Reviews

Troll is an endearing fantasy film, despite it's lackluster first appearance, and will likely be seeing a resurgence in the next year or so if director Bueschler goes ahead with his remake, if only out of the interest drawn by an inevitable lawsuit. Noah Hathaway is reportedly on board to play Harry Potter Sr. Rowling's camp has made a few early feints, claiming infringement, but I would think it difficult to stop a film from reprising a role made a decade before the novel. Especially one with many similarities. But then, they have more money. I find the whole HP trajectory childish and inane, personally. Troll was a different thing entirely. Oblique Shakespearean reference, a quirky B-star cast (Phil Fondacaro's most entertaining role since Under The Rainbow), and a comical seriousness reminiscent of Labyrinth or Bubba Ho-Tep. Fun stuff.

Yes the print is terrible, the audio worse. Yes it's obviously not the studio session the album came from. It's amateurish, silly at first glance, and almost obnoxious. That's the first 10 seconds. It's dark. Daaark. Vampiric, hyper-stoned lashing out at all of the hippie culture and icons. Now I know why those guys are so famous. It's the most straight-faced, vicious satire, delivered in dead-pan wasted modality. From the 'surgeons on acid' on, my jaw was on the floor... The music, sloppy and cruelly sycophantic, is awesome, for want of a better term. Belushi's "Bottom Of The Barrel?" Wow.

"Just dig yourself." "Where you're comin' from, man, no one wants to be!"

Wow. Wow, wow. Hmmm. Do I waste the words? In the spirit of Bakshi, I'll stay human and fail by trying. I won't believe the Grandfather. Anyone who studies Bakshi feels the tides of generations, of change, of the street, of music, and art, addiction and emotion. Of the loss of soul which accompanies conviction. So those few will suck on the sour, ironic pill of these comments like they have every minute of Bakshi film, and twist their face wry, and spit it out and never forget. They illustrate alike. Let me simplify and close; from 'a brilliant, if all-too-brief, collaboration...' "Soon there are goofy attempts by a hired Grandfather Yook (voiced by Charles Durning) to take on the task of stopping the Zooks from continuing on their bottom-buttered path." And contrast. From 'Simplistic and misguided' "In any event, the cartoon is little more than simplistic propaganda which does little to explore the nuances of the ethical questions behind nuclear armament and instead tries to inculcate fear of weapons technology into children." Do I really need to summarize? Probably, but I won't. Conviction becomes reality. What acts is indestructible.