We’re in Alabama. And we’re following a dentist, who is probably the nicest guy you’ve ever met. He’s tall, handsome, blonde, a little rugged looking, and he’s got a smile that won’t stop. He’s like that kid in elementary school who can be publicly nice to the geekiest geek without it tainting his reputation. He’s a friendly doctor whose routine of making mango-flax oil-whey powder protein shakes makes him positively giddy, and it seems like the naughtiest thing he’s ever done is his yearly performance as a roller-blading tooth fairy in his town’s Christmas parade.

That’s when the makers of “Best Worst Movie” reveal that this friendly, goofy tooth-spelunker starred in a movie in 1990. Not just any movie. The movie that IMDb rates The Worst Movie Of All Time. Worse than any choose-your-own-meaning bullpucky from David Lynch, any self-indulgent pablum from Guy Maddin, any plush pityfest from Sofia Coppola. “Troll 2.”

It’s no ‘Little Lebowski Urban Achiever’ shirt, but you guys are alright with me.

Now, I’ve never seen “Troll 2,” and it would have been easy for “Best Worst Movie” to go totally inside baseball and devolve into in-jokes as bad as the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” or “Big Lebowski” crowds do. Instead, there are interviews with people who have examined how a bad straight-to-HBO horror movie turned into a cult phenomenon. The filmmaker — Michael Stephenson, who, to add another layer of awesomeness onto this Nutso-Nutella sandwich, was a child star in “Troll 2” — tracks down his former co-stars. None of them are famous. Several of them are quite obviously mentally ill. When he finds the Italian filmmakers, their level of unshakeable confidence in the deep meaning of “Troll 2” and their inability to comprehend why anyone would find the tale (like “Twilight,” except the vampires are goblins and they don’t want blood, they want to turn humans into plants because, get this, they’re vegetarians) silly rises positively to the level of Christopher Guest mockumentaries. The movie stays totally accessible to those who haven’t caught the there-are-no-trolls-in-this-absurd-movie fever — and when you’re dealing with one big in-joke, that’s quite a challenge.

Also the reaction when you ask for ice in your water at Angelica Kitchen.

Last September, I trashed a too-long PR stunt posing as a “documentary” about the righteous phoneys at the sand-blasted hippie jam band art-mobile festival known as Burning Man, saying that there were too many hyper-positive testimonials from photogenic, made-for-press-release young people spewing nonsense about unity and art and purpose and togetherness and definitely not marijuana and acid and sex. “Best Worst Movie” could have easily followed in those footsteps. It didn’t. I don’t think that’s because the “Troll 2” fans are any less interested in getting high and getting laid at the end of the day, helped by the social capital they earn, whether by midnight screenings of bad cult movies or bio-progressive sun-scorched eco-rock vortex jams. But “Best Worst Movie” certainly provided the necessary old newspaper and cat food can-scented bitters to balance out the sweetness of the super-fans. It’s a movie about a movie, with great and deep and long-term tenderness towards its subject, and by all rights it could have been far more difficult for the filmmaker to separate himself from its focus in this movie. It wasn’t.

I’ve seen plenty of horrible movies — “Manos: Hands of Fate,” “Red Cockroaches,” “Avatar.” I’ve never seen “Troll 2.” I’m determined to now, though, whether or not I get any cool points for it.

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies that aren’t in the theater anymore. She lives in North Hollywood, near the In-N-Out Burger.