Returning to more obscure pursuits, there is a phenomenon that has been sweeping the world for a couple of years now. My cousin’s husband’s friend from Canada introduced me to the movie, and my life is richer for it.

Troll 2.

From the title alone you may be able to guess a couple of things about this movie.

First guess: The movie is a late-80′s to early-90′s, direct-to-video, sequel of poor quality, cashing in on moderate success of original. Good guess. You’d be right.

Second guess: The movie has something to do with Trolls, probably evil ones. Usually you’d be right. The titles of Jaws, Alien, Twister, Critters, The Exorcist, The Bear, Nixon, and Gremlins all do a perfectly adequate job of explaining exactly what the movie will feature. Some of the above titles even had sequels that featured the exact same character or creature featured in the title. But not Troll 2.

The first Troll movie featured trolls, lots of them. Trolls with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, trolls with Sonny Bono, trolls with the prosecutor from Law & Order before they switched to Sam Waterston, even trolls with two characters named Harry Potter. The monsters in Troll 2 are, counter intuitively, goblins. Yep. Little, ugly, Papier-mâché masked, green goo eating goblins.

Our story begins with an elderly man telling his grandson a fairy tale, or reciting his lines at some random kid, depending on how you look at things. The fairy tale shows us a young man in a green, Robin Hood style hat running from the goblins described above. He is eventually entranced by a comely lass with large freckles scribbled onto her nose. She feeds him green goo, turns into a goblin, and then eats him.

The kid’s mother enters the room to see who he’s been talking to. He lets slip that his grandpa was there, and he gets a lecture from his mother. You see, his grandpa is dead. Well, sort of. His shade has returned to warn his grandson abuot goblins. And yes, I’m sure that the movie is called Troll 2.

Meanwhile, the kid’s dad is planning a family trip to the small town of Nilbog. Nothing suspicious there. (And yes, that is the same Nilbog featured in Guitar Hero 2.)

Meanwhile again, the kid’s older teenage sister is lifting weights in her bedroom. If you can call pushing just the barbell into the air “lifting weights”. Her boyfriend surprises her by coming through the window and hilarity ensues. You see, none of these people are actors, especially the teenage girl. The Italian producers must have had a casting call for people who could best memorize the lines, instead of who could best deliver the lines. Now, memorization is an important part of the acting process, but the teenage sister rushes to spit out her lines without taking a breath or changing her tone in that rapid fire way that you see from that one kid in the junior high play that only has one long line and just wants to get it over with. Kind of like that last sentence. Without slowing down or changing her tone she knees her boyfriend between the legs and says, “My father hates you. If he catches you here, he’ll cut your little nuts off and eat them.” She then immediately suggests that he come with her family on their vacation. I literally thought she was playing with this guys emotions the first time I saw the movie, but the next day, she’s angry that her boyfriend was left behind.

Each of these “special” moments of the movie come across as totally unexpected and bizarre. This unique combination coupled with the low expectations of a movie called Troll 2 makes this one of the funniest experiences I’ve ever had.

While the family is driving to their pseudo-vacation, the teenage sister continues to whine about leaving her boyfriend behind. The mother finally gets fed up, demands that her daughter stop complaining, and that her son sing, “that song I like so much.” Reluctantly, the kid starts singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”. Again, the bizarre conversation combined with the unexpected choice in “favorite song” makes this a laugh out loud moment.

The logic of the story line is, at best, completely insane. The kid’s dead grandfather pauses time to tell his grandson that his family must not eat the food. He gives the kid one minute to do something before time starts up again. Think about that for a minute. This ghost has the power to stop time but is virtually powerless against a town of goblins and leaves it to his grandson to stop his family from eating the poison.

Why are the goblins trying to poison the food? Well, because they’re vegetarians. Militant vegetarians. They have meetings and diatribe against the evils of meat.

So again, why are the goblins trying to poison the food? Well, because they want to eat the vacationing family. Wait, didn’t I just say that the goblins were militant vegetarians? Exactly. You see, the goblins standard operating procedure starts by tricking humans into eating green goo. This causes the humans to transform into plant material (as shown by the green sweat that cascades down their face out of their hair). Once the humans become plants, the goblins are happy to devour them.

Oh, and there’s a witch. She’s the leader of the goblins. Don’t ask, I don’t know why. While she actively participates in the green goo scheme with the goblins, she takes a break to seduce one of the minor characters. Again we’re assaulted with a fierce hilarity resulting from the unexpected and the bizarre. The witch magically appears on the television that the teenage boy is watching in his RV. She enters with a cob or corn. A cob or corn. The witch holds the corn with her teeth, pushes the teen onto the bed, and they proceed to eat the corn off the cob simultaneously. After a few minutes popcorn begins to fly at the pair from offscreen.

I’m not kidding. I couldn’t make this up.

I won’t ruin the ending, but it involves grandpa giving the kid an ultimate weapon to defeat the militant vegetarian goblins: a double baloney sandwich.