My Review of "Gremlins 2: The New Batch"

Gremlins 2: The New Batch is a really weird sequel that came out back in 1990. It's been a while since the first movie so a lot has changed. The way they make movies with special effects, tone and social dynamics have all changed. Like the previous movie this movie is a product of its time but it is very well aware of itself. Fans of the first movie may feel totally out of place with this one because the tone has changed entirely.

The movie starts out again in Chinatown. We're at the same shop as the first movie but now we know it's in a New York City Chinatown. The same original Chinese old man is there. This time there is a corporate CEO, Daniel Clamp, trying to buy out his shop. He wants to gentrify Chinatown for his own newly developed Chinatown development.

It doesn't take long for Clamp to get what he wants because the old man is in bad health. Eventually he passes away and the corporation takes over the neighborhood. Saddened, Gizmo tries to figure out what to do next as his owner is now deceased. Instead he gets captured by some scientists that work for Clamp. As you can guess Clamp pretty much owns everything.

We then get reintroduced to Billy and Kate from the previous movie. They have moved to New York city and have been a couple for quite some time. Both of them now work for, you guessed it, Clamp. Billy is an artist and Kate is a tour guide. A series of incidents happen and Billy finds out that Gizmo is held up at one of Clamps' medical research facilities.

He obviously wants to reunite with his old buddy and get him out of there. Unfortunately he isn't able to save the rest of Clamp industries from the devastation of the Gremlins. You know the deal, Gizmo gets wet and his offspring go off to do wild things and eventually become Gremlins.

Now it's up to the gang to figure out how they're going to kill all of these Gremlins before the wreak havoc on the rest of New York city. That's going to be even tougher this time around because they're so many more toys at the Gremlins' disposal.

You'd think this is kind of a rehash of the previous movie but this couldn't be further from the first movie. It is entirely aware of itself and has us in on the joke as well. This movie leans away from the horror aspect of the previous movie and leans towards satire of itself and society in the 90s in general.

In some ways I appreciate what they did with some of the stuff they did with this movie. Although, outdated I see what they did with what they were trying to do. A lot of the emphasis was based on the control of big corporations over us. They would never guess the extent of how much corporations control us now. Back then technology was quite crude so they had antiquated looking video telephones and voice command machines. Who knew these would have become a reality. They had bar codes on employees to ensure they can go in and out of things. This now would be replaced with scan cards. There's a lot of things like this that were pretty smart and probably not appreciated back in the day.

I loved how they showed that humans could be even scarier than the Gremlins. They were trying to figure out how they could get away with situations much like any corporations would if a disaster hit and they were trying to sweep it under the rug. There were talks about unethical testing of animals and weird medical experiments which made the Gremlins even more dangerous.

Again this movie is very self aware so they make fun of themselves because they know themselves how ridiculous the rules of Gremlins really is. Even they couldn't make sense of some of the inconsistencies of the rules. This kind of makes it okay for them to break the rules now and then.

We also have very interesting cameos that they have fun with. We have a lot of old celebrities that play monsters in previous TV shows and movies and they have fun with the dialogue and scenarios for these cameos. There's even moments that they try to blur the lines between the movie and reality.

The Gremlins in a way kind of represent the youth or adolescents in America. They're up to no good and just trying to live their best lives. Corporate America represented by Clamp and the rest of his cronies are trying to control everything while the rest of America suffers the consequences.

They added so many metaphors and similes in this movie that you'd have to do a whole report on it. Not everyone is going to get it. Some of the references are very much references of the times. The celebrity cameos won't be recognized because these were stars 30-40 years ago. So there is going to be a lot lost in the evolution of time. Still there is some fun to be had with this movie. People can recognize a lot of these metaphors because they're out there in plain sight.

Since this movie came out 6 years after the original, there is a drastic improvement in the special effects. The character models and the puppetry in this movie are remarkably improved over the original. There is still no CGI so you can tell everything is hand crafted and that took a lot of dedication and time.

Overall, I had a fun time with this movie but I think this is something I would have to see again to grasp all of the concepts that they added. It's a movie that is too smart for its own good and I think it may fly over some peoples' heads. There is a lot of fun but I can't argue that there is a little too much unnecessarily wild antics by the Gremlins. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. A very different type of movie that I would suggest trying out if you're kind of familiar with the Gremlins lore.