Susan Jones Movies

The feverishly deranged minds at Troma Films endeavor to top their original cinematic stink-bomb Class of Nuke 'Em High with this excruciatingly awful mess -- which takes place at the newly-built Tromaville Institute of Technology (TIT), built after the nuclear disaster that mutated and destroyed most of the students and faculty of the Tromaville High School. It seems something gloopy is amiss once again, as certain members of the teaching staff are plotting to turn the students into hideous mutants (a negligible difference, to be sure). When Nuke 'Em High Junior College's ace reporter (Brick Bronsky) starts poking around, he soon finds himself nose-deep in a toxic quagmire of hideously bad music, sweaty youth gangs, bouncing naked ladies, sophomoric movie and TV in-jokes, bizarre food products, and (last but not least) "Tromie," the atomic squirrel. Finding this film a somewhat slicker effort than its predecessor is comparable to discovering a higher grade of plastic vomit, but the Tromites have certainly managed to pack this one to overflowing with sick humor (be sure to catch the closing credits), and cuddly Tromie is even more adorable than The Toxic Avenger (who puts in a cameo appearance). ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

On a midnight clear 2,000 years ago, three wise men enter a manger where a babe is wrapped in swaddling clothes. It is an infant called Brian...and the three wise men are in the wrong manger. For the rest of his life, Brian (Graham Chapman) finds himself regarded as something of a messiah -- yet he's always in the shadow of this other guy from Galilee. Brian is witness to the Sermon of the Mount, but his seat is in such a bad location that he can't hear any of it ("Blessed are the cheesemakers?"). Ultimately, he is brought before Pontius Pilate and sentenced to crucifixion, which takes place at that crowded, nonexclusive execution site a few blocks shy of Calvary. Rather than utter the Last Six Words, Brian leads his fellow crucifixees in a spirited rendition of a British music-hall cheer-up song "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." The whole Monty Python gang (Chapman, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, and Terry Gilliam) are on hand in multiple roles, playing such sacred characters as Stan Called Loretta, Biggus Dickus, Deadly Dirk, Casts the First Stone, and Intensely Dull Youth; also showing up are Goon Show veteran Spike Milligan and a Liverpool musician named George Harrison. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi