The Garbage Pail Kids Movie

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

1/2 (out of 4)

I must admit that I was seven years old when this movie came out. I was a fan of the cards and I remember begging my mother to take me to see this on opening day, which she did. A couple of my friends went along and I still remember the sold out crowd of pre-teens laughing and having a blast with the film. I believe I watched it a couple more times when it first hit VHS but I haven't seen it since....until this latest viewing.

What did I think of the film twenty-two years after being a kid who loved it? Well, it was the pits. It really shocked me to re-watch something I found entertaining as a kid and I know that saying that many kids never grow up but thankfully I did. Now I'm not going to sit here and put this film down for being disgusting, vile or featuring "ugly" jokes because nothing here offended me today. What I will put down is the entire screenplay, which really makes one scratch their head because the story is so bad that you can't help but wonder if any real attempt was made to come up with something good or if this was just thrown together to make some quick cash.

The story pretty much as the Garbage Pail Kids coming to the aid of a weak boy (Mackenzie Astin) who might just be getting taken advantage of by a girl (Katie Barberi) he has a crush on. I think the biggest problem with the screenplay is that it tries to tell too much story in regards to the GPK and this wasn't needed. The cards told us all we needed to know so the film should have just stood back and delivered the goods that the cards did.

Valorie Vomit, Ali Gator, Greaser Greg, Nat Nerd, Windy Winston, Messy Tessie and Foul Phil are the kids here and most of them never really get to dig into their "tricks" from the cards. Valorie Vomit, for one example, only does her thing once at the end of the movie. Now, a lot of parents back in the day would have said that's a good thing but every generation has its thing that parents object to and this was one from the 80s.

The performances are all pretty brutal with Astin not delivering anything and Barbieri delivering a really, really bad performance. You do have the costumes by John Carl Buechler who previously did the film TROLL and would later do Friday THE 13TH PART VII. While watching this horrid movie I couldn't help but smile at thinking back at some of the cards and passing them around class in the school. It's a real shame that this film didn't do anyone any good but I can't help but wish that a real R-rated remake would come along and really do things right.

As a lover of movies, I sat down to see The Garbage Pail Kids Movie after hearing from so many people how bad it was. Sometimes when I see "bad" movies, they are not so bad if mediocre,or movies that are so bad they're good, but there are other times when the movie that is supposed to be bad IS bad. This garbage belongs in the latter, it was so awful(in my opinion that is) that I didn't know whether to vomit or cry. I will give credit and say it is not quite the worst movie I have ever seen, but that isn't saying much.

Firstly, I do have to agree with other reviewers that this is one of the poorly written kids movies out there. I know this movie is supposed to be bad and mindless trash, but the dialogue alone makes it not only bad, it makes it garbage. The dialogue is mega lame and not quotable at all, and I didn't laugh once. The humour was also very grotesque, I know the cards are quite grotesque, and movies like Freddy Got Fingered had grotesque and very unsubtle humour, but The Garbage Pail Kids Movie takes the whole meaning of the word "grotesque" to a whole new level and in a bad way. Plus the pranks are very mean-spirited, as is the knockabout violence.

Then there is the story. What was the story again? To me, it had those talentless hacks Friedberg and Seltzer written over it, it is one of the most poorly constructed stories in a movie, with drawn out scenes, plodding pace you name it. Next, the production values, am I the only person who thought they were appalling? The sets were poor, the lighting was dim, the camera work was like direct to video quality, the special effects were laughable and the costumes were horrible. Don't get me wrong, I like 1980s fashion, it is funky and cool, but the costumes here made me want to gouge my eyes out.

Even the soundtrack was awful. Generic, lifeless and uninspired, even worse than the music in Disaster Movie, which sounded like it had been made up on the spot at last minute. Not to mention it is the epitome of cheesiness. And the acting was atrocious. Anthony Newley was wasted as Captain Manzini, and MacKenzie Astin is a bland and inept child protagonist. Juice and Tangerine are underdeveloped and clichéd, and Ali Gator, Greaser Greg and Nat Nerd are unlikeable and I think ugly characters with voices that have haunted me in my sleep since seeing the movie last night. And they wasted Jim Cummings completely here, the immortal voice actor who gave us Darkwing Duck, Dr RobotNik and Don Karnage has sounds utterly embarrassed here, it makes me want to cry.

Overall, absolutely awful. When I finished watching it, yes I watched the whole thing, I was like what was that? 1/10(and that is being kind, I could tell even from the title it wasn't going to be good). Bethany Cox

This movie came on at around 6 AM on Cinemax this morning, and out of curiosity aroused from the fact that they would make a movie based on that utterly ridiculous card game, me and my friend sat down and decided to watch it. And almost instantly we were perplexed. Absolutely flabbergasted by the fact that a movie studio would go ahead and produce this movie. It is by far one of the most poorly written movies I have ever seen. The bizarre plot never seems to come together and make sense. The gags run utterly flat and actually tend to leave you with a sick feeling in your stomach. Not to mention one of the poorest makeup jobs in film history. As for the acting, one word can describe it: atrocious. The actors, with the exception only in some cases for Anthony Newley, seem to be doing nothing more than shouting their lines through the almost forced emotion, which comes over as horridly flat and unbelievable. If you're actually interested in this movie, I would go ahead and recommend it. A spectacle such as this film is something you rarely come upon.

I can make a solid case on it being the worst I've seen because at least other movies can turn into "So bad it's good" or "So bad it's hilariously bad" or have multiple features that generate enjoyment. This movie had Anthony Newley. That's it. It encompasses the worst of the 80s, complete with unlikable characters, repulsive aliens who move their mouths with minimal effort, repetitive gross-out gags, the antithesis of warmth, joy, empathy or entertainment and one of the worst original songs spawned by rejects of Satan's orchestra.

I already knew this movie was legendarily bad, so I only have myself to blame for sitting down and watching it when it came on TV. To understand how this atrocity came to be, you have to understand what they were thinking when they were making it. Garbage Pail Kids was a trading card parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids that was basically a gross or ridiculous take on them. They were so popular that someone somewhere thought, "What if we took this shallow concept completely dependent on making fun of another property and turn it into a feature length film?" It's notable that the Cabbage Patch people never actually tried to go that far (or at least, never succeeded).

What we got was an ill-conceived dumpster fire that is an abject failure in every way conceivable. I could spend all day talking about how the story is nonsensical and aimless, how the suits/animatronics are creepy and nightmarish, etc. But that stuff's been covered a million times, so I'm going to focus on the real odious aspect, and that's the characters: a collection of paper thin, unmotivated tropes. Dodger is your typical bullied kid daring to look for bigger and better things. He's antagonized by a bunch of bullies for no reason other than for us to feel sorry for him (though if they bullied him because of his stupid name, I'd understand). Then there are the Garbage Pail Kids themselves, who are bizarrely portrayed as protagonists despite being repulsive physically and personality-wise. You can imagine the type of comedic depth you will encounter with characters like "Valerie Vomit" and "Windy Winston." When the characters aren't constantly farting and peeing on themselves, they're at each others' throats or even aggressively stepping to Dodger. I can only imagine the audience's reception to E.T. if he repeatedly threatened to shank Elliott if he didn't get to phone home. We're supposed to be rooting for these guys?

The most bizarre part of an already ridiculous movie happens when the bullies kidnap the kids and send them to the "State Home for the Ugly," where people deemed too ugly are executed. Wait, what? What is this twisted, alternate Earth where they kill off ugly people and why is it so out of place in what was beforehand (and after) a disgusting, cliché 80's mess? Lincoln and Gandhi are locked up here so I guess it's insultingly implying the Kids are unconventional in appearance but important for their contribution to society, some sort of misplaced Aesop about true beauty coming from within...despite the Kids being genuinely horrific on the inside. The kids are rescued (unfortunately) but their execution would have been a fitting end to this disaster. There's also a silly romance plot with a girl named Tangerine of all things, facilitated by the Kids' sudden ability to sew fashionable clothes for her fashion show.

So yeah, it's offensively bad. Don't make the same mistake I did and waste you time with it. There's nothing here for you but tears and fecal matter.