"Out Of The Garbage Pail And Into Your Heart"

Where does one draw the line between irony and manic psychosis? While I may have put The Garbage Pail Kids Movie on my Netflix queue out of some ironic delight in bad cinema, it was a much darker and disturbing force that kept me glued to the television for the last hour and thirty seven minutes.

What I find even more disturbing was the level of sociological insight I tried to glean from the film.

The Garbage Pail Kids are accidentally freed from their garbage pail inside an antique store run by Cap’n Manzini, a wizard of sorts who, it is hinted at, may be an immortal. It is never fully explained how he has come to possess the garbage pail that contains the Kids, but he does make a speech to young Dodger (played to great effect by hobbit Sam Gamgee’s brother Mackensie Astin) about the mythology of Pandora’s Box, likening the evil it contained to the dangerous inhabitants of this dented old garbage pail. It is, in fact, Pandora’s Pail.

We are first introduced to the 14 year old Dodger as he is being savagely beaten by a tight-knit group of 23 year old ruffians led by the dapper yet dangerous Juice. Juice, we will learn later, aside from being the stylishly-dressed neighborhood bully, has some sort of stronghold on the illegal trade of fashion goods and accessories. (This is hinted at in a telephone conversation at the film’s climax, where Juice is talking on the phone backstage at his girlfriend’s fashion show, telling the person on the other end, “As soon as the stuff gets over the border, get it to the warehouse.”)

Dodger has a bit of a crush on Juice’s girlfriend Tangerine, who, along with being Juice’s number one gal, sidelines as a fashion designer. She sells her homemade goods in the alley behind a happening dance club. To show her true DIY colors, she keeps all her proceeds in a cigar box.

Dodger enlists the aide of his new found Garbage Pail Kid friends to help him design twelve outfits to sell alongside Tangerine on Friday night.

Eventually this use of the GPKs as slave labor escalates, until Tangerine has them work on an entire fall line of clothes for a show that she managed to get at a local department store.

The Kids aren’t always victims of child labor abuse, and escape one night to paint the town red. This involves a trip to see a Three Stooges Festival at the local theater, while Ali Gator and Windy Winston sneak off to visit “The Toughest Bar In The World”. Aptly named, for they find themselves in danger of being pummeled by the biker gang clientele, until Windy gains their respect with his noxious farts.

More hi-jinks and double-crosses pepper the film. On the night of Tangerine’s big fashion show, she locks the Kids in the basement of the Cap'n Manzini's antique store and gives the key to her boyfriend Juice. Juice and his two cohorts kidnap the GPKs and take them to the State Home For The Ugly, which pays him a handsome reward. (??)

The GPKs are placed in a cage labeled “Too Gross”, while other inhabitants of the State Home are locked in cages marked “Too Old”, “Too Skinny” “Too Short”, “Too Hairy” and “Too Silly”. This is the film’s strongest critique of the way society treats difference and is hell bent on homogeneity. The film’s theme song, “You Can Be A Garbage Pail Kid” sings the praises of being different and unusual, and contains the scathing line, “If you think we’re ugly/take a look in the mirror”.

We learn to accept people regardless of their appearance. The Garbage Pail Kids proved themselves to be brilliant fashion designers in spite of their crippling hideousness. They befriended other outcasts, like Dodger, their fellow State Home For The Ugly patients, and the bikers at the “Toughest Bar In The World” (who helped free everyone from the State Home near the climax of the film)

We learned about the horrors of forced child labor and how it will come back and bite you in the ass. In this particular case, the GPKs ransacked the fashion show, farted on the audience, and ripped the clothes off the models, leaving them to run around in their underwear for several minutes.

The 14 year old Mackensie Astin also did some amazing stunt work in the final fight scene with Juice. I think they probably filmed the fight scenes later, because Mackensie is noticeably taller and larger (about 6’, 175 lbs.) in the fight scenes, than he was in the close-ups and rest of the movie (about 5’3”, 100lbs.) It was smart of the filmmakers to let him bulk up like that, because he could’ve hurt himself fighting the 6’2” actor who played Juice, had he not been in prime physical shape.

I am left with one question, however: How drunk was I when I moved The Garbage Pail Kids Movie to the top of my queue, bumping out Good Night and Good Luck, Walk The Line, and Capote?