June 15, 2009
"What the hell?" I'm sure some folks are asking, "Why is he reviewing this? It has a 2.5 on IMDb!" I'd point to other films I've reviewed in response to this, but anyone who would say or think that would clearly not be paying close attention to what I review in the first place, s...( read more)o it would not serve as much of a clarification for those folks, who are clearly new to my taste in movies. There's no real good explanation for my taste, there never has been and there never will be one. That aside, this is the fourth and as-yet-final (in all likelihood, forever final--though a remake of the original is rumoured) Killer Tomatoes movie. It follows 1979's Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, 1988's Return of the Killer Tomatoes, and 1990's Killer Tomatoes Strike Back. I've seen them all, the first two numerous times.
Professor Mortimer Gangreen (John Astin, the original Gomez Addams for anyone who doesn't know that name immediately) is up to his old tricks, plotting world domination through the cunning use of fruits cooked as vegetables, but is currently residing in prison in France. He carries a large and dusty tome as he is brought before the prison's warden to be given his final fate. The warden releases him instead, to the confusion of the official who brought him there. Of course, the warden is none other than the Animated Series* villainous tomatoes re-designed: Zoltan, Ketchuck and Viper (who is based on the cartoon's Fang). They all help Gangreen to escape to a waiting hot air balloon, which is of course piloted by Gangreen's faithful assistant Igor (Steve Lundquist), who looks far more like he's a football player of Scandinavian ancestry from the midwest than a hunchback. Their escape leads to dropping a sandbag of ballast onto the face of a complaining actor (Marc Price) who is woken by a French Country girl named Marie (Angela Visser). She asks his name only for him to lie and tell her he's Michael J. Fox. Stumbling onto a plot that involves the kidnapping of Fuzzy Tomato (aka "FT," aka "Le Tomato Fuzzy") in an attempt to manufacture the prophesy hiding in Gangreen's tome that will bring the monarchy back to France--in the form of Igor.
It's stunning sometimes to watch people who don't seem to get that these movies are jokes. One hopes that some of the reviews out there are indicative of some strange subversive attempt at falsely stubborn ignorance that, while not funny, is at least intended to be. If not, there are some pretty horrifically stupid people out there, who talk about how ridiculous it is that anyone would find tomatoes reasonable villains, or wonder how they could keep in a shot of a cameraman tripping down the stairs. Both of these are intentional and intentionally ridiculous. As with the last two films (and unlike the first), returning writers John De Bello (directing as always, too), J. Stephen Peace (not appearing in this film, sadly, perhaps to busy campaigning for his upcoming California Senate seat), and Costa Dillon (who makes more bizarre appearances, this time as a recurring vendor/plot device) work in plenty of fourth wall-breaking material. This time, though, it's a little more surreal, as characters wander in and out of sets, note their presence in a movie and so on. Marc begins the film by bemoaning his b-movie status as compared to the real Michael J. Fox (with whom he shared the small screen in Family Ties). It's never subtle, but nor is it terribly clumsy.
That's the appeal of these films--yes, including this last one--they don't take even their sense of humour too seriously. They know when their puns are bad, and they revel in it. The scenes centered around them have the shrug of resigned acceptance of their ludicrousness mixed with the snap of treating even those puns like any good joke. Some of them can get a pretty good laugh as a result, and sometimes they build on each other in just the right way, or build and build to a lateral move that catches you off guard (Marc's final ascent of the "Tower of 900 Steps" got in the one joke that really took me by surprise and appealed to my referential sense of humour, then turned a corner and really got me with an awful pun--that was also referential). There's a clear intelligence behind even the stupid humour, with too many touches revealing an understanding of their own idiocy to really believe it's actual idiocy. The French accents are deliberately outrageous and over the top (some delivered by the prior film's star Rick Rockwell), with amusing French "rants" that consist entirely of strange sets of words that are commonly used untranslated in English (or at least that are cultural touchstones for English-speaking audiences). There's actually a handy trick to this--any dated reference is not overtly dated because the sense of humour is so consciously over-the-top and "bad." I could go into my rant about how much I dislike the idea of "movies so bad they're good," but I've done it before and I'll just leave it at this: I don't believe in that. These movies are not bad, because they are deliberately like this, but they revel in being ridiculous, and that's just fun. They're good at it, well-enough directed, written and performed to carry their intentionally stupid humour for their running lengths.
Price is a better lead than Rockwell, I must say, with a less smarmy role, one closer to Anthony Starke's as Chad Finletter in Return of the Killer Tomatoes than Rockwell's Lance Boyle. This isn't the fault of Rockwell, he's just better suited to things like a caricature of a French soldier being assaulted with tomato juice than a lead. Price is better as a guide through all of this because he's a little more innocent and wide-eyed a character, aware of how ridiculous things around him are and a little less ridiculous himself as a result, which is a better way to experience humour like this. There are plenty of jokes that falter, but they're all delivered with such gusto--and tongues planted so firmly and obviously in cheeks--that it works anyway, and the film never really stumbles too badly, keeping up its pace throughout a reasonable ninety minute running time. This doesn't mean that anyone would find it as amusing as I did--or even tolerable. I'm not really going to rush out and recommend it to anyone, but I can definitely say its IMDb rating is utterly ridiculous, and most of the reviews on there seem to indicate the reviews come from people who are unaware of the film's sense of humour, despite the fact that it's so obviously on display. Ho-hum. The film's too bouncy and upbeat (even if in a stupid way...) to be let down by this, but it's a shame for the voices behind it, who are doing what they want how they want, nudging at other pop culture elements but always showing enough of their own sensibilities to keep claims to relative freshness.
I'll save you any puns about tomatoes and freshness, even if I am talking about rating the film better than it is. But Rotten Tomatoes ought to maybe latch onto it.
*Yes, there was a Killer Tomatoes cartoon. I've seen a few episodes, one of those obnoxiously difficult to catch cartoons of my youth. Absurd hours on Sunday mornings, if memory serves.
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