The original Gremlins is a favorite from the era, but I've never had any love for its 1990 sequel, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH. Revisiting it again, I wanted to see if maybe I was missing something.
Billy (Zach Galligan) and Kate (Phoebe Cates) are back, six years older and living in Manhattan. He's an engineer and she's a tour guide in Clamp Tower, the giant, modern skyscraper of Daniel Clamp, a thinly veiled late 80's version of Trump. John Glover (Scrooged) plays Clamp as a cartoony modern inventor with an ego taller than his office building. It's just one of many over-the-top performances here that give the film a strange tone that never generates any of the fun of the original.
On one floor of Clamp's building, mad scientist Doctor Catheter (subtle humor) is experimenting on rare creatures. Catheter (Christopher Lee, wasted in an underused role) gets hold of Gizmo and pretty soon he's fed after midnight and he's all kinds of wet, spawning a crazy horde of new Gremlins that spread faster than that fire in "The Towering Inferno".
It's supposed to be funny, but I didn't laugh once.
The creatures are relentless but after awhile, pretty one note.
Film Critic Leonard Maltin, who famously panned the original film, shows up and is attacked by Gremlins while he's on TV talking about Gremlins. It's supposed to be a clever meta moment, but like everything else that splatters across the screen, it's unfunny and feels forced.
Billy's boss tries to seduce him in a needless subplot.
Kate wears a bad tour guide costume, rendering Phoebe unattractive, a feat previously considered impossible.
Gizmo is a huge fan of Stallone in Rambo:First Blood Part II, so at one point he dons a headband and creates a mini bow and arrow to go after the creatures.
Director Joe Dante admitted later that he had no interest in creating a sequel to his original film and his lack of enthusiasm shows in every frame.
The first cut of the sequel was longer, but executive producer Steven Spielberg, after the first screening, claimed there were too many gremlins, and several scenes were cut as a result. I can't even imagine how bad THAT version was.
Creatures multiply, attack everyone in sight and take on the traits of the humans around them.
When one of Dr Catheter's brain formulas is drank by the main evil Gremlin, he begins speaking like an English professor, which is funny at first. But Dante's never seen a joke here that he can't beat to death, so soon that speaking Gremlin is on a talk show, spouting philosophy. Uh-huh.
Dumb.
I wasn't alone in my repulsion to this half hearted continuation of the superb original film. With a $50 million budget, it barely crept past $40 million at the box office, leaving a trail of exterminated creatures in its wake.
A testament to sequel greed, it killed the series faster than bright light and post-midnight snacks.
This NEW BATCH is a very pale imitation of the first batch and gets a D.
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