Gremlins 2: The New Batch
Year: 1990
Director: Joe Dante
Written by: Charles S. Haas
Threat: Mogwai
Weapon of Choice: Electricity
IMDb page: 
Gremlins 2: The New BatchYear: 1990 Director: Joe Dante Written by: Charles S. Haas Threat: Mogwai Weapon of Choice: Electricity IMDb page: |
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Other movies in this series:
Gremlins
Rish's Reviews
In 1984, I was a little kid.
By the time 1990 (and this film) came along, I was a big kid.
Gremlins really captured my imagination in
the summer of '84. . . I probably dug it more than Star Trek 3, Ghostbusters,
and Indy 2. So of course, I was at Gremlins 2: The New Batch as soon
as it opened (I think my mom took me), and it was one of my first real movie letdowns.
Oh wait, Ghostbusters 2 came out the year before. Hmmm. Regardless, I
really hated this movie fifteen years ago.
But I picked up the Gremlins special edition DVD and listened to director Joe
Dante express that he liked Gremlins 2 more than the first one, so I thought,
"Well, I gotta give this another chance," and headed straight to the video store.
Boy, this was worse in 2005 than it was in 1990. The film was extraordinarily lame.
Most of the charm is gone from the first movie, replaced by cynical jabs and timing-free
slapstick. Oddly, it is much more dated than the original. I always figure the first
Gremlins was Horror with comedic elements. This one is easily Comedy with
stupid baby scares sporadically spotting it. The new mogwai are just infantile. I don't
know, maybe I've grown too old to appreciate this film (though that doesn't explain
why I could still enjoy the first, does it?).
I'm not sure how they make Gizmo dance around in pre-CG days. Stop motion? Wire-
removal? Puppetry? Regardless, Gizmo looks different than he did in the original. I
guess they fixed him, like they did Yoda in Phantom Menace.
That was sarcasm, kids.
"The New Batch" is a joke that a buddy of mine and I used to toss around whenever we
were referring to a cheap, really bad sequel ("I hear Million Dollar Baby 2: The New
Batch is going straight to video. What do you think?"), now I remember why. Oh,
man, this is a stupid movie. It takes the parts from the original that were dumbest and
most childish, and multiplies them by five. There was some cute Daffy Duck animation,
though.
I'm thinking that both Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates were Former Celebrities by 1990,
and that's too bad. Besides returning actors Galligan, Cates, Keye Luke, and Dick Miller,
this features Christopher Lee, Robert Picardo, and John Glover. But the cast can't save it.
Maybe Joe Dante had a better time working on Gremlins 2 than Gremlins
1, but I can't imagine anyone enjoying watching it more. In my professional opinion,
this is as bad as the original was good.
Even Phoebe Cates, who I could probably watch dry-heaving and still find adorable,
didn't enthrall me here (though the part where she takes the retarded mogwai home,
thinking it's Gizmo amused me). I was also amused by the trip to the Cathedral of
Saint Eva-Marie, but I'm not sure why.
While the original film isn't a perfect movie (I found myself groaning a bit at the gremlin
antics and cutesy moments the last time I saw it), it's just about perfect for what it sets
out to accomplish. If the sequel's mission was to make fun of everything and anything,
including the original, then it too succeeded.
I'd Recommend It To: Maybe very, very little kids who liked the first movie.
Posted: October 17, 2005
Total Skulls: 13
| Sequel |  |
|
| Sequel setup | ||
| Rips off earlier film | ||
| Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie | |
Attack of the Octopus People, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms |
| Future celebrity appears | ||
| Former celebrity appears | ||
| Bad title | ||
| Bad premise | ||
| Bad acting | ||
| Bad dialogue | ||
| Bad execution | |
|
| MTV Editing | ||
| OTS | ||
| Girl unnecessarily gets naked | ||
| Wanton sex | ||
| Death associated with sex | ||
| Unfulfilled promise of nudity | ||
| Characters forget about threat | ||
| Secluded location | ||
| Power is cut | |
|
| Phone lines are cut | ||
| Someone investigates a strange noise | ||
| Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door | ||
| Camera is the killer | ||
| Victims cower in front of a window/door | ||
| Victim locks self in with killer | ||
| Victim running from killer inexplicably falls | ||
| Toilet stall scene | ||
| Shower/bath scene | ||
| Car stalls or won't start | ||
| Cat jumps out | ||
| Fake scare | ||
| Laughable scare | ||
| Stupid discovery of corpse | ||
| Dream sequence | ||
| Hallucination/Vision | ||
| No one believes only witness | |
|
| Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth | |
|
| Warning goes unheeded | |
|
| Music detracts from scene | |
|
| Death in first five minutes | ||
| x years before/later | |
|
| Flashback sequence | ||
| Dark and stormy night | ||
| Killer doesn't stay dead | ||
| Killer wears a mask | ||
| Killer is in closet | ||
| Killer is in car with victim | ||
| Villain is more sympathetic than heroes | ||
| Unscary villain/monster | |
|
| Beheading | ||
| Blood fountain | ||
| Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc. | ||
| Poor death effect | ||
| Excessive gore | ||
| No one dies at all | |
|
| Virgin survives | ||
| Geek/Nerd survives | ||
| Little kid lamely survives | ||
| Dog/Pet miraculously survives | ||
| Unresolved subplots | ||
| "It was all a dream" ending | ||
| Unbelievably happy ending | ||
| Unbelievably crappy ending | |
|
| What the hell? |