"O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?"

This is the question I posed to Lloyd Kaufman after his 1996 updating of the Bard's famous tragedy had reached its climax. I mean, I didn't actually email Mr. Kaufman and ask him why his film was so painfully awful, but I would have liked to.
I remember watching this on video a long time ago and being less than impressed with it then. Sure, there were hot lesbian sex scenes and giant monster penises and crushed/mutilated/deformed human heads...but it was really nothing new. Watching it again on the recently released (locally, that is) "Director's Cut" DVD I realised that, quite apart from the fact that I had I seen it all before, it probably wasn't all that wonderful to begin with.

My initial viewing of The Toxic Avenger was one of glee, amazement and adolescent awakening. It was, at the time, one of the many films that provided a worthy counterpart to the crud that production companies pimped to my particular demographic. In 2005, however, and after so recently revisiting the almost deliriously awful Hell of the Living Dead, I find it difficult to ascertain what it was, exactly, that attracted me to Troma films in the first place.

Oh yeah, I remember, the crappy acting, crappier effects and gratuitous nudity. For some reason, however, these things just don't seem to tickle me like they used to. Don't get me wrong, I will defend the merits of The Toxic Avenger to my deathbed, but I can no longer see the fun in films that are as aggressively bad as Tromeo and Juliet. For a cut-rate gore effect to really get me chuckling, it has to be played straight. And while much of this scatological updating of Shakespeare's romantic tragedy is loaded with potential, much of it also fails to be either entertaining or funny.

None of this will matter to the hardcore Troma devotees. I suppose I have just become the Captain Hook to the Troma Team's Peter Pan. As for the plot, well, it's Romeo and Juliet as we all knew it in high school, just with more puns and latex. And at 107 minutes, it feels damn long. On the DVD, Lloyd Kaufman informs the viewer that the first cut of the film ran for over 3 hours.

I can only pray that he was joking.

Tromeo and Juliet is what can only be described as a review-proof film. Everything about it sucks ass through a straw but, like most of the films in the Troma archives, that's exactly the point. However, making little or no effort is hardly a commendable thing for a production company to do and it is far too easy to simply film any old shit in the hope that ineptitude is still enough to make people laugh. Perhaps I've grown weary of the films in the Troma catalogue over the years. What was once funny and endearing to me has become familiar and boring.

There are some quintessential Troma gags to be found in the film, and it is certainly a Kaufman and Herz production through and through, but I tend to like my bad movies with a pinch of earnestness. It is always funnier to laugh at someone who has tried and failed than at someone who has tried to fail.