Tromeo & Juliet
Troma's aggressively tasteless parody of Shakespeare's quintessential star-crossed lovers features a bisexual Juliet living in white-trash suburban New Jersey and a blandly romantic Tromeo fond of Shakespeare-themed pornographic CD-ROMs with titles like As You Lick It, The Merchant Of Penis, and Much Ado About Humping. Tromeo & Juliet starts off strong, but pretty soon the vile, tasteless, unfunny gags begin to exponentially outnumber the vile, tasteless, reasonably amusing gags. By the time Juliet has mutat-ed into a hermaphrodite cow and her suitor is projectile-vomiting all over her, any comic momentum that had been built has been sacrificed for cheap gore and ample scatological humor. Although Tromeo & Juliet is Troma's highest-profile release this decade, boasting a decent mainstream soundtrack, Troma purists need not worry: It still features the non-existent production values, wooden acting, infantile humor, and gratuitous sex, gore and exploding body parts that have become Troma's trademark. Nonetheless, you have to give the company credit for delivering exactly what it promises: an intermittently funny film with more than enough nudity, cheesy special effects and mindless vulgarity to keep its chief demographic of maladjusted 12-year-old boys happy.