The final entry in 'The Toxic Avenger' franchise (well...until the new one finds distribution) was a bit of a scattershot ride for me to say the least, After 'Toxic Avenger: Part 3' failed to do the numbers, the franchise went dormant for the better part of just over 10 years. But then, at the turn of the milennium. Lloyd Kaufman decided to try again to bring New Jerseys lone superhero son back to the big screen...and the results? Well, they're not so good.
For a starters, the film opens by slamming the previous two entries in the franchise, announcing that they 'dont count' at this point and that 'Part 4' is now the OFFICIAL sequel to the original 'Toxic Avenger'...Which...I dont mind so much...But then they spend a huge chunk of this film re-introducing elements (such as Tromatons) back into the series...
The other thing to prepare yourself for, is a distinct change in the approach to the way these movies were (and still are) made. Y'see, up until the mid 90s Troma movies main goal was (seemingly) to bring cartoon level violence and humour into live action scenarios complete with all the real world gore that would inevitably follow it.
But at some point around 1995/1996. Attitudes changed, and a shift took place AWAY from making films that were absurd first, and offensive second (the idea being that these productions were too cartoony, crazy and absurd to ever really TRUELY be taken seriously when they did offensive things) to instead riding on a wave of 'anti PC' humour.
In short; from the mid 90s to the present day, rather than anti PC rhetoric being a more casual played down byproduct of the absurdity of a Troma film filled with aggressive characters and tones...It became THE drive of Tromas films...and thats important to differentiate, because a film casually dropping racial slurs when its firing a hundred jokes a minute and its CLEARLY not using those racial slurs or rhetoric as THE main drive of a joke CAN sometimes be funny...But a film where the central joke is picking on minorities and just shouting slurs over and over again, apart from being lazy and annoying is in fact NOT funny (not in my opinion anyway.)
I mention this because a core central element to 'The Toxic Avenger 4: Citizen Toxie' is predominantly the abuse and slurring of people with physical, mental and learning disorders. In fact...MOST of the film is spent with actors pretending to have learning difficulties, twitching, putting on 'voices' and HARD leaning into stereotypes.
The film basically RELIES on this, alongside gags involving actors in 'Blackface', racial and homophobic slurs, and graphic toilet humour to get by. Which, to me at least pretty much instantly made it one of THE most offputting things to try and work through in quite a long time.
The basic plot is that a local gang called 'The Baby Mafia' infiltrate a School for 'special' children, giving the police 30 minutes to meet there demands or they'll kill a student, and then every 5 minutes AFTER that, they'll kill one more student. Eventually; Toxie and his faithful asstant 'Lard Ass' (a morbidly obese man who fights with a baguette and 'lard spray') tackle the mafia, but in doing so a wave of children end up murdered and the Baby Mafia activate a bomb, killing Lard Ass, but...As luck would have it, at the exact same time in a parallel dimension, a bomb was set off at the exact same location at the exact same time. causing a rift in space time that forces two Toxies to swap universes. Toxie ends up in an evil version of Tromaville called 'Amortville' and his doppelganger, the evil 'Noxious Offender' is sent to Tromaville.
The pair eventually realise whats going on and while Toxie tries to clean up 'Amortville' and make his way back to his own dimension, 'Noxie' actually kind of likes Tromaville, and decides it's going to be his new place to cause carnage and sow chaos...Oh! and theres a B plot where Toxies girlfriend (who for some reason is now called 'Sarah') is trying for a Baby with Toxie, but 'Noxie' finds out and sets about impregnating Sarah with his evil demon baby seed...So yeh, if your sensitive to SA and rape content...be aware that this things also CHOCKED full of SA and rape jokes AS WELL AS actual scenes of SA and rape...
The first time I watched this, I remembered actively hating it. LOATHING the fact that they essentially turned a daft, shocking but ultimately charming series of films into edgelord fodder for seemingly no reason. On this rewatch, my opinion softened on it a little bit, but my main thoughts still remain the same.
The script is simultaineously lazy in the sense that its just a load of nonsequiters *occasionally* tied together by a very thin plot device and propped up with an ungodly amount of racist, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist bollocks. but then equally it gets overly complex when its trying to deal with multiple universes...To the point that it really kind of stops making sense...But the thing is, I dont think that was intentional, I dont think Lloyd and his writing team were trying to satarize 'sliding doors' style movies here...I think they just didnt really take the time to BOTHER hashing out a movie that would at least TRY to hold together...
The pacings all over the place, at an hour and 40, this thing DRAGS so bad. Tonally its trying to recapture the aggression of the first Toxie...But because it cant quite nail the absurdist humour of the first film, it just comes across as an angry movie that using humour to mask how angry it is, rather than a funny movie thats using anger as a mask to amuse.
The act structuring is more or less non existent, the characters are all stereotypes or charicatures...and not good ones. the dialogue has the odd moment that made me gaffaw...but those moments were well and truely few and far between...
Its a script that feels rough, unfinished and most importantly, it just isnt that fun. most of it is quite mean spirited and the handful of times it does manage to capture the energy of the first film, its very fleeting and feels almost of of place amongst the rest of the film.
On the direction front, we're once again having to deal with stock footage on and off to get by, Kaufmans work here is consistent, but feels phoned in. Given they took over 10 years off from Toxie, you'd think they'd be coming back with an appitite, but that doesnt translate on screen. Theres no consistent vision. its chaos, but not the kind of organized chaos that shows thought and craft went into the production. Its chaos in the sense that it feels like everyone was handed a camera and told to 'have at it.'
And thats not mentioning the cheapness of the whole thing, almost every aspect of the set design and direction within the locations feels cheaper. most of the signs on buildings are just written on pieces of paper. Toxies makeup has been downgraded to just a generic halloween mask, and the recent 4k remaster makes it PAINFULLY clear that it wasnt even moulded for the actors head. as his mouth doesnt really fit the moutpiece of the mask leaving random flaps between his face and the latex.
The handful of times it DOES feel like a budget was present, they kind of ruin it with an inconsistent edit, that has WAY too many cuts going on for its own good, is overly busy and generally feels a bit lost in itself. There were moments watching this that I had to stop and try and take stock of what was ACTUALLY going on onscreen, because it was cutting to things for LITERAL seconds, then cutting away.
The cine isnt great either, theres a lot of handheld work, it feels rough and rushed. But not in the frenetic way that made the original 'Toxic Avenger' feel like something anarchic and new, in a way that makes it feel like they hadnt planned out the scene, so they just decided to free hand it and wing it.
composition is messy, vision isnt great and the edit really suffers as a result, with inconsistent shot variety, everything feels like it was assembled via blender...and the end product really didnt do it for me.
Throw in some weird performance stylings. Folks here are either angry without being funny, or are comedic without any other kind of personality type to offset the comedy...meaning they're either irritating or migraine inducing. Again; sometimes the film does have its moments and Clyde Lewis as the voice of Toxie is probably the best thing about this film. Hes decided to voice the character in the same way Adam Wests Batman delivered lines. He plays it more or less totally straight and in doing so, he makes some of the deliveries here genuinely hilarious.
I suppose honestly, the best thing about this film (easily) is the score. Which is 90s and very early 2000's style pop punk and a real shake up to the synthy stuff we've had in the previous films. Theres some genuinely great tracks on the soundtrack for this one, and while Im really not a big fan of the film itself, the OST is one i'd really quite like to get my hands on.
'Citizen Toxie' was quite a dissapointing watch for me. I didnt exactly have high hopes for it after 'Part 3' but I'd at least hoped that Kaufman and Hertz maybe would have used the 11 or so years gap to try and plan a future for the series...Instead, this comes across as rushed, insincere and offensive in a way that isnt funny, its just depressing...Its overly long, boring in places and never quite manages to hit the 'Troma' mark that made some of their other more notable works successful.
I could see myself revisiting this one again in future. But I really cant recommend it unless you're doing a marathon of all these films. the first 2 films are really all you need.
(Additional: the 4k remastering for this one is night and day over the old Bluray release. its the best this films looked on a home release...but again, given the content. While it looks incredible, it isnt enough to warrent ACTUALLY sitting through it.)
source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/citizen-toxie-the-toxic-avenger-iv/
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