In Best Worst Movie, the schlock epic Troll 2 triggers a Christopher Guest movie in real life
by Jim Ridley @countrylifeblog
"You can't piss on hospitality!" George Hardy regales a less than impressed audience with his Troll 2 moment of glory in Best Worst Movie.
Before you hurl another sackful of spoons at a midnight show of The Room, check out Michael Paul Stephenson's engaging documentary Best Worst Movie, which examines the so-bad-it's-good cult-movie phenomenon from a sympathetic perspective — the inside. A lifetime ago, Stephenson was the child star of Troll 2, a dumbfounding 1990 horror fantasy that has neither trolls nor a prior Troll. Now that legions of hooting hipsters have embraced the movie, Stephenson follows his on-screen dad — George Hardy, now an ebullient small-town Alabama dentist — as he ponders another shot at fame.
Christopher Guest couldn't have made up Hardy's climb down the rungs of F-list celebrity, culminating in a mortifying merch-booth signing at a soul-sucking hellcon. But Hardy has an indefatigable good nature and a never-say-die weatherman's grin; his acceptance of the limits of his backhanded notoriety makes him a hero, not a goat. And no matter what the cultists say, I'm with hothead director Claudio Fragasso — Troll 2 genuinely creeps me out. (Opens Friday at The Belcourt with midnight showings of Troll 2 on Friday and Saturday.)
