Gremlins 2: The New Batch

365 Films

Entry #2

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

Directed by Joe Dante

I consider this phase in my cinematic upbringing to be the Looney Tunes period. Gremlins 2 and Who Framed Roger Rabbit both revel in the anarchic spirit of that wonderful animated enterprise. Gremlins 2: The New Batch is basically a live action series of Looney Tunes shorts wrapped around a barely-there wisp of a plot. That’s not meant to be a put-down, in fact, one of Gremlins 2’s most successful feats is the coup it stages at the palace of mainstream commercial cinema. The movie is so devoid of purpose and so full of mindless self-indulgence that it could really stand in as a “fuck you” to almost any sequel ever made. What sets Gremlins 2 apart is that it is deliriously funny. Again, it probably goes without saying, that none of this made any sense to me at the time of my initial viewing. I missed maybe 80% of the jokes, I didn’t get the satire at work (particularly the take down of Donald Trump’s New York), and in all honesty, I only went to see it because the lobby display had a cardboard animatronic gremlin popping in an out of a desk. That shit was cool. So while my abilities to absorb and understand the cultural critique were limited, the sense of fun the movie possesses was undeniably contagious. The movie breaks the fourth wall at the drop of a hat, and instead of feeling distanced; you feel like you are in on the joke. Perhaps that is because the movie itself can’t believe it’s getting away with half of the shit it does. I have to be totally honest here and admit my preference for Gremlins 2 as opposed to the original. I’m pretty sure I had seen Gremlins before seeing the sequel but my memory could be mixed up about that. It’s not that Gremlins is entirely inferior to its follow-up, but it’s certainly a lot grimmer and with a shockingly high body count for a movie of its type. All of these attributes could describe the far more impressive film. But for me being the age that I was and my then state of mind (Looney Tunes), I guess I wasn’t in the mood for mean and nasty.  And this was my cinematic introduction to New York City (more on that later), I’m sure that didn’t hurt.