In deathly serious tones, over
shots of factories pumping fumes into the air, we’re informed that one hundred
and thirty five billion pounds of toxic waste are dumped into our water every
year. Billions more infest our air. Of all the pollutants, only a handful have
been studied for their harmful effects on human beings. Just imagine what those others could do! Meanwhile, billionaire industrialist Armond
Davis (Chris Robinson) suffers from
heart issues (insert joke about not having one here) while merely tolerating
the constant protests outside his chemical plant. Tasking cardiologist Wayne (Allen Dorris) and meat slab Drake (Torin Coyle Caffrey) with finding him
an unwilling donor pronto, they prey upon feckless workout nut Bobby (Luis Lemus), and things only get worse
once they dump his body in the contaminated water behind Davis’ plant.
Like The Toxic Avenger, which Louis
Mathew’s Look Who’s Toxic (aka Bobby aka Toxic Adventure Part 4) attempts to emulate (and wishes to hell it
was even remotely as accomplished as, if you can believe that), this film
concerns itself with environmental matters and pollution as a springboard for a
revenge story. Outside of that, it could
care less about the social issues involved.
When Dr. Reskin (Alex Morris)
talks about his findings in the water at Davis’ facility, it’s only to either
dress Davis down or to tell a disinterested reporter that the waste in the
water could be “life altering” (I wonder what that could foreshadow?). And fair enough. This is an exploitation/monster movie, and
they’ve been using this tactic for decades.
All you need to do is look at films like Them! or The Horror of Party
Beach or Spawn of the Slithis for
proof. So, when it’s all said and done,
we can’t fault Mathew for not
treating the issue of industrial pollution with the sort of depth and gravity
as we might expect from a Sixty Minutes
exposé (or even Godzilla Versus the Smog
Monster). There are plenty of other
things to fault him for, however.
One of the film’s failings
(probably its biggest) is its pacing. It
is positively glacial. It takes well
over half the run time for Bobby to return from his watery grave. In the meantime, we are treated to endless
scenes of Davis musing about how evil he is and how disposable everyone else
is. Never mind that the other main
protagonist, Bobby’s girlfriend Susan (Shelly
Stolaroff), gets to the bottom of absolutely nothing during her
investigation into Bobby’s disappearance.
Further, her being in the film at all is tangential to pretty much
everything that happens in the plot aside from acting as a reason to try
injecting a modicum of pathos into the finale (it doesn’t work). In fact, Susan spends most of the film being
tied up and/or chased around by Drake (and not in a fun way). It may not have been so egregious if the
scenes between what miniscule action and gore there are were more than simply
retreading variations on the same dialogue and story beats we saw in the film’s
first fifteen minutes (and felt like it sucked up twice that much time).
There is a saying touted by
screenwriting gurus (whether it was Syd
Field, Robert McKee, or some
other, and regardless of how you feel about their processes and teaching
methods is inconsequential) that scenes should start late and end early. I have always understood this expression to
mean that a screenwriter should stay focused in each scene, relaying necessary
information and then moving on. Every
second of a film costs a lot money (or at least they used to), so blowing it
watching a person brew a pot of coffee from start to finish is ludicrous. Otherwise, there had better be a solid reason
why this process needs to be exhaustively detailed for the audience (at the
risk of costing a film the other thing it cannot afford to squander: and
audience’s patience). So, if the action
of a scene starts at a point of dramatic conflict and continues through another
point (or even multiple points, so long as it doesn’t lag drastically or
descend into repetitiveness) and then exits, tension and interest are likely to
be maintained, and anticipation of what comes next is likely to be generated. In other words, the script is well-paced. Unfortunately for Look Who’s Toxic, double threat writer and editor Alan Stewart has a hard time doing this
both on the page and on the screen. The
example that sticks in my head most prominently (in a movie loaded with
prominent examples) is when Drake drives Davis’ limousine to the chemical plant. We watch as the car slowly pulls in from
frame right, until we can almost make out the emblem on the trunk. Then, after Davis decides that these pesky
protestors are going to be difficult to simply plow through, he instructs Drake
to take him to the rear entrance. We
then watch as the limo now slowly exits frame right in reverse, until it is
completely gone from sight. Now, if you
thought that the last couple of sentences were painful to read (y’know, as
opposed to the rest of my review), picture in your mind how painful it is to
watch.
Another major failing of the film
is its tone(s). The title alone clues
you in that the filmmakers wanted to look like they were being irreverent, but
really it just looks like they didn’t give a shit at all (come on, a play on Look Who’s Talking?!). Remember how I said the opening monologue/info
dump was deadly serious? Well, cut to
the very next scene in a hospital, where a woman is in labor but refusing to
open her legs for the doctors, whinging about the pain. Her husband (who I am almost absolutely
certain holds a paperback copy of Ira
Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby in his
hand) pleads with her and grouses about all the birthing classes they
took. Shunted to the waiting room, he
lights up a smoke, right next to a no smoking sign! Hilarity!
The fake television station that keeps us up to date on the protestors
outside the chemical plant (read: a reporter appears every now and then and
reminds us that people are protesting outside the chemical plant) goes by the
call letters KRAP. Get it?! That so much more of the movie is played
straight (and if it isn’t, it’s either subtle to the point of subliminality, or
I’m as dense as cement) is a massive misstep.
It’s literally just people talking, and worse than that, saying the same
things over and over again (imagine the worst soap opera in the world and
multiply it by one thousand). What The Toxic Avenger gets right is that it
is positively gleeful about its ridiculousness and violence (I maintain that it
is the franchise for people who love “dead baby” jokes), and it both starts and
finishes from that perspective. I’m not
saying that tonal shifts are bad; I’m saying they are badly handled here. Sure, once the abysmal Bobby Monster makes
his appearance, Look gets a tiny bit
more interesting. Yet even then, it
treats every scene like a chore to be finished rather than anticipated and
enjoyed. If you’re looking for chores to
do, come over and clean my house. I
won’t force you to watch Look Who’s Toxic. I promise.
MVT: The monster attack
scenes are definitely gory. They’re also
too little and too late to save this dreck.
Make or Break: The Break (if
we’re not counting the drudgery that came before it) is the scene where the
Bobby Monster meets up with a couple of paramedics. If it’s supposed to be serious, it isn’t, and
if it’s supposed to be humorous, it isn’t.
Double fail.
Score: 3.5/10
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