Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Gremlins 2: The New Batch

Release Date: 1990

Rating: * *

By John Engell August 1, 2012

Six years after the release of Joe Dante’s seminal classic “Gremlins,” Warner Brothers convinced the reluctant director to return for its sequel by offering him complete creative control of the picture and a very liberal budget.

Come summer 1990 “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” was unleashed on American moviegoers to little fanfare. With a budget of $50 million, nearly five times that of the original, “The New Batch” was a bona fide box office bomb, bringing in a paltry $41 million in receipt revenue domestically; roughly a fourth of its predecessor’s bounty. Dante attributed the film’s financial failure to the franchise’s lengthy layoff and thus its inability to capitalize on its own success.

Regardless, Dante’s follow-up effort feels rushed. The film rejoins hero Billy Peltzer ( Zach Galligan) and his new fiance Kate (the stunning Phoebe Cates), who have left the comfort and tranquility of small town Kingston Falls for the sprawling ambiguity of the big city (in this case, the Big Apple). The transplants have given up banking for work with media mogul Daniel Clamp’s Clamp Enterprises. Billy is now a commercial artist and Kate a tour guide in the same high-tech corporate skyscraper.

The building also houses, amongst other oddities, an animal experimentation laboratory where the Mogwai Gizmo is conveniently being caged after his master dies and he is captured wandering the city’s streets by one of the lab’s scientists. It’s not long before Billy gets wind of his old furry friend’s imprisonment and frees Gizmo, who then as a matter of course gets wet and replicates. The new Mogwai that are produced are caricatures of their former 1984 selves, as are the gremlins they metamorphosize into after enjoying a late night snack at one of the center’s eateries.

Yes, it is farfetched for even this type of fare, and the film quickly becomes as chaotic as its namesake as the creatures continue to multiply and take over the high-rise in a series of increasingly outlandish gags. Police tape off the building, but Billy and his former neighbor Murray Futterman(character actor and Dante regular Dick Miller), who is in town visiting, are on the inside and must stop the monsters before dark when they can escape into New York.

“Gremlins 2: The New Batch,” is an hour and 46 minute long love letter to the fans of the first installment, yet ironically it lacks much of the violence, and crude humor that made the original a blockbuster and a staple of the horror-comedy sub-genre. The gremlins, once genuinely scary, act like something out of a Sunday morning cartoon, as both Dante and Stephen Spielberg, who reprised his role as executive producer on the project, favored a more family friendly film that was less dark and more slapstick than the original. It is interesting to note that although the sequel is oft considered the tamer of the two films, it received a harsher MPAA assessment than its predecessor did because the PG-13 rating did not exist when “Gremlins” was released (although it did help facilitate its creation).

Perhaps “Gremlins 2’s” saving grace is its satirical, self-referential script. In one scene for example, characters debate the inherent flaws and potential inconsistencies in the logic of the Mogwai’s 3 golden rules i.e. The creatures can’t eat after midnight, but what would happen if they traveled between time zones? In another scene we see famous film critic Leonard Maltin deliver his real and scathing review of the first “Gremlins” film, before being attacked by the green little monsters.

Dante acknowledges that we are only watching a movie when at one point the celluloid appears to melt and the screen goes blank and it’s revealed that gremlins have removed the “New Batch’s” reel from the projector, temporarily putting a stop to proceedings in the cinema where the picture is being screened. Then in a rather hokey, but fun cameo, Hulk Hogan pops up and proclaims that we the audience have paid good money to see the film and he then threatens the gremlins until we once again pick up with the action.

There is even a nod to city legend Frank Sinatra as the gremlins have a New Year’s-esque celebration in the  Clamp building’s lobby complete with a rousing rendition of New York, New York.   
 
Ultimately, “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” is an entertaining if unnecessary sequel that thankfully does not damage the legacy of its groundbreaking forefather, but does little to add to it either.