Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Title: Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Director:  Joe Dante

Cast:  Zack Galligan, Phoebe Cates, John Glover, Robert Picardo, Dick Miller, Christopher Lee, Robert Prosky

Review:

Gremlins 2: The New Batch is the sequel to Gremlins (1984), one of the films that took over the box office during the summer of 1984. Now that summer was a good one! At the box office we had Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) fighting for the top spot with other huge money makers like Ghostbusters (1984), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), The Karate Kid (1984) and Purple Rain (1984). Still, in spite of this tough competition, Gremlins went on to make huge bank.  Joe Dante had established himself as a director of successful films like Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1981), but it was with Gremlins that he had his first huge hit. A sequel was a no brainer; unfortunately, Dante didn’t want to revisit the grueling experience of making a film like Gremlins. The studio went on to plan a sequel without Dante’s involvement (Gremlins go to Mars!) but since for whatever the reason, it never materialized, they approached Dante yet again offering him a bigger budget and cart blanche with the project, this is to say, he could do with the film whatever the hell he wanted; and that he did my friends, this film is pure Joe Dante every step of the way.

Joe Dante, next to one of the many Gremlins in Gremlins 2: The New Batch 

The story centers once again around Billy and Kate, the two teenagers who confronted and destroyed the Gremlins on the first film. This time around, Billy and Kate are young adults and have moved from the small suburban town they lived on in the first film, to New York City! They both work in Clamp Plaza, an ultra modern building where everything is computerized! Meanwhile, as fate would have it, Gizmo The Mogwai gets sent to a bio engineering lab in the very same building! It isn’t long before Gremlins start reproducing, turning monstrous and destroying everything in sight! Will Billy and Kate have what it takes to stop these creatures before they escape the building and wreck havoc on New York City?

Gremlins 2: The New Batch is obviously a larger picture. Where the first film was an 11 million dollar picture, this sequel had 50 million dollars to work with. To the films favor, I will say that you do see the money up there on the screen, there’s literally thousands of Gremlins on this film tearing up the place. If you take a look at the first film, the gremlins are virtually indistinguishable from one another. But on Gremlins 2 they employed the talents of makeup effects guru Rick Baker. This is the guy responsible for making each Gremlin in Gremlins 2 different from one another; Rick Baker is the reason why we get Vegetable Gremlin,  a Gremlin who talks, a female Gremlin, a can’t stop the laughter Gremlin, we get a Spider Gremlin;  we even get an electrical Gremlin made up of pure energy! These variations make this sequel way more fun than the first. So yeah, this film is way bigger than its predecessor, we don’t only  get more Gremlins, we also get a large amount of cameos on this one. This is one of those films filled with cameo after cameo, which of course makes everything that much more fun.

 And speaking of fun, it seems that this was Joe Dante’s goal with this sequel, to make it funnier than the first one which in contrast played out more like a horror film. Honestly, this is where the first film is superior to this sequel in my book. What I loved about the original one is that it’s a bit darker in tone than this sequel, which is so bright, goofy and colorful by comparison. Gremlins 2: The New Batch feels like a live action Warner Brothers cartoon, which makes perfect sense when we take in consideration that Joe Dante is a true blue fan of the old Warner Brothers Cartoons, the ones with Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny . This is evident by the many slapstick gags that Dante squeezes into the film,  the whole vibe of the film is cartoony; this is really what sets this sequel apart from the first film. The first Gremlins film is so much more of a horror film. By the way, Chris Columbus the writer behind the first film, had written a far gorier and scarier picture then the one we got. Columbus’s script had the Gremlins killing people in gory ways, but Dante and Spielberg softened the film up a bit because Spielberg himself thought the film had to be as family friendly in order for it to be successful. Still, even with the modifications to the script, the first Gremlins film has its scary moments. So much so that, along with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the first Gremlins film was the reason why the PG-13 rating was created. The film wasn’t all that scary, but it wasn’t all that innocent either, so the PG-13 was created as a middle ground for films of this nature. But when compared to the first Gremlins film, Gremlins 2: The New Batch isn’t even remotely scary; it’s simply, goofy, cartoony fun.

The only negative thing I can really say about this movie is that it starts out like a normal film, with a story and everything, but somewhere along the line it turns into a series of vignettes or sketches if you will, with the Gremlins causing all sorts of mayhem. The film even gets a bit surreal and other times it turns into a musical? What I didn’t enjoy is that this sketchy nature of the film hurt it, because you don’t feel as if you’re watching a film, you feel more like you’re watching a series of gags. Yeah they are fun gags, but this sequel isn’t like the first one, which did feel like a true blue genuine film. Still, Gremlins 2: The New Batch has many good things going for it, mainly the creature effects which are still awesome by today’s standards; in fact, I love how the Gremlins are all real and palpable. These were amazingly animated puppets. I’m pretty sure if they made one of these films today, every Gremlin would be computer generated, and that would suck for me. But, thankfully, Gremlins 2: The New Batch is an amazing display of puppetry and creature effects. These Gremlins simply look awesome; the puppets seem full of life, Kudos to the puppeteers behind these creatures.

Finally, what makes this film so fun for me is that special brand of Joe Dante humor. There’s this unique kind of humor to his films that always puts a smile on my face.  Dante’s love for WB cartoons is very present here; the film even starts out with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck fighting for the spotlight! All of Dante’s films are infused with this goofy, cartoony nature of the WB cartoons. This is after all the director behind Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003). Many of Dante’s films have some kind of reference to these old WB cartoons; they were obviously a huge part of his upbringing. Final word? This is a fun film, it moves at a fast pace, something is always happening on the screen and well, Dante really ups the ante ;  on this one we get more Gremlins than ever! The film has awesome monster effects, things get slimy and nasty, if you love those films from the 80’s that were always filled with slimy, gooey creatures, then this is the film for you. You’ll also find the huge amount of cameos entertaining, Christopher Lee,  Rick Ducommun, John Astin, Leonard Maltin, even Hulk Hogan makes an appearance. Just don’t expect much of a story, this film plays out more like a series of gags one after another, still, this doesn’t make it any less entertaining, Gremlins 2: The New Batch though not superior then the original, is a worthy sequel in my book.

Rating: 4 out of 5 

The pupeteers and their puppets on the first Gremlins film

After Hours (1985)

Title: After Hours (1985)

Director: Martin Scorcese

Cast: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, Catherine O’Hara, John Heard, Dick Miller, Bronson Pinchot, Cheech Marin, Tommy Chong

Review:

Every once in a while a director will take a project that could have otherwise turned out to be bland or formulaic and elevates it, makes it better then it has any right to be. I think this was the case with After Hours. You kind of get the feeling that had this comedy been under the command of a lesser director, it simply would not have been as good as it is. Had legendary American filmmaker Martin Scorcese not been behind the camera, it could have ended as just another romantic comedy, lost in the shuffle and forgotten in time. But in the hands of Scorcese, this dark comedy is a superior form of comedy film in my book and I might add, criminally underrated.

After Hours tells the story of Paul Hackett, a New York City computer programmer who’s fed up with his life. He’s got a boring job, doing the same thing over and over again; when he goes back home, it’s to watch the same boring channels on television and judging by Hackett’s one tone face, there’s nothing unique or interesting on it;  he surfs through the channels with a blank stare on his face. So after a while he decides to  go out and venture to the outside world, searching for human contact, searching for something other then the numbing loneliness he lives in. The streets he ventures to are the perilous streets of the big apple, circa mid-eighties, which means dark, dangerous and manic. He stops at a coffee shop to read his favorite novel and stumbles upon a beautiful girl whom he apparently has a couple of things in common with. They exchange phone numbers and part ways, but Paul's loneliness gets the better of him and so he ends up calling her up on that very same night! They meet again at her apartment and Paul seems to think he’s going to be getting lucky, for what is wrong with casual sex? A random night of passion? Absolutely nothing! Unfortunately for Hackett, Marcy ends up being a true wacko! He sees the signs and decides to abort mission, but as Hackett will soon find out, going back home is not going to be an easy task.  

Many things make After Hours a good film, not just the fact that Scorcese directed it, though that is the big bonus in my book. Actually a lot of good things came together to make this as special a film; for example, the cast is amazing! The film is mostly centered on Griffin Dunne’s character Paul Hackett, he plays the every man. A blue collar worker type that’s fed up, he wants human contact, he wants something more then just his own self to talk to at night. Unfortunately, the universe seems to be conspiring against him on this night, this is one of those movies where everything goes wrong for the main character. He runs out of money, gets mixed up in all sorts of trouble and meets the craziest people! True blue New York people who live jaded lives in a jaded city. To you or I these characters that Hackett meets through out the course of the evening might seem nuts, or too crazy for real life, but to a New Yorker, this film is merely an exaggeration of every day New York life. Every character is brought to life by a gifted actor. Terry Gar for example, whom I always remember as Inga from Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein (1974), is hilarious on this one as a waitress who’s a lonely desperate woman, looking for the right man to snatch up and devour! Catherine O’Hara plays this psychotic woman who has her own Mister Softee Ice Cream truck, her character is hilariously jaded out of her mind.  I mean we even get freaking Cheech and Chong on this film! The cast is very well rounded out, it makes watching the film a pleasure.

But of course, the big draw here for me is that Scorcese directed the film. What I’ve always loved about Scorcese is how very New York he is. He is enamored with the city, same as Woody Allen is, can’t say I blame ‘em, the place can be rather magical, vibrant, alive. It is a beautiful city and a dark city; it can be the stuff of dreams or nightmares depending which corner you turn on. New York City's ambiguity is what  shines through so well in After Hours. You can meet a beautiful girl in a coffee shop in the middle of the night, but said girl can turn out to be a total head case. It’s these little details that the film has that make it such a New York film, the crazy taxi driver, the cold crazy people, the dark haunting city streets, the bums, the punks, the night clubs, the gay bars, the unexpectedly friendly people, the film effectively captures the dark beauty that was New York of the 80’s, I loved that about it, so my hats down to Scorcese for capturing New York City life so well, it’s something he’s gotten very good at through out his career. I mean, this is the director who made New York, New York (1977), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980) and Mean Streets (1973) all of which take place in the big apple. Scorcese is without a doubt a director that displays his love for the city that never sleeps; he’s the most ‘New York’ director of all. The fact that the entire film was shot in New York City streets and entirely at night is what gives After Hours its unique look.

But aside from that, the film has these amazing camera shots, which is really what let’s us know there’s a master filmmaker behind the cameras, it’s little details, like when we follow these keys that someone throws from a building, or when Hackett’s twenty dollar bill flies out the taxi cabs window and the camera follows it. My favorite shot is the one with which the film ends, the camera simply sweeps through an office building filled with desks and computers and telephones…loved that. This is the camera work and direction that brings After Hours up for me, it elevates the film. So as you can see my friends, many things make this one special. After Hours is without a doubt an extremely underrated Scorcese film! Same as with Scorcese’s Bringing Out the Dead (1999), this is a film from Scorcese’s repertoire that many seems to be missing out on, but should definitely be seeing. Scorcese made After Hours in order to regain his love for filmmaking, you see, before making After Hours Scorcese had been trying to get The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) going, but had an incredibly hard time making it happen, until finally he let it go. He ended up making it anyways a few years later, but at the time, he was incredibly frustrated at the fact that apparently The Last Temptation of Christ was not going to happen. So he went on and made After Hours, to regain his love for making movies. His love and passion for the medium shows through in the film, this is a master storyteller giving it his best to make us laugh and achieving it, in a very artful stylish way. This is a wonderfully dark comedy.

Highly recommend it if you want to see one of these films that’s very paranoid, and fast, the film moves at a frenetic pace. It’s the kind of film that takes places during the small hours of the night, in these seedy places that are open when most of humanity is sound asleep. It’s a film that shows us that the freaks most certainly come out at night. Which is probably why Hackett is always shown running from someone, which was a nice motif I picked up while watching the film; that image of Hackett just running,  running from the freaks, from the crazies, from scary life. Paul Hackett is a character that just wants to ‘get home’ which reminds me that in some ways, this is a dark version of the Wizard of Oz, with it’s main character trying to get away from all the craziness and back to the comfort and warmth of home. By the way, the films connection to The Wizard of Oz is alluded to at one point in the film. But aside from wanting to get home, Hackett just wants to live, which I think is an awesome message in the film. He wants more out of life, can’t say I blame him for going after it even if it means going through hell.

Rating: 5 out of 5