The way I’ve been describing this movie to people is that The Toxic Avenger is basically a movie filled with middle school jokes written by people who took too much LSD in the 80s. Any time that there is need for numbers on screen there will be the number 69. All names on signs are puns or stupid jokes. The consistency with which the movie sustains its low-brow humor is impressive, and hearkens back to the genetic code of The Toxic Avenger, which is Troma Entertainment, an indie production house that’s been around since the 70s putting out tongue-in-cheek genre films with a lot of titties and a lot of practical effects. Those films from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, including the original Toxic Avenger movies, are a lost art in low budget camp.
Take a look at just about any trailer and not only will you find a young James Gunn (Tromeo and Juliet, 1996), you’ll also find a treasure trove of over-the-top, excessively violent and hypersexualized films with self-referential humor and intertextual jokes which point to an idiomatic and cultish sense of humor. The Toxic Avenger remake, by its own admission, was not really ever meant to make it to the widescreen and certainly never meant to have as large a budget as it does. The cast and effects are ludicrous and the cameos from previous movies, references to other Troma-universe lore are all artifacts of a film whose prospects were bleak even from the beginning.
The movie first debuted in 2023, weirdly enough, and struggled to find distributors, but it was filmed during pandemic restrictions, and written even before that. Some of the reviews nod to this in the way that the Toxic Avenger’s story seems relevant as ever despite not being written to the moment. Depending on the press, you’ll see Toxic Avenger as the antidote to its contemporary superhero franchise fatigue or the gross out movie of the year, prompting more walkouts in test screenings than any movie in a decade, which woof how did you compete with Babylon or Beau is Afraid? But really, if anything, the movie seems a lot more like a sibling to the 2018 Deadpool than anything–in its glib breaking of the 4th wall, its preoccupation with ultraviolence, its cringey soft, Shrek-like earnest interior, and its slavish nostalgic proclivities. But where Deadpool was trying to capture comic book bros who were yearning for vulgar language and more blood splatter in a sanitized Disney-franchise, the Toxic Avenger’s nostalgia is clearly meant to appeal to some old stoners from the 70s who somehow convinced Dinklage and Kevin Bacon to act their hearts out.
Troma at its core is sort of antithetical to the idea that women are anything but their bodies, and the odd moment when they aren’t on their backs to be plowed for laughs by the slightly mutated Avenger in the originals, their lines are meant to emphasize how stupid they are, which works when the outsider cast is Frank-N-Furter and Meatloaf, but makes the challenge a little more difficult for adapting the source material for 2025. They’ve made some changes and included plucky young actresses for the goodies and the baddies alike, but for the most part the sexual humor and sexual commentary of the 70s and 80s is largely sidelined for a broader swipe at capitalism and corporate greed.
The movie meanders and lurches from shoe-horned fight scene to scene, pulled by the sheer charisma of Elijah Wood, Dinklage, Bacon, and its other cameos, some more in-jokes for fans of the original, and others meant to make us wonder what possible deal with the devil was struck to include such talent. Probably in any other world where the expectations for movies’ gross weren’t so high this movie would be able to justify its own existence and several copycats, but instead it has and will languish as a practical joke in limited release hell for a few weeks before slithering off into oblivion.
