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    The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

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    This might be hard to believe, but someone back in 1987 decided that "The Garbage Pail Kids Movie" was a legitimate idea. The results are pretty pathetic. It's not only that the film is poorly conceived and badly made; it fails at nearly every possible opportunity and screams ineptitude to high heaven. Here's the plot: Captain Manzini (Anthony Newley) is some kind of magician who operates an antique store with his 14-year-old assistant Dodger (Mackenzie Astin) While a group of bullies enters the store to harass Dodger, they knock over a mysterious garbage can and release the Garbage Pail Kids: Greaser Greg, Valerie Vomit, Ali Gator, Foul Phil, nat Nerd, Windy Winston and Messy Tessie. While Manzini searches for a way to return the nightmarish creatures to their prison, he tasks Dodger with keeping them out of trouble. Instead, Dodger gets the Kids to help him impress a girl by designing clothing, and the bullies report the Kids to the State Home for the Ugly (a prison that captures and executes people that are too fat, too bald, too silly, too skinny, too hairy or otherwise undesirable) I think we’re supposed to learn something about friendship and being your own man by the end of the film, but it’s so inept at this that I may be mistaken.

    I was not entirely surprised when I learned while writing this review that this is considered one of the worst films ever made. Going through standard film components, you can see how badly director Rod Amateau managed to drop the ball on what was unquestionably a doomed project from the start, but still!

    The Acting & Casting:

    Horrendous. At the performances, one knows not whether to dispense laughs or groans. Everyone acts like they’re in a stinker of a movie about talking Muppet rejects who have been through the wash 50 times too many, and now look ragged and cobbled together. Special mention to Katie Barberi as Tangerine, for one of the fakest laughs I’ve ever heard in a movie. I am certain that some of the actors are supposed to be teens, maybe a couple of years older... but they’ve clearly cast people in their late to mid-twenties. What were they thinking?

    The Special Effects/Costumes:

    The effects that bring the Garbage Pail Kids to life look like something that would come out of your nightmares. The lip sync is a joke. It’s on par with the goblins in “Troll 2”. They’re extremely ugly, but also poorly put together. I noticed several times that the costumes barely covered the actors underneath them, the worst offender being Ali Gator, who wears green scaly gloves that barely go past the wrists of the poor sap desperate enough for a paycheck that he/she wore that ridiculous alligator head. They make me think of a twisted version of “Chuck-E-Cheese” characters, or a cursed high school play in which the worn and badly sewn together costumes came to life, devoured the students attending and have now decided to take up acting. They need to make a legitimate horror movie about these creatures.

    The Story:

    This is one pathetic tale. It’s like a war criminal that’s been turned inside out. It deserves its fate, but you feel like putting it out of its misery anyway. Plots points are introduced out of thin air and no one bats an eye at bizarre concepts like “The State Home for the Ugly” or the fact that apparently, Ali Gator eats people (his lunchbox is filled with eyeballs and toes) I also don’t really understand the would-be romantic subplot throughout. Tangerine is at least 18. Why is she leading some kid on? Honestly, I was so taken aback by the endless flow of nonsense that came out of “GPK” that I’m not even sure I watched it. The experience is a surreal one, like a bizarre nightmare that made sense and was terrifying at the time, but now is simply madness.

    The Music

    I think this is meant to be a children’s movie. This film has a child protagonist, and features musical numbers in which all of the Kids join in a song all about “Working together”. The song is so inappropriate, so badly written and so ear-splittingly awful that I’m convinced it was plucked right out of Bizarro World’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and is that planet’s equivalent to “Whistle While You Work”. If your nose is plugged up, try listening to the song. I’m fairly sure the oozing blood coming out of your skull will build up enough pressure to push out any obstructions to the outside.

    The Direction:

    I realize that this is “The Garbage Pail Kids Movie”, but even under those dubious standards, the film fails. I can imagine that there might have been some appeal to finally seeing the Garbage Pail Kids live-action form... but they screwed that up majorly. The movie spoils what the Kids look like in the opening credits by showing us the card artwork of the few abominations that will be seen in the film. That might have been forgiven, except these cheap trading cards look way better than the actual costumes. I saw continuity errors, bad fight choreography and several scenes that make absolutely no sense whatsoever. It’s a trip through the loony bin is what this is.

    I should have saved myself some time and just told you that there are 5 instances in which a character wets himself. 5 piss jokes! I was hoping that this notoriously bad movie would be at least entertaining to riff on, but it isn’t. In the annals of bad movies, “Garbage Pail Kids” is the black ooze you find at the bottom of your trash bin, right underneath the garbage bag that’s been dripping and stinking up the house after a long, hot weekend. (On DVD, August 2013)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  5.9.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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