The Toxic Avenger Unrated (2025)

This doesn’t start well, indeed after about ten minutes I thought it was just going to be “Tyrion Lannister” does “Bruce Banner”. Well I was quite pleasantly surprised as it takes those foundations and, with it’s tongue firmly implanted in it’s cheek, and with him suitably armed with his newly radioactive mop, we set off on a crime caper with a difference. Kevin Bacon’s “Bob Garbinger” runs a big chemical company that routinely churns out enough gunge into the rivers and streams of the city to give Julia Roberts and Albert Finney enough work for a lifetime. “Winston” (Peter Dinklage) is trying to rear teenage stepson “Wade” (Jacob Tremblay) whilst holding down a menial job in one of those plants. When he gets a terrible diagnosis from his doctor, he thinks he has company health insurance - but when platinum turns out not to be all it’s cracked up to be, he decides to ask his boss to intercede. That just sees him rather savagely treated and dumped into a drain where, well let’s just say it isn’t envy that has turned him green. Meantime, we learn that all in his garden isn’t exactly rosy for “Garbinger” either, so with hoodlums chasing him and his wacky brother “Fritz” (Elijah Wood doing his best impersonation of “Gru”) organising a kid-napping it falls to the irritated “Toxie” to save the city, nobble the baddies, rescue “Wade” and maybe even stop his eye from constantly popping out of it’s socket on a great big stalk! This is quite an entertaining parody of many things super-hero with shades of Hammer and John Carpenter thrown into a mix that is held together amiably by a Dinklage who looks like he is enjoying himself. He even manages to rescue a cat! The scenario serves to remind us of just how cavalier we have been and still are with our environment in the name of convenience and though Bacon isn’t really at his best, he and his band of “Nuts” provide plenty to swing a pretty lethal sponge-on-stick at! High brow it isn’t, but when “Winston” discovers the astonishingly corrosive powers of his own wee…! Mindless and enjoyable, and I liked it in the end. Wouldn’t bet against a sequel.