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\u201c<\/span>Just play the fucking hits,\u201d is the advice given by grotesquely combed-over, club-footed Fritz Garbinger (Elijah Wood) to members of local band The Killer Nutz, some way into The Toxic Avenger<\/i>. He is talking about an open-air performance that they have to give, midway between carrying out abductions and assassinations for Fritz\u2019s brother Robert (Kevin Bacon), who operates a\u00a0run-down highly pollutant factory producing supposed panaceas that are actually carcinogenic.<\/p>\n Fritz\u2019s words might as well apply to writer\/\u200bdirector Macon Blair\u2019s remake, which still plays many of the old tunes from Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman\u2019s 1984<\/span> original. The setting, for example, is \u200b\u201c<\/span>St Roma\u2019s Village\u201d, concealing within itself, in mutated form, the original toponym Tromaville. For this The Toxic Avenger<\/i> recombines familiar elements from its source, while making them refer not to Reagan\u2019s Orwellian America, but to an even more putrescent post-millennial corporatocracy where health insurance is rarely honoured and the little man is marginalised, humiliated and oppressed.<\/p>\n Here the little man is no longer the teen Melvin, but widowed single parent Winston Gooze (Peter Dinklage), dealing with a\u00a0diagnosis of terminal cancer without a\u00a0safety net. Yet Winston is still a\u00a0janitor (now at Robert\u2019s factory rather than a\u00a0gym), and still manages somehow to be wearing that absurdly iconic pink tutu when he transforms into the Hulk-like green-hued Toxie, and still wields a\u00a0mop as his weapon of choice for cleaning up the community. Yet here there is a\u00a0new focus on Winston\u2019s attempts to connect with his teen stepson Wade (Jacob Tremblay), and to become a\u00a0hero in Wade\u2019s eyes \u2013 and this theme, entirely alien to the original, is so thoroughly ingrained here that it dominates the post-credits coda. One might even regard it as instantiating Blair\u2019s own struggles to form a\u00a0meaningful relationship with the father text \u2013 and Kaufman himself has a\u00a0cameo near the end, grudgingly acknowledging this bastard son of a\u00a0movie.<\/p>\n The original Toxic Avenger<\/i> was, like all cult films, unlikely. Essentially a\u00a0superhero origin story with an incongruous mix of juvenile comedy, sex, sadism and ultraviolent slaughter, it smuggled in under the guise of its knowing tastelessness a\u00a0degree of political satire. Though few would call Herz and Kaufman\u2019s film great, it is often said that mediocre films have the best potential for better remakes. Yet this new The Toxic Avenger<\/i> is relatively restrained, infuriatingly unfunny, yet entirely on-the-nose for more than just the stench of rot and urban decay that its scenes so frequently evoke. Sometimes the old hits are just better left uncovered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nGet more Little White\u00a0Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n