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Gremlins. Throw water on them, they give birth to new ones. Throw them into the sunlight, they die. Feed them after midnight, they turn into homicidal maniacs. Who the hell would want this as a pet? Apparently everyone, since this film was a box-office hit back in the day. There are hundreds of monster movies out there, and especially in the 80s these were pretty darn popular. Gremlins however stands separate from the rest with one clever trick; it takes apart cliches. Primarily those revolving around american suburbia and best of all, christmas. American movies especially seem to have problems when it comes to making christmas into a violent or offensive event, and Gremlins achieves just that through various methods. The best out of them is that it takes these wonderful cliched christmas setpieces and puts monsters into them, tearing them to pieces. It's fun to watch when the monsters destroy decorated trees and idyllic suburbian housing. All the characters are caricatyres from other comedies, and seeing them pitted against serious situations like a monster attack is also fun. There is one scene though where this whole thing goes too over-the-top if you ask me. I mean even though it's occasionally mean-spirited, Gremlins still mostly maintains this pretty fun and sweet athmosphere, but in one scene one of the characters talks of her traumas regarding a previous christmas, and it goes to the extent where it isn't funny to be heard, atleast not in a movie like this. Otherwise the humour in Gremlins rarely fails, delivering pretty steady laughs throughout. The writing is solid most of the time, but I've always wondered about one thing; One of the rules is "Never feed them after midnight." That's an odd rule. How is this determined? Is it midnight eastern standard time? When does the midnight end? At 6am? What if you're on a plane, and cross into a different timezone and then feed them when it'd be midnight in the timezone you just came from? What decides when you can't feed them? This is nitpicking though, I won't hold it against the movie, that rule just always made me wonder about it. Now, even though I'm meant to be reviewing the first part, I will say this about the sequel; the writing is where it went wrong. It was a collection of loose jokes revolving around the monsters, instead of circling a certain theme, like christmas or whatnot. It was just a monster movie in a skyscraper, nothing more and nothing less. The New Batch is still entertaining in it's own right, but I think that this is where it went completely wrong.
If the first thing that Gremlins excells at is the writing, then the second thing is definately the puppetry. All the animatronics, costumes and rubber dolls in here as the monsters is technically wonderful. Especially for someone like myself who adores old-fashioned puppetry this movie is a treat to the sore eyes. The facial expressions, the detailed textures; these monsters have it all. Sure, they all look alike except for the leader who has a mohawk (this movie was made in the 80s after all), but they're so well made I won't hold the monotone individual puppets against Gremlins. Otherwise, the set pieces, as I previously noted, are well replicated from idyllic suburban christmas comedies, and the prop department have also done a good job making wacky inventions we see on-screen every once in a while. Joe Dante does a very good job of maintaining a great pace for a popcorn flick and the cinematography looks quite alright for something that could be categorised as a B-movie according to some. The biggest downfall, even though it isn't such a big one after all, is the acting. The actors are mostly somewhat unknown film veterans or relative newcomers, and some do better and some do worse; Zach Galligan does a pretty good job as the main character, whereas his love interest, Phoebe Cates, does a pretty good job... in overacting her part every time she can. The rest of the cast is really mostly average, but I did get some kicks out of seeing a young Corey Feldman in a christmas tree-costume.
Gremlins is a very good movie to watch every once in a while and have some laughs. It even provides some "sophisticated laughs" which is something most wouldn't expect from a film like this, and the animatronics are a real godsend to look at. The real downfall is the acting, and the writing is flawed to an extent due to one, single horribly misplaced joke that should've been put into a movie like Very Bad Things or something. Still, I do recommend this one.
8/10
