By David Dent
The reboot that nobody needed or wanted? Director Macon Blair clearly doesn’t give a cat’s whiskers, resurrecting the lead figure of no less than four hilariously bad taste movies originally directed by Lloyd Kaufman (who pops up here in cameo) between 1984 and 2000.
For those unfamiliar with the franchise, the original had goofy janitor Melvin bullied into an early death via a vat of toxic chemicals, fusing worker and his mop into some kind of mutated bio freak, visiting death and destruction on all the baddies in and around his home town of Tromaville (although actually mainly filmed in Bulgaria).
And this is the jumping off point for the 2025 version (actually 2023, but the feature’s been hanging around for a couple of years before coming to the UK). Toxie here, pre mutation anyway, is played by Peter Dinklage; he’s Winston Gooze, general dogsbody at BTH chemicals, headed up by Bob Garbinger (an excellent turn from Kevin Bacon). As this is Tromaville, the chemical company is up to no good, with Bob’s creepy brother Fritz (Elijah Wood, almost unrecognisable) using his hired assassins, a sort of punk band called ‘The Killer Nutz’, to despatch anyone looking to badmouth the company.
Winston has more of a back story than Melvin, a widow whose sole preoccupation is looking after his stepson Wade (Jacob Tremblay). Other characters shuffle into position, in the shape of scheming company employee Kissy (Julia Davis, yes that Julia Davis), spy for the good guys JJ (Taylour Paige) and philosophical hobo Guthrie (Davis Yow). Toxie’s chemical transformation is a brilliantly odd psychedelic set piece, accompanied by the strains of Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ and you’ll cheer as his radioactive mop becomes as variedly useful as Batman’s utility belt.
There are arguably way too many characters than the movie needs, but everything zips along in pretty eccentric fashion, and soon you stop questioning why Blair chose to make this movie and just go with it, gags and gore included. Did you need to have seen the original movies to get something out of this? Possibly, judging by an older critic sitting next to me in the screening room, whose only comment, after the credits rolled (and do stay for the final breakfast scene tacked on at the end), was a confused “well, well”. The Toxic Avenger is well, indeed.
Bloody Flicks 