
hits...which you can see here.

Please this woman's heart, she is really giving her all
and then some to this awful movie.

Now, I will admit that I have fun watching and riffing on bad movies but, at the end of it all, they are still pretty bad.  Even though I am having fun, I’m not going to give them a high score.  For example, I can watch films like Troll 2, The Room and a billion different low-budget shark films over and over again and laugh the night away and have a great time but due to the terrible production they will still get a low score.  The entertainment value I take away from this film is not due to the product but the accidental by-product of riffing on its bad production.  That is essential what films like Troll 2 are:  Accidental comedies and entertainment by-products.  The film wasn’t designed or created to be mocked and laughed at.  To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what they were going for with Troll 2 but I can guarantee it wasn’t created to be riffed on.  

The director got this reaction by making him watch the dailes.

I mentioned the film's eroticism, right?

Troll 2 is one of those films that screams to be viewed at with a group of friends and just spend the night playfully making jokes about it.  I know that sounds mean but even the cast admits the film is a stinker and all have good feelings about how it has achieved cult status due to its said badness (check out the documentary about it call Best Worst Movie, it is fantastic).  Yes, it is bad but it is a fun type of bad that replaces the disappointment of not seeing a good movie with the pleasure of experiencing a unique, one-of-a-kind bad film that is fun to watch.