Reaction & Review | The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a family film from 1987. That movie is "The Garbage Pail Kids Movie".

Now, for those of you who know nothing about the "Garbage Pail Kids", they were originally made as a trading card series that was suppose to parody the "Cabbage Patch Kids". Where with the "Cabbage Patch Kids", they were mostly dolls meant for younger children (mostly girls) to enjoy, while the "Garbage Pail Kids" leaned more on being slightly more crude and mostly aimed for gross-out humor. I've never collected any of the "Garbage Pail Kids" cards. I mostly collected Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards as a kid. Sometimes Digimon as well, but not as often as the former two. And that was about it for my trading card experience.

Setting that aside, the "Garbage Pail Kids" trading cards sold very well. So much so that it later got a live action movie, which is what I'm gonna be watching tonight, and an animated series that lasted only 1 season, and was never released outside of the U.S. due to certain themes that supposedly stopped it from coming over here. You can probably find it on YouTube pretty easily and it's only about 13 episodes, too. But I'm not here to talk about that series, I'm here to talk about tonight's movie. And the only thing I really know about it, aside from this being an adaptation of the trading card series, is that it's known to be one of the "worst movies ever made". Personally, I've gotten sick and tired of hearing this phrase so much that it lost almost all of it's meaning. Because I've seen movies that have had horrible reputations of being absolutely awful, and they ended up being nowhere near as bad as everyone made them out to be. I can think of movies such as "A Troll In Central Park", "Starship Troopers 3: Marauder", and even that live-action "Jonah Hex" movie that I reviewed earlier this year. Which, at the time, I didn't even know people hated on that thing. And yet, I ended up quite enjoying it, despite it's flaws.

Now I'm not trying to discredit the possibility of this movie being absolutely terrible. It may very well end up being as bad as everyone who saw this movie says it is. However, I still want to see if there's something redeemable about this movie. Something that I can look at and be very pleased with. And if I can get that much, then this movie's already accomplished that feat. Now I don't know, I really have no idea if there's gonna be anything decent about this movie. I kinda have my doubts about it being any good, but hey, who knows? Stranger things have happened before. So the only way I'm gonna find out if this movie's interesting at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "The Garbage Pail Kids Movie".

2 minutes later

"Ali Gator"? That has got to be one of the laziest names I have ever heard of for a Garbage Pail Kid. Mind you now, every other Garbage Pail Kid's name I've seen in these opening credits so far has been pretty creative, but "Ali Gator" just doesn't ring any creative bells for me, you know?

14 minutes later

So these bullies big plan for getting revenge against this kid, who also had an interest in one of the bullies' women, was to tie him down near the pipes in the sewer, while also draining sewer water all over him. Well...at least I can say that they certainly know how to use dirty tactics. God, that joke really sucked...

12 minutes later

Wait, so Dodger hid as soon as Juice and his buddies showed up to meet up with Tangerine. And they just left the dance club together...all the while leaving Dodger behind. So...how the hell is Dodger suppose to get home then? Because the car ride he had with Tangerine lasted from the daytime to night. Meaning that it probably took all DAY just to get to this dance club, and now Dodger has no way to get home. I don't know if Tangerine is gonna come back for him or not, but I'm curious now as to how Dodger is suppose to find his way back home to Manzini's shop? I totally understand that it's probably just a trivial matter in the long run, but it's something that's just bugging me a little bit. Just saying.

2 minutes later

So...apparently, the Pepsi truck that Valerie was driving just flattened this dude's car like it was a fucking monster truck! That's...kinda funny, actually. I'm sorta impressed by that. I didn't know trucks were strong enough to crush cars in that kind of fashion. You learn something new everyday, don't ya?

7 minutes later

OK, I didn't even know this movie had a musical number. Especially coming from the Garbage Pail Kids of all people. And their singing REALLY sucks, too. Just thought I'd throw that out there. I know you guys can't hear it for obvious reasons, but this singing from these Garbage Pail Kids isn't really that good.

5 minutes later

So now the Garbage Pail Kids are going out into town to see a movie, while wearing matching disguises. And while that sounds like a decent idea, it makes Ali Gator and Nat Nerd stand out, considering that Nat Nerd looks rather sickly with his pimples, and Ali Gator...well, still looks like an alligator. Are you telling me that they couldn't find any disguises that would make them look less standoffish? I'm just saying that, considering that they've made a ton of costumes for Dodger, they probably could've found some other costumes that would make them stand out less.

13 minutes later

You know, I was gonna ask how the hell their basis was on the possibility that the Garbage Pail Kids friends were being locked up by some place called the State Home For The Ugly. Well, it turns that a couple of these, I guess, cops are driving a car that literally has that name on the side of it. And they almost caught a little girl that was wearing an ugly-looking mask, too. So basically, they're the pound for ugly people. That's kinda messed up and rather dark, too! Damn.

18 minutes later

Wait, so Juice and his two buddies were able to catch ALL of the Garbage Pail Kids in one go? Well...I guess maybe they were able to use that sleeping gas that was able to knock Cap'n Manzini out, but I still want to know how they were able to capture all of them, despite the numbers game? I'm really curious about that, and I don't think this movie's going to give out an answer for that. Call it a hunch, if you will.

The Review

Well, guys, that was "The Garbage Pail Kids Movie". Let me go ahead and the shut the film off here...all right. Well, I called it. I said, earlier, that if this movie, even if it did end up being as bad as everyone says it is, I would find some something redeemable about this movie. And you know what? There were a few things in this movie that I ended up kinda enjoying. Now mind you, the movie isn't good, but it is in no way the worst thing I have ever seen. Not even by a long shot does this movie ever aim for that sort of standard. Again, the movie isn't good, but as I stated earlier, this whole "worst movie ever made" fad has lost pretty much lost all of it's meaning. And the only reason I can think of as to how this movie ever got that sort of term was because a certain critic told them this and they just took that critic's word as gospel while they most likely never saw the film for themselves. Now I could be totally wrong on this, but it is something that I kinda wanted to throw out there, because nobody should ever take a lone critic's word as the gospel-fucking-truth. Now if you agreed with it, that's totally fine. But as I just said, nobody should ever take a lone critic's word as gospel, and that includes myself. I'm just here to give out my opinion on whatever movie I'm covering, and whether or not someone agrees with it is something I'll leave to viewers to think for themselves.

Now...setting aside that little rant, let's finally dig into the movie itself, shall we? And as usual, I'm gonna start with the writing. Now going into this movie, I had no idea what the hell this movie was gonna go for in terms of a plot. And being that this movie was suppose to be an adaptation of a trading card series that was meant to be a parody of the "Cabbage Patch Kids", it literally could've gone for almost anything. Well, what we did end up getting for a plot was...kinda underwhelming. And what I mean by that is that this story is all over the place. There's a LOT going on here that kinda doesn't end up making much sense. For example, we have our main plot, where this kid named Dodger wants to impress a girl that he really likes named Tangerine, who's also dating someone else named Juice. I'll get more into this later. We also have our Garbage Pail Kids, where they mostly end up causing trouble, and also help Dodger make some clothes for a fashion show that he wants to help Tangerine with. We also get hit with another side plot where the Garbage Pail Kids are worried that they can't find their other friends, who I'm going to assume are also members of the Garbage Pail Kids. And they believe that they are being held hostage at some place known as the State Home For The Ugly. Where, literally, there are ugly people being held prisoner there. People such as Santa Claus, who's labelled as "too fat". A random clown, who's labelled as "too silly". Some guy who's "too hairy". And even someone who's labelled as "too crippled". Which I thought was fucking hilarious as shit. Granted, it's kinda fucked up, but being as someone who enjoys dark humor, I couldn't help but laugh at that bit. But anyway, the Garbage Pail Kids believe that their friends are being held there, so it's up to Dodger and Cap'n Manzini to go there and see if they can save them.

Honestly, guys, like I said, the story here is all over the place, and a lot of it here doesn't really make any sense. One thing about this plan about breaking into the State Home For The Ugly that really bugged me was how exactly the Garbage Pail Kids came to the conclusion that their friends were potentially being held there. I say this, because at no point during this movie was this place EVER brought up, nor was it mentioned by anyone else during the movie before that point. And when the Garbage Pail Kids do eventually bring that up, it's about close to the hour point of the movie, in which the film has about 40 minutes left of it's runtime. For most of that first hour, it mostly focuses on them making clothes for Dodger so that he can impress Tangerine with them, or it's just them doing random shit, like when they go to a movie theater because they feel like they're not getting appreciated for all of the hard work that they've been doing in making these clothes for Dodger, or a couple of them are at the "Toughest Bar In the World" where Ali Gator starts munching one some dude's random toes, in which it starts a barroom brawl. It's mostly just stuff like that. So to have that point about their friends possibly being held at this State Home For The Ugly just being brought up out of nowhere kinda makes me wonder why we never heard about this place until now? I think that if this place were brought up earlier, it might've given us a better idea as to what this place the Garbage Pail Kids were talking about was.

While I'm on the subject, let's get into the characters. Now when it comes to the Garbage Pail Kids themselves, I honestly don't mind that they don't really get a lot of depth. Especially when you consider that these characters essentially came from trading cards, character depth is something that I wasn't really expecting from them. And it shows. We have Valerie Vomit, who's gimmick is that she...well, vomits, in case you didn't catch her last name. We have Greaser Greg, who's basically just a greaser. Then there's Nat Nerd, who pisses in his pants a lot. We have Foul Phil, who's basically this baby who likes to cry mommy a lot, and acts rather foul. Then there's Windy Winston, who basically likes to fart a lot. Messy Tessie, who's, well, messy, because she likes to put her slobber on a lot of things. And finally, there's Ali Gator. Which is still probably the laziest name that you could give to a Garbage Pail Kid. But anyway, setting that aside, Ali's suppose to be the leader of the group...somehow. Cap'n Manzini is the one who says that to him, though I don't really know why. Is it because that he's an alligator and because he doesn't look like a human, that makes him the leader of these Garbage Pail Kids? I don't know. It really doesn't really make any sense as to why he's the leader. But regardless, aside from him being the supposed leader, he also has a toe fetish. Don't ask, it kinda makes sense in a really stupid and sorta creepy way.

The only other characters that are even worth mentioning are Dodger and Tangerine. Now, if you think that I'm gonna comment on the age difference between the two characters, and how it makes it looks supposedly creepy, I'm not gonna do that here. Because while it's possible that there may be some sort of age discrepancy between the two characters, I can 'kinda' buy the possibility that Dodger looks to be about 13 or 14 years old, while Tangerine looks to be about 17 or 18 years old. And, at least in my opinion, it looks more believable than something like "Blank Check". Where in that movie, some dumbass kid, who looked to be about 10 or 11 years old, ends up dating a 30 year old something female FBI agent. And no, I'm not kidding about that either. But anyway, I'm getting off track here. When it comes to this movie, I can sorta give the age difference between Dodger and Tangerine a pass. Their relationship, though, is kinda shit. Because Tangerine mostly cares about wanting to get these clothes ready for her fashion show, and Dodger doesn't get the hint that she's mostly using him just to get what she wants. Now there are a couple of scenes where it seems like she feels for him, such as during the beginning of the movie, where we see Dodger is being chased by Juice's buddies, in which Juice takes money from Dodger. Why? I don't know. It's never really explained. Maybe it's because they're just stereotypical bullies, but what I do I know? But for the most part, Tangerine mostly cares about herself. And as for Dodger, he really doesn't have anything that makes him stand out, other than the fact that he makes friends with the Garbage Pail Kids, and he has a crush on Tangerine because she's beautiful, according to him.

So overall, the characters here are mostly bland and somewhat one-dimensional. And the story here, like I said, is mostly unfocused. But you know what? Despite all that...I actually did kinda end up enjoying it a bit. I was still interested in what was going on in the movie, and I didn't feel like I was bored out of my mind. Which is saying a lot, considering that I've seen plenty of movies this year for this series, and a lot of them bored the shit out of me. But not this one. This one kinda surprised me a bit by being rather watchable. Not good, but at least watchable. Which, again, is something that I can say more about than certain movies I've seen in the past. So with that being said, let's talk about the acting. The acting here is fairly decent from almost the entire cast. The only ones that sounded terrible were one of the female bullies that hangs out with Juice, and Dodger's actor, who goes by the name of Mackenzie Astin. He was mostly terrible in this movie, considering that he's a child actor, and as I mentioned before, most of them sound horrible when you give them a script where they have tons of dialogue. And in Mackenzie's case, he definitely sounded pretty bad here. Now admittedly, he's not the worst child actor I've ever heard. I've heard FAR worse child actors in my time, but still, he's not a very good child actor either. So it's something that you have to take for what it's worth. But for the most part, he was definitely the worst actor in this entire movie. Everyone else, though, did a really decent job for what they had to work with. They weren't great, mind you, but they certainly did put in enough effort in order to make their performances stand out a bit.

In terms of special effects, I want to touch upon the Garbage Pail Kids themselves again. When it comes to the costuming and puppeteering, it mostly looks really good. The only thing that kinda brings it down a bit are the mouth movements. The mouth movements on these Garbage Pail Kids are mostly a mixed bag. In some scenes, their mouth movements mostly match up to whatever dialogue that comes out of their mouths. And in other scenes, no one cared enough to match any of the mouth movements that was suppose to match whatever dialogue that they had. The only one that I can think of that mostly stayed consistent with it's mouth movements is Ali Gator. And it mostly makes sense, because with him, it's pretty easy to match the mouth movements, given that the character is an alligator, and he can freely move his bigger mouth up and down without too much trouble. With the other Garbage Pail Kids though, like I said, sometimes the mouth movements look fine. And other times, they look like shit. So, it's really a give or take situation here. Other things involving special effects such as the vomit from Valerie Vomit look pretty decent. Everything else, though, is just average. Nothing else about the special effects really stood out at me. So overall, the special effects here are mostly a mixed bag at best.

Camerawork here is pretty good. The lighting here is lit fine. The sound-mix here is also mixed fine. The music here, at least for it's score, is decent. The soundtrack is also pretty good, minus that one song that the Garbage Pail Kids sing about working together. That song sounded like shit. Now it's very well possible that it was probably intended to sound like shit, but honestly, it doesn't change the fact that it still sounded terrible. So, minus that one song, the soundtrack here is mostly fine.

Overall, guys, when all is said and done, can I recommend "The Garbage Pail Kids Movie"? If you're able to overlook the noticeable flaws that this movie does have, then yes. I can totally recommend it, as long as you're able to shut your brain off and view this movie as just some cheese-ball bad movie that you could riff on with friends on a bad movie night. If you're looking a good movie, though...no. There is no way I could recommend it on that end, because this movie, like I said, has writing that's all over the place, and the characters are pretty fucking bland for the most part. Now again, I want to stress that this movie is nowhere NEAR as bad as everyone supposedly made it out to be. I have seen far worse movies in my own time and for this series, and this movie definitely doesn't fit into that criteria. It's one of those movies that sorta fall into the category of 'so bad, it's good'. It has just enough charm to where I can overlook the flaws that this movie does have and sorta enjoy it for it's stupidly fun moments. Now admittedly, I don't think it's ever going to match something, like, the "Street Fighter" movie from 1994, in terms of it's cheesiness. However, it still has enough moments to where I can come back and rewatch it again from time to time as just some charmingly bad movie that I'm more than likely going to hold onto for my DVD collection. And speaking of the 1994 "Street Fighter" movie, I really want to go back and watch that thing again. That movie is just so much fun that even just mentioning it almost makes me want to rewatch that movie again and again. So, I'm gonna go and watch that next after I'm done putting this review together.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.