There
is a new class at Tromaville High School, but they still have no class. Before
the Veronica Mars team raised over
one million Kickstarter dollars for their high school reunion, Team Troma sequelized
or rebooted or re-whatevered Nuke ‘Em
High for about twelve cents. Having split their triumphant homecoming into
two volumes mostly as a gimmick, Troma lets Return
to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1 (trailer here) ooze into theaters today.
As
all cultured viewers surely remember, the nuclear power plant next to
Tromaville High had a little mishap in the 1980’s, leading to a mutant uprising. The plant is now safely closed, but an
organic food processing facility has been built directly over it. Naturally,
they churn out some pretty disgusting foodstuffs, primarily for the school
market. Taco Tuesday will turn ugly when
the radioactive guac turns the glee club into the next generation of the rampaging
mutant “Cretin Gang.”
Chrissy,
a pseudonymous student blogger, always knew there was something wrong with Tromorganic
and the high school lunch program, but nobody seems particularly interested in
her evidence. She also gets a little
distracted quarrelling and secretly lusting after Lauren, the poor little rich
girl who just enrolled in Tromaville. It
is massively ironic that there are more leeringly exploitative lesbian sex
scenes in Blue is the Warmest Color,
because Nuke ‘Em is really trying its
best.
Right,
so what can you say about Vol. 1,
except that it is a Troma movie? The gore is ridiculously over the top and the
humor is in aggressively poor taste.
Yet, in its defense, Nuke ‘Em Parte
Une seems to have less of a mean
streak than earlier Troma grind-ups.
Believe it or not, Asta Paredes and Catherine Corcoran are sort of
decent as Chrissy and Lauren, all things considered. In contrast, Lloyd Kaufman, Mr. Troma himself,
is outrageously shticky as Lee Harvey Herzkauf, the corporate villain behind
Tromorganic. Still, it is a subtler more nuanced performance than Meryl Streep’s work in August: Osage County, so if the Academy nominates her they might as well nominate
him while they’re at it.
