Juliet is a poor little rich girl who lives with her protective, domineering father. Tromeo is a poor young wastrel born on the wrong side of the tracks. When the two fall in love, aching, high-strung romance ensues. But since this is a Troma movie, it also provides an excuse for gore, violence, nudity, body piercings, sick humor, vomit, piss and -- it goes without saying -- lots and lots of plugs for previous Troma productions.
By now, everyone is familiar with that "Troma Aroma". Ugly, flood-lit lighting. Coarse, knee-jerk direction. Unfunny, forced jokes. Lots of jobs for the director's white-trash Jersey family. Nauseating set-pieces that point out their cleverness, that are anything BUT. You get the picture, but I don't think the nimrods at Troma do.
Fans of bad movies are drawn to them largely because the cinema, coasting on it's reputation as "The Liveliest Art" got uppity along the way. Kevin Costner taking the annual budget of Third World countries and throwing it away on Mad Max-type science fiction movies that went out of fashion in the mid-Eighties being is a foremost example. We rush to cheap, funky alien invasion flicks such as Zontar the Thing From Venus and Plan Nine from Outer Space due to their reckless imagination, a quality Independence Day conspicuously lacks. Tromeo and Juliet, and Troma Pictures, just don't get this. They sit down and draw out on graph paper how inept their projects will be. A good bad movie strives for seriousness and misses the mark. A Troma movie deliberately shoots blanks, making for an empty and irritating experience.
Tromeo and Juliet also fails even on a John Waters-grossout level. Waters parlayed a career by objectively and effetely recording atrocious acts for his camera. When a blind girl's seeing eye dog is shot in Toxic Avenger and the camera focuses in on the German Shepherd's pulsating guts, however, we get the impression that a bunch of troglodytes are laughing at it at face value. Tromeo and Juliet will not disappoint Troma "fans," a very frightening concept in itself. It appears that studio mascot Toxic Avenger, a janitor who fell into a barrel of radioactive waste, has become symbolic of a culture sustained on junk food and bad art. You are what you eat . . . . .
By Greg Goodsell (1998)
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