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Those who... if Spielberg produces it must be tasteless. It's one of the many stereotypes that distinguish cinema history, and it's one of the most false. Sure, Spielberg has produced despicable or overrated films ("Poltergeist"), but he has also been the producer of masterpieces ("Who Framed Roger Rabbit?") or respectable films ("Gremlins"). Among his protégés, Robert Zemeckis, Tobe Hooper, Joe Dante. Leaving aside Zemeckis and Hooper (the latter being a truly modest director), perhaps Joe Dante is the greatest "spielberghian" discovery.
A director who is too often underestimated, Joe Dante is, before being a film industry insider, a passionate cinephile. He had his epiphany at the age of 6 after seeing "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Cinema is his drug, and from the Hammer horror classics to John Ford's westerns, everything passes before his eyes. Spielberg noticed him after the release of the film "The Howling" (perhaps Dante's best), and offered him the screenplay for "Gremlins." It's a worldwide success, but just as happened to Michael Cimino after "The Deer Hunter," his exit scene will be terrible. In 1985, his contract with Paramount ruined him, and interesting films like "Innerspace" or "The 'Burbs" turned out to be spectacular flops. Today he manages to get by, between commercials and American TV series, occasionally helped by his always faithful friend Spielberg, with whom he manages to make very worthy films (but always with little success), such as "Small Soldiers."
His name, however, remains unquestionably tied to "Gremlins," an excellent film, a mix between science fiction and horror, with interesting sociological interpretations: the destruction of the classic American middle class, the end of the average man, rampant anarchy. And with those cute little creatures that have entered the hearts of millions of viewers. Obviously, cute up to a point, since they did little more than kill. I could talk for hours about Phoebe Cates, but I avoid any prurient comments.
In 1990, in the midst of "Dantean" crisis, Spielberg proposes to his director friend to make a sequel to that film from six years earlier, and Dante accepts. "Gremlins 2: The New Batch" comes out in theaters in the summer of 1990, achieving interesting public success but, alas!, far from the greatness of the first film. This one is indeed less commercial and less direct than the first, it is more crazy, anarchic, full of references (perhaps too much so), convoluted, ruthless, parodic. The story is just a pretext to unleash Dante's enormous cinematic culture, (in practice, a mogwai reproduces in a large corporate building causing panic among employees and the upper floors, that's it...), but in between, there are a lot of often brilliant inventions sometimes excessively forced, to the point of seeming almost trivial.
Excellent the start, even before the opening credits, with Warner Bros. characters (specifically, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny) arguing over who should appear on the Warner logo, to move on to the Chinese trinket seller ("Big Trouble in Little China"), to the fake Dracula who appears in late-night TV, leading to one of the most ruthless scenes in cinema history: the death of the critic. Midway through the film, Leonard Maltin (one of the world's most famous film critics, still active today) appears, sitting on a comfortable theater chair, intent on slamming the first "Gremlins" (which he actually did in real life), and is attacked by two satanically expresed mogwai. They strangle him, and he dies. Revenge, perhaps not refined but effective, that Dante perfectly serves in the most tumultuous and agitated moment of the entire film.
There are numerous references, (there are also "Batman," "The Wizard of Oz," "Rambo," "The Phantom of the Opera") but also many scenes that go around in circles, and an excessively chaotic screenplay, unable to create a coherent story but only to pile up a series of gruesome sequences of cannibalism and animalistic ferocity. A serious flaw, of course, but it's also true that Joe Dante's directorial mastership is sensational, capable of holding the storyline until the end, and keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat until the closing credits. And that's not nothing.
A good cast lights up the scene (only flaw: Zach Galligan is always the same old wooden fish), but the scenic genius of the great old Christopher Lee is undeniable (who appears very little, to be honest, but when he appears on screen the film magically takes off, as if it never left...), in the role of Professor Catheter, a madman who works on the 51st floor of the Clamp company.
The Italian dubbing (well done, nothing to say) contains a juicy curiosity: when one of the mogwai transforms, with glasses always ready to use, into a know-it-all, it is Vittorio Sgarbi who lends him his voice. Many years before bickering on television with Alessandra Mussolini...
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