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.

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.

Everyone involved in the making of this movie, from the coke-vacuuming, muckraking scum who financed it to the gaffer's newest apprentice, is going directly to hell.

This isn't just a bad movie. It's a psychotic, surreal journey into the realm of the profoundly grotesque. The Garbage Pail Kids themselves are terrible in their deformity, with exaggerated facial features and apparent elephantitis of the cranium making them hurtful to witness. Poorly-done animatronics make them all appear as if their facial muscles have been injected with lidocaine. They have a collective IQ of approximately 58.

It's not pleasant to watch. It's not funny, it's not kitschy, it's not camp. The dialogue is pat and smarmy, the characters stupid and forgettable, and the whole slimy mess reeks of greedy bastards trying to make a fistful of money on the flavor of the week. TGPKM is another example of how depressingly low the common denominator really is...and this was BEFORE the reality TV craze.

It hurts.

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

If you were a boy growing up in the 1980s, you likely collected the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. I was obsessed with them, and I even got to see this movie when it was released. I didn't remember a thing about it, but I was aware that it now has a reputation as one of the worst movies ever made. And, boy howdy, does it deserve it! This thing is simply dreadful. It brings to life seven of the trading card characters in all their disgusting glory, making them impossibly hideous dwarfs with hydrocephalic domes. Ushering them into the world is Sean Astin's younger brother Mackenzie, who uses their skills at clothing design (?!) to impress an older girl (Katie Barberi, quite attractive). She uses his affection to pass the clothes off as her designs. The film's attempts at humor are predictably juvenile, but I doubt I found them even close to funny, even as an 8 year-old. The movie isn't boring, but it's mind-numbingly awful. A must-see for anyone who likes bad movies, though, be warned, this is far from being so bad it's good. It's so bad it's soul-crushing!