The 'I' in your 'team'

Sunday, April 09, 2006

One Man's Trash . . .

From the I-Shit-You-Not-It's-Actually-Real Department:

Once in a lifetime there comes a film . . . a film that captures the voice of a generation . . . OK, a film that must be seen to be believed, a story that boggles the mind, making one wonder how it ever was greenlit . . . or at the very least, a movie that rouses your humble blogger from his current state of existential angst. No, I'm not talking about Love Actually (I'll never figure out the appeal of that one, but I digress). Yesterday while killing time*, I came across the following masterpiece:




Oh, it's real alright. Not just a clever photograph. In fact, you can rent it from both Netflix & Blockbuster, or if that isn't enough, throw this tour de force on your Amazon wishlist. IMDB offered no plot summary, so I did a little digging & found a nice description over at Dumpster Baby's parent company, Troma films, but it was the synopsis put together by DVDtalk that captured my heart:

Two crack whores are getting high when the overweight addict suddenly realizes she's giving birth. She has to get rid of the child or her drug dealer boyfriend will kill her. She gives the fetus to her friend, who tries to get rid of it. A local gang member rejects her offer, and she ends up placing the infant in a dumpster. From there, it finds its way into several differing hands, including a college student, a mentally retarded groundskeeper, a group of addle adolescents and a young girl who anguishes over a recent abortion. All the while, a black-hatted figure in a flowing cape is tracking the child, attempting to abduct it for unknown purposes. Eventually, a pair of teen paramours runs afoul of the infant's fate, and it's not long before the police - and a cannibal - are involved. All the while, our unseen infant is carried and cuddled, a catalyst for some, a curse for others. Eventually, the baby finds its way onto a desolate beach, where a bum provides a soliloquy to aging. And still, the man in the hat and cape keeps coming...

Now come on, how could you
not want to see it? Crack whores, overweight addicts, gangs, students, the handi-capable, cannibals . . . there's something for everyone. And with such a diverse array of characters, I've begun to imagine this film as Crash told through the eyes of an abandoned crack baby. I wonder if these characters are as stereotypical as the inhabitants of Paul Haggis' Los Angeles® . . .

So I'm still laughing about this find going on 24 hours later, but what nearly pushed my bladder to the breaking point was the following review by a hapless customer on Netflix's page (see above link):

What more could I possibly say about the movie? It is horrible! I popped the dvd in and it started off with some stupid stuff, then it just got even worse, it said it was not rated, so I figured it was safe for my 7 year old son to watch. WRONG! Their (sic) was a woman being raped, and when she was raped, they showed her full body, she then jumped off a bridge butt naked, they showed everything, they couldn't rate it because it was so horrible it shouldn't have even made it on the market I personally think! I think this should stop being sent to customers!

I would like to point out that titles aren't just "being sent to customers." Netflix doesn't decide, "Hey, you know what? There's a lot of buzz around this
Dumpster Baby movie, let's randomly send it to customers as a special treat!" God, I'd love it if things worked that way. Here's poor Kristin Wright of Anytown, USA, checking her mail when she comes across the usual red envelope. "What's this? Dumpster Baby, eh? I don't remember physically adding that to my queue. Gee, that was awful kind of 'em. Sounds like a good companion piece to Baby's Day Out for my impressionable 7 year old. In fact, I won't even bother to read the synopsis on the DVD sleeve before I pop it in the player for my unattended boy while I'm off mixing up a fresh batch of meth in the bathtub."



The DVDtalk review makes it sound like an honest-to-God, not-so-terrible movie. But, I have to admit, it's the angry parent's review that makes me
have to see this movie. Off to the top of my queue you go.

*I found this item on Defamer, which then directed me to the You Can't Make It Up blog, so I'm not blazing any new territory here, but then again, I never claim to be.