I don’t know what it is about Best Worst Movie that makes me want to call it a guilty pleasure; perhaps it’s that it is based on one of the ultimate guilty pleasures of cinema history, Troll 2, or that it is destined to be the documentary of choice for geeks and fanboys across North America for the next year or more. It could also be that, while most definitely being the most entertaining and enjoyable documentary in Hot Docs this year, it doesn’t actually function in many of the ways a ‘good’ doc does. It is all of the above, of course, but mostly the latter. The film has at least half a dozen spectacular characters that really couldn’t have been scripted any better. George Hardy, the father in Troll 2, is an excessively amiable dentist, charming in his good intentions and naivete. Claudio Fragasso, the original film’s director, and his wife, the screenwriter, are completely oblivious to the cult following that their film has developed, and we get to witness their epiphany first-hand, in all of its bitterness and confusion. Don Packard, the drugstore owner, is every bit as mentally unstable and frightening as one could have hopes he would be. And then there is Margo Prey, the mother. Poor Margo – the revelation of what she has turned into is too good to be spoiled, and really has to be seen to be believed. I have never seen Troll 2, but I came away from Best Worst Movie with an appreciation for the film that is on par with Sleepaway Camp, Dead Alive, and The Re-Animator: the best of trashy, cult, camp horror. As a documentary that studies the impact of making/starring in a terrible film, and the trauma that the cast must have experienced, shifting over the years into hyperbolic worship and praise, is hit and miss. The film works best when the tragedy of fallen dreams is shown to have taken its toll on the cast and crew in its most heartbreaking form, and even more when that tragedy morphs into joy and euphoria after those years of suffering. The first half hour of the film, I thought it was in trouble. Many of the laughs and set-ups were satisfied simply by showing footage from Troll 2, a cheap and lame reliance on the source material instead of the substance and craft of the documentarian. The substance does get better (much, much better), but it still feels like a lot of luck, rather than talent. Nagging criticisms aside, though, fans and the un-converted (as I am) of Troll 2 are almost gauranteed satisfaction from this feel-so-bad-it-feels-good film. I laughed till I cried, it’s true.