FT TOP 100 FILMS 23: GREMLINS 2

Of the sequels in this list, this one perhaps might raise the biggest eyebrow. Its predecessor is by no means a great movie, it might have its fans but was too kiddie to be scary, and too scary for the kids. Oh and its central plot device (feed ’em after midnight and they turn into monsters) was destroyed by any vaguely pedantic twelve year old who understood the concept of time-zones. So every kid in America then.

So why Gremlins 2? Unlike nearly all the other sequels, nearly all sequels indeed, Gremlins 2 is a completely different genre to the first in its sequence. Gremlins 2 is an out and out comedy. Taking the piss out of itself, the world and in particular the movie biz that even thought that a Gremlins 2 was necessary. A film that embraces the stupidity at the core of the concept, a film that realises that the kids in the first film were actuallya bit insipid, and that Gizmo was pretty much a cheap toy rather than any kind of character. This is a sketch comedy of a film, a parodic slapstick whirlwind of colour and toytown macabre. It plays fast and loose with the audience in much the way Mars Attacks! would do later, but with a few key exceptions. Joe Dante has a much better sense of humour than Tim Burton, and funny was not necessarily on teh cards when you went in.

I am not sure even why I went to see it. But I do remember thinking I was going to get a cheap rehash of the original, just set in the city. Maybe it was raining (plot hole number two if you reproduce by getting WET!) Anyway I remember slowly, and then quite quickly, realising that this film was going to be silly. I think it was the time Grandpa from The Munsters turned up. Yes the film relies far too much on Joe Dante’s obsessions with cheap horror films, but for the sight gags (Gizmo as Rambo is both adorable and extremely daft), the destruction and slapstick – there had not been a better film of this sort since Laurel and Hardy hung up their boots.