Greetings from Tromaville

Greetings from Tromaville (2017)

**** (out of 4)

This here is an excellent documentary telling the story of Lloyd Kaufman who would become a king in the independent market with Troma. The documentary covers his early life, how he got into the movie business and the forming of what would become Troma. Through interviews with Kaufman as well as those who know him and have worked with him we learn just about everything a fan would want to know.

GREETINGS FROM TROMAVILLE is about as great of a documentary that you're going to get about the subject of Troma. I really thought this was a wonderfully entertaining film and this is especially true if you're a fan of Kaufman as we get his thoughts on a wide range of topics including his early films as well as some of the more controversial topics with the company. This includes the rather "tame" sequels to THE TOXIC AVENGER.

I thought some of the best stuff was early on when we hear about what Kaufman was going to do and probably would have been doing had there not been a little fate to get him interesting in movies. Some other great stuff comes later in the film as we get some behind-the-scenes footage from some of the later day Troma films where we see Kaufman at work and we also get to hear about how he tries to make one person cry on set.

The interviews are all exceptionally entertaining and there's no doubt that Kaufman himself knows how to tell a fun story so listening to him was great. We get to hear about the early Troma movies, the popular stuff, the studio's comeback and we also get to hear about their distribution deals on titles like BLOODSUCKING FREAKS and REDNECK ZOMBIES.

I've only seen a couple of Troma movies like Surf Nazis Must Die and The Toxic Avenger so this documentary was very interesting as it did a pretty good job following the whole Troma filmography. It does a pretty good job at getting a variety of interviews, though some with Lloyd Kaufman go a little too long without any B-roll and cutaways. The sound quality in some interviews drops at times, because some interviews are or could've been last minute and sudden while others were phone calls. But it was really great seeing some of the clips from all of these cult classics, I do think I will watch a couple of Troma movies if they have any on Amazon Price where I checked this out. But if you know about the pure reputation of Troma, this doc is a nice way to summarize their whole story. 8/10 for the niche fans of the story like me.

While the clips are, er, entertaining (I find a lot of what Troma did to be absolute crap, but still better than The Asylum, who do TOTAL crap), this could have been better. Lloyd Kaufman sounds like he's about to fall asleep while narrating and his voice is of that droning kind that one dreaded when in high school economics class.

It's easy to discard Troma movies as silly schlock-horror. It would also be a mistake to do so.

"Greetings from Tromaville" is 2 hours well spent in the greatest company. Lloyd Kaufman and friends tell the story of Troma, the movies and the cultural impact the company have had on moviemaking. From The Toxic Avenger being an icon in itself to James Gunn starting his career on the set of "Tromeo and Juliet", Troma has a long and entertaining story, which if you're even the slightest interested in cultfilms or just moviemaking in general, will be worth a watch. A lot of people working on set has gone on to do great things on their own. As one of the actors puts it: "Troma is one of the best film schools in the world in a way"

This documentary just goes to show the importance of indie-movies in an age of huge-budget mediocre Hollywood-blockbusters.

It's not just about the blood, boobs and gore. It's the underlining story as well. The satire, the social-critique and Lloyd Kaufman holds no punches in attacking all he deems wrong with modern society, be it McDonalds and the fast-food industry or the superficial social-structure of society.

But what's maybe even more important, this documentary is just very entertaining and it made me wanna rewatch all the classics again.

Now, how about a new Toxic Avenger movie?

While this was good, it could have been much better if it had been made by someone who put in a little more style. Too much of it is just Lloyd Kaufman staring at the camera mumbling and stumbling through his words. The clips and other interviews are fine (although it needed James Gunn and some actual big names instead of just a few cult actors) and you get a solid sense of what the company has done, but not enough of how its truly impacted others. A missed opportunity overall.