Or you could always aim for self-parody, as Joe Dante did when he made the sequel to his seminal '80s creature feature Gremlins. The sequel was more lighthearted than the original movie, eschewing much of the dark humor for a self-referential silliness that makes it feel like a completely different creature than its predecessor.
It's been a few years since Kingston Falls was decimated by the gremlins, during which time the peaceful mogwai Gizmo (voiced by Howie Mandel) has lived safely in the curio shop where he was initially found. But when the shop's owner dies and the store is demolished, Gizmo is left homeless.
He is eventually found by a geneticist and taken to the laboratories at Clamp Tower, an ultra-modern skyscraper in Manhattan owned by eccentric media mogul Daniel Clamp (John Glover). It's an amazing coincidence, too, as former Kingston Falls residents Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates) work in the building as a graphic designer and tour guide.
Billy stumbles upon Gizmo one day and frees him from the lab, leaving the mogwai hidden in his desk until Kate can take him home at the end of her shift. But a broken water fountain sprays Gizmo, spawning a new batch of evil mogwai. And thanks to a combination of the Clamp Tower food court and a triggered sprinkler system, an army of gremlins are soon running loose throughout the building. Trapped inside with them, Billy and Kate must find a way to destroy the gremlins before they can escape Clamp Tower and wreak havoc on the streets of New York City.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch is nowhere near as good as the first one. Let's go ahead and get that out of the way right now. It quite simply comes nowhere near its predecessor. But for all the stupid moments and corny jokes and all that jazz, Gremlins 2 is still an hour and a half of dumb fun. The movie's not really all that good, but the fact that it's willing to go to any length to get a laugh is somewhat endearing.
As I said, Gremlins director Joe Dante returns to helm the follow-up, and he's made the odd choice to go from a horror/comedy to a straightforward screwball comedy. The shift in tone between the movies can be a bit off-putting, especially if you watch them back to back. But it's still watchable, however, so it isn't a total waste of time.
But still, Dante does do a fine job in the director's chair. He's armed with a bigger budget, which allows him to approach things on a grander scale. The mogwai and gremlin puppets have been improved upon, and the sets are a lot roomier than the studio backlot from the first movie. (And I still think it's strange that the backlot Gremlins used would later become Hill Valley from Back to the Future). The bigger sets allow for some fantastic cinematography from John Hora; the movie looks great, in large part due to Hora's camerawork.
The problem with it, though, is that you get the feeling that part of the reason the movie was made was so Rick Baker and the gremlin designers could show off. Thanks to Clamp Tower having a genetics lab full of weird experimental serums and concoctions, you get to see all kinds of new gremlins. There's a gremlin with bat wings, a spider gremlin, a gremlin made out of lightning, a gremlin that turns into vegetables, and a metric ton of gremlins in the Clamp Tower lobby singing "New York, New York." I ended up with the impression that the movie's whole point was so Baker could point at the movie and say, "C'mere and look at all the cool stuff me and my crew can do." I don't want to sound like I'm dogging the effects, because they're great. But sometimes I just wanted Dante to focus on something other than showcasing the gremlins.
The screenplay is pretty flawed too. Written by Charles S. Haas, the script is full of nonsensical scenes that don't contribute anything at all to the movie. Take, for example, the scene where the movie breaks the fourth wall, having the gremlins destroy the film in the projection booth, and a theater usher gets Hulk Hogan to scare them into showing the movie again. The scene is funny, but does it have anything to do with anything else?
The same can be said for the Looney Tunes scene at the beginning of the movie. If you haven't seen it, Gremlins 2 opens with Daffy Duck stealing the Warner Brothers logo from Bugs Bunny. The scene has no real purpose, no point, and no reason for the scene to be in the movie at all. But that's the movie's whole shtick: getting humor from random silliness, logic and story be damned.
That's the movie's biggest flaw, too. There's just so much random mayhem going on that anything resembling a plot or a story gets buried underneath a mountain of goofiness. Did the movie really need the moment where the gremlins attack Leonard Maltin while he's giving the original movie a bad review? Maltin even holds up the VHS box of the original Gremlins to further hammer home the point that Gremlins 2 just doesn't care if it makes sense or not. And really, that pretty much sums up the entire movie: It just doesn't care about making sense.
I could go on all day about the stupid crap in the script, but I really should move along to the cast. Reprising the role of our hero is Zach Galligan, who plays the role as well as he did in 1984. Galligan is charming, likable, and entertaining, and he's all aces. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is sadly forgettable. They're adequate, I guess, but you aren't going to be telling people about the fantastic acting in Gremlins 2. Phoebe Cates is fine and I did like Christopher Lee (I'm still not sure how they roped him into this movie) and Robert Prosky, but my favorite performance came from John Glover. I like Glover a lot anyway, and his work in this particular movie is really funny. It's always weird seeing him do comedic roles after spending six years watching him as a villain on Smallville, but the guy is great. He's so great, in fact, that he practically steals the movie.
And Glover would have, too, if it weren't for the late Tony Randall. Randall plays Brain, a rather verbose hyper-intelligent gremlin. While he only provides the voice, he plays Brain as hammy as he can get. If overacting has a sound, it would be Tony Randall's voice work on Gremlins 2. Quite frankly, it's a glorious example of how sometimes, silliness can actually work.
Gremlins 2: The New Batch is nowhere near the quality of the original movie. Hell, it's barely worth being called "good." But is it fun? Oh yeah, it is. Though all the stupid scenes and jokes that don't really work and pointless nonsense, Gremlins 2 is entertaining enough to be worth a watch. However, I can't give it anything higher than two and a half stars. And even if it does lead to gremlins, I still want to own my own pet mogwai. That'd be awesome.
Final Rating: **½
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