Critters & Critters 2: The Main Course

Before I start the review proper, a little more about New Line Cinema. New Line was a company that originally just bought and distributed films in the early '80s. They'd handle mostly cheapo college type movies and had some success with that. After a few years of that, studio head Bob Shaye decided to actually try and get the studio off the ground at making it's own films. After a shaky start, they hit gold with "A Nightmare On Elm Street", the slasher that put New Line on the map. They later went on to make more films in that franchise, as well many others. Several of which I actually grew up with.
One of these was "Critters", otherwise to be known as New Line's shameless effort to cash in on the popularity of "Gremlins". This 1986 release was the studio's next big effort after they had big success with that one movie that introduced a certain Freddy Kruger to the world. And it was a bit of a success, but does it hold up all these years later? Short answer, no.
But to be fair it isn't because it's a bad movie. Far from it, to people like me anyway. What I like most about "Critters" is that it's just a lot of fun. It's dark sure, but it's also insanely funny at times and it's kind of going back to what made those old alien invader movies from the '50s a lot of fun to watch. Actually, this movie is basically a big homage to those kinds of movies.
The plot involves a bunch of, well, critters escaping from a maximum security space prison and crashing on Earth. Yeah, they had to be aliens, not weird creatures found in a Chinese pawn shop, who would buy that? They have a ravenous hunger and decide to eat whatever they come across. They happen upon a typically farming family and most of the rest of the movie is the family trying to fight off the critters while intergalactic bounty hunters are trying to find them.
It's got it's low points and it's high points. Some of the performances are pretty damn good, like the mother played by Dee Wallace Stone, otherwise known as the mom from "E.T.", and the father played by Billy Green Bush, a common player of horror making appearances in films such as "The Hitcher" and "Jason Goes To Hell". They seem like a believable couple, and have the whole mother/father dynamic with the kids down pretty well. Also, credit needs to go to cast members like M. Emmett Walsh as the sheriff, who's very likable and really funny. The bounty hunters have their own quirks to them too, the scene where they try to figure out how to drive a car is particularly well done.
But the movie is also not without it's flaws. The kids are really kind of on the annoying side, the daughter in particular since for the second half of the movie she basically only talks in shrieks. The son isn't really bad, but it's still one of those performances that stand out as being fairly not good. The effects can range from pretty cool, like when the bounty hunters transform into humans, to the rather sad, like how a good chuck of the critter effects look like demented hand puppets. Although the thing that I hated the most, was this written for the movie bad '80s power ballad that I guess the producers thought would take off because they play the fucking thing about 3 or 4 times in the course of about 15 minutes!
At the same time these elements, bad '80s music aside, combine to be an overall fun movie watching experience. I mean where else will you get to see the asshole fiancee from "Titanic" get his fingers bitten off by a sock puppet from hell? Or see another one yell out "fuck" as a punch line to seeing one of his buddies getting blown away? I mean this is one of my biggest guilty pleasures as far as movies go.
And since it did reasonably well, naturally a sequel was made. To be honest, for the longest time I avoided the "Critters" sequels. Every single human I've met has said that 3 and 4 are utter crap and so I saw no need to see them, but I did get a few positive comments on "Critters 2: The Main Course". And several times I almost did in fact watch it, but looking on the back of the box at the credits always stopped me. I was not going to spend my time watching a sequel written by David Twohy, the same guy that gave us "Chronicles of Riddick" and directed by Mick Garris, a guy who I'd only ever seen two movies from, and hated both of them. So needless to say I was not optimistic when I put this in the DVD player.
However, once it started I have to admit that I was just as satisfied with this movie as I was with the first. It's a rare horror sequel in which they continue the original rather go the "Final Destination" route and remake the first one with different people.
To be fair, the first film set itself up for a sequel, so it wasn't all the hard to make one. The critters from the first film apparently got busy and laid a bunch of eggs during the course of the first film, and surprise, they hatch in this one. The bounty hunters have to return to get rid of them, again. Only this time, there are more of them, A LOT more.
This one is a much more obvious rip off of "Gremlins". The critters do things like take out the power lines and destroy a fast food place that has the annoying kid from the Ferris Wheel in "1941" working behind the counter. The gags are much more cartoony and while the critter effects have improved, they still look like demented sock puppets, can't fault them for consistency I guess. That is until the end of the film where the little buggers all fuse together into a giant ball and instantly turn everybody the roll over in to nothing but bones, which is a pretty cool effect for being basically a giant fur ball.
The only returning cast is the son, played by Scott Grimes, and the town drunkard turned space bounty hunter played by Don Keith Opper. It seems that Grimes got acting lessons between the two films because his performance here is a little less whiny and more believable. The rest of the cast, the love interest, the town's folk, the child in danger, bounty hunters and so on, all do fine, but nothing special.
The thing that makes this one of the better sequels I've seen in awhile, is the fact that while the first film was the family fighting to survive, this one starts as a boy who cried wolf type tale until the critters hatch, and then the town must team up together to fight them. It's a bit of an homage to the other kind of story that was popular in the '50s mainly with movies like "Invaders From Mars" and "The Blob".
Both of these "Critters" films are decent flicks, well worth renting, I would even recommend buying if you find them in a bargain bin. Just don't expect high class cinema, these are something you put on when you want to have some fun watching movies with your friends, and they are lot of fun.