Some say Hollywood's remakes, sequels and franchises prove they're totally out of ideas.

Well, I say it takes an awful lot of brainpower to turn a board game based around abstract boats and Cartesian coordinates into a movie about underwater space aliens or whatever.

So let's give some credit to these unsung heroes tasked with turning commercial properties into feature-length movies. And let's give absolutely none of that credit to 1987's The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.

Mackenzie Astin keeps getting beaten up by the boyfriend of his dream girl -- Katie Barberi. But after accidentally unleashing the Garbage Pail Kids from the hedge wizard that Astin works for, Astin and Barberi begin to bond over a shared love of fashion design.

Yeah, that's a real plot. Most of the time, it isn't too hard to boil a plot down to something halfway interesting, but that's the best I can do for The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.

You know you're watching something awful when you know it's awful right away. Most bad movies can deceive you until about halfway through, when you realize this is as good as it's going to get. Not b>The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. From the moment Astin is shoved around by a pack of '80s L.A. muscle thugs, all you can do is sigh. Or turn off the movie, I suppose. Write the great American novel! The world is your oyster.

If you don't turn it off, however, you will be treated to a host of grotesque creatures sharing every gas and fluid in their bodies.

Despite being directed by the man who made Son of Hitler, it's crude and broad.

Despite being written by the screenwriter of Legion of Fire: Killer Ants!, it's dumb and cliched.

Cliched? When it's about magical, trash-infesting, waist-high alligator-people? Yes, but b>The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is also about how real beauty comes from inside. Now, I disagree. If you look inside yourself, all you'll see is kidneys and gall bladders. Maybe that's why this movie has nothing interesting to say about true beauty until the very end, when Astin rebuffs Barberi with a line carrying powerful echoes of Gone with the Wind. Other than that, it's a long slog of ankle puddles and horrible '80s clothing.

Do I expect too much from a movie based on a popular series of gross-out trading cards? Well, yeah. But there's bad, and then there's The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.

* Contact Ed Robertson at edwrobertson@gmail.com.