Touted as "Part IV In The Tomatoes Trilogy" this self-deprecating, smirky, and spoofy fourth entry in the Killer Tomatoes franchise is probably the least successful simply because director John De Bello and his longtime co-writers Constantine Dillon and J. Stephen Peace have taken the series more in a "kid friendly" direction by adding some wisecracking tomato henchman (obvious hand puppets) and toning down the humour even more than it already was. In fact, it's not surprising considering around the same time they shot this back-to-back with the third part (Killer Tomatoes Strike Back!) a cartoon series made its debut on the Fox network.

John Astin returns as Professor Gangreen as does Steve Lundquist as his pretty boy (but not too smart) sidekick Igor and the opening scene has them escaping from a French prison where tomatoes are regularly executed in a guillotine. With the help of the aforementioned mutant tomato sidekicks they escape the prison in an air balloon and soon set forward Gangreen's plan to take over France by placing Igor on the throne as the new King of France (due to his striking resemblance to former Kings).

Former Family Ties co-star Marc Price plays our hero "Michael J. Fox" (in one of the movies biggest laughs, Price makes fun of his past role and the fact he's starring in a "killer tomatoes" sequel) an American tourist going across the French countryside who meets up with local girl Marie (Angela Visser, continuing the series trend of casting fairly pleasing looking ladies in the lead role) and is soon drawn into trying to help stop Gangreen from taking over the World - or at least France - with help of his tomatoes.

With a script that plays on stereotypes to get laughs and piles on the sight gags and dopey dialogue, you'd expect Killer Tomatoes Eat France to be a laugh riot. It's not. The reason for this is that there's so many gags in the movie and most of them miss the mark. Sure, there's a few chuckles to be had here and there and there's a few moments of mild slapstick in the "basement of death" scenes, but the formula for the series has begun to get tired and started to show wear around the edges. We know the movie is purposely meant to be corny, but there's just not enough laughs to go with it and it even manages to waste that classic theme song!

The first three movies in the series might not have been the greatest, but they had more to offer than this fourth entry that just seems to be playing more to its newfound young audience rather than to longtime fans of the movies. It's always nice to see people not taking their movies too seriously and being able to poke fun at themselves (in turn breaking down the "it's only a movie" barrier), but it's too bad Killer Tomatoes Eat France couldn't have been more funny. (Chris Hartley, 9/23/05)

Directed By: John De Bello.
Written By: John De Bello, Constantine Dillon, J. Stephen Peace.

Starring: Marc Price, Angela Visser, Steve Lundquist, John Astin.