Welcome, one and all, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna be covering a movie from 1988. That movie is "Short Circuit 2". Which is the second film off this DVD 2-pack that also features the first movie.
Now, earlier this month, I did review the first "Short Circuit" movie, and...I thought it was OK. It certainly wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either. Really, what kinda held that movie back for me were the side characters. Most of them were shallow and flat, and I really didn't care about the relationship between our two main characters. The only character that was worth watching from the first movie was it's star, that being Johnny Five.
Speaking of which, this also leads into tonight's movie. I have no idea what the plot is to this movie. I do know that it's gonna focus on Johnny Five again and that it's set in New York City. I'm not totally sure WHY it's taking place New York City, but I am going to find out soon enough. Now, from what I've heard, this movie has almost no connection with the first movie, outside of Johnny Five making a return. So, I'm not totally sure if the continuity from the first film is going to carry over to this second one.
But really, I'm just hoping for this thing to be better than the first one. Again, the first movie wasn't awful, it just wasn't all that memorable. I'm hoping that the sequel will be better. I'm not totally sure if it will be, but the only way I'm gonna find out, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Short Circuit 2".
19 minutes later
OK, I have a question, and it's probably a stupid one. So Johnny Five was delivered to Ben from Newton and Stephanie, so that Johnny Five can help him make the toy robots. How the hell did they even know WHERE to deliver him to? Because, last time I checked, New York City is a huge fucking place. Ben had to have been really specific to Stephanie and Newton on where he was building these toy robots at. I understand it's a completely trivial matter in the long run, but it is something that is sorta bothering me a little bit.
16 minutes later
OK, that was a really cool way to just toss their asses out. And Johnny Five did that without inflicting physical damage. Well...kinda, sort of. Still though, it was certainly really cool.
6 minutes later
All right, well, you know what? That was probably one of the more creative ways I've seen someone defend their home. It almost makes Kevin McCallister's attempt at it look fucking amateurish at best. Then again, maybe Kevin should've taken lessons from Johnny Five on how to defend your home without going the extra mile. Just a thought.
19 minutes later
You know, guys, every time that I think I've seen Johnny Five do some creative things in this movie, it almost seems to top itself with each passing moment that Johnny Five is doing something creative. That time, he was able to use one of those city billboards to tell this guy running a popcorn vendor to get out of the way. It's not anything amazing, but it's certainly really creative, and I gotta give the filmmakers props there.
18 minutes later
OK, you know what? I can probably ignore the stupid Morse code trick that Ben and Fred came up with earlier, but how the hell are they still alive? Shouldn't they be dead from hypothermia by this point? You would think maybe after being trapped in a frozen room for almost the entire day, their bodies would be frozen solid. Then again, I may be ignorant on this subject, because I'm not totally sure how long it would take for a human body to die from hypothermia. So perhaps I should probably drop this subject, you know?
9 minutes later
You know, guys, I didn't think that I would see Johnny Five writing the word 'dying' with a piece of chalk. But the way it was handled is...actually a bit tragic. I was not expecting that.
The Review
OK, that's a rather cheesy way to end the film. But anyway, guys, that was "Short Circuit 2". Let me the shut the movie off...OK. Well, I can start by saying this much. When compared to the first movie, this film stands head and shoulders above it. This really is a good sequel. I understand that it shows my hand early, but why don't we talk about the movie itself?
Let's start with writing. I'm gonna start with something that I brought up earlier. And that was how much of the continuity was brought over from the first film. Earlier, I brought up about how this film had almost no connection to the first movie. And for the most part, it keeps the references and callbacks from the first movie to a minimum. The only real callback that we get is when Johnny Five is delivered to Ben's warehouse. He comes with a letter from Stephanie, in which she says that they, that being Stephanie and Newton, sent Johnny Five out to Ben to help him build the toy robots that he's been working on. And mind you, Stephanie is the only one from the first film who gets any dialogue from this movie. And I would rather hear her voice then fucking Guttenberg's acting again. But aside from that, that's all of the references to the first movie. And to be really honest, I'm perfectly okay with this. Because, if you haven't read my review of the first "Short Circuit" movie, one of the issues I had with it were the supporting characters being incredibly bland and shallow. There really was nobody in the supporting cast that I gave a shit about from the first movie. In fact, if it weren't for Johnny Five, I would've almost written that movie off as complete shit. Thankfully, this movie actually improves on this. First of all, the only character who makes a comeback in this movie, barring Johnny Five, is Ben. He was the Indian stereotype that was Newton's friend. In this movie, he ends up moving to New York City to start up his own business where he can build small robot toys that are modeled after Johnny Five. He gets help from Fred, who's basically this smart ass dick that starts out as a con artist who was trying to sell gold watches. He even tries to sell Johnny Five at one point, after hearing that Johnny Five was worth $11 million dollars. But he actually ends up being the second best character in the entire movie, not counting Johnny Five. Because, much like the first movie, Johnny Five is definitely worth watching in this one. We also have Sandy, who is a toy buyer that wants to order 1,000 of Ben's robot toys after she sees one of them herself. And Ben ends up having a crush on her. Now admittedly, Sandy's probably the least developed of the entire supporting cast, but she's actually a little more tolerable here, unlike Stephanie from the first movie. The biggest problem I had with Stephanie was that she got riddled into a forced relationship with Steve Guttenberg's character and she had really cheesy dialogue in certain areas. Well, to be fair, it was more so her acting that ended up giving out dialogue that sounded rather cheesy. And unlike the forced relationship between Newton and Stephanie, the relationship between Ben and Sandy actually feels more natural here. Our characters our really well developed. And even though I said that Sandy's character was the least developed, it's still better than what was present in the first movie.
Before I get into the character of Johnny Five again, I want to talk about something that this movie actually does. You see, I briefly talked about this in a couple of my past reviews where certain movies try to inject a message into their films. Now again, I am not against movies that want to do this sort of thing. However, you have to be kinda subtle with how you handle your message. If you want a bad example, I would easily point towards "Drive Thru". Which was a horror comedy, and I'm gonna use the term "comedy" in the loosest way possible because there was no comedy to be found in that movie, that bludgeoned an anti-Republican message to it's viewers, and it got really annoying, really quick. This movie also has a political message of sorts, where it brings up equal rights. You see, Johnny Five is learning about city life for the first time, because he spent the entirety of the first movie in the middle of nowhere Oregon. Yeah, I don't remember where exactly the first movie took place in Oregon, and I don't really care. But anyway, after it gets sent over to New York City to help out Ben, he discovers the culture shock of what it's like being in a big city, rather than the countryside of bumsville Oregon. And because he is rather naive, he's being tricked to help steal stuff such as car batteries for this city gang, or when he's being tricked to help out Oscar, who's after a certain set of jewels, which was a big plot point in the movie. And in certain moments, Johnny Five realizes that he's not being treated like he's a person. And this is where the part about equal rights comes in, because, at one point in the movie, Johnny Five discovers a church and he ends up in a confessional booth with a priest. And Johnny Five has been trying to find answers about how he should be treated by society, to which the priest says that how he should live his life is based on his character, so to speak, and despite what Johnny Five has done, he is deserving to be equal just like other humans. Now I will say that, while the message is perfectly fine, personally, I'm really sick and tired of hearing this kind of message. Especially within the last few years, where people wouldn't shut the fuck up about equal rights not existing, specifically for women. Which is bullshit, because equal rights has always been around for a very long time for just about anyone. I understand that I'm delving into my politics a little bit, so I'm gonna try and move past that, because I could be here all night typing my grievances about that subject. But anyway, that's where most of the message comes in from that scene. Now, I will say that, unlike "Drive Thru", this movie doesn't preach to you it's political message for too long. While it is one of the themes for this movie, it's not something that they'll hammer into your mind. Maybe right towards the very end of the film, but it's not something that I'm going to harp on this movie too much for. I will say, however, that the movie can be a little over-dramatic at points. And part of that can be attributed to the score for this movie. However, I am going to hold off on talking about music until I get to that point. But overall, I can say that the writing is certainly an improvement over the first movie.
What also is an improvement over the first film is the acting. In the first movie, I commented about Stephanie's acting sounding very cheesy, and how Steve Guttenberg had terrible dialogue that did not sound natural in the slightest. And thankfully, we don't have to worry about him in this movie, because he makes no appearance in this movie, other than getting name dropped once or twice. As for the acting in this movie, it's certainly really good. Every actor was able to turn some really good showings. One actor, in particular, I need to make mention of is the actor who played Fred, which was Michael McKean. Perhaps it's just the voice, but his performance in this movie reminds me a lot of Phil Hartman. Where he acts and sounds a lot like a smarmy, smart ass, dickhead. And I love that. Granted, McKean is never gonna be as great as Phil Hartman was, but it's still good enough to where I can look past that. One other thing I need to make mention of in terms of acting is whenever the actor voicing Johnny Five has to do certain celebrity impressions towards the end of the film. And by impressions, I'm talking about impressions of Robin Williams, Clint Eastwood, and John Wayne. And the impressions were kinda shit. But then again, it was more so the delivery of the lines rather than the impressions that sorta got to me. Other than that, the acting is really good from just about the entire cast.
Special effects are once more really good. But then again, a lot of it was just the same puppeteering as what was shown in the first movie involving the character of Johnny Five. So, I can't really talk about much involving special effects. But I can talk about something that I have never talked about before in this series, which is the involvement of product placement. For those who don't know what product placement is, it usually is something involving a product of sorts, where it is featured in movies and television to market whatever product they want to advertise. Three of them in particular come to mind for this movie. Two of them are very minor, such as Coca-Cola, in which we see Ben and Fred having lunch, and Ben's drink has the Coca-Cola name plastered onto it. The other minor one is Nike, in which Johnny Five blatantly name drops that shoe company once, including it's logo. But the biggest example of product placement in this movie goes to RadioShack. Many people today probably don't even know what a RadioShack is. And to make a long story short, they were an electronics company that mostly dealt with cell phones, television, and computers. They were basically one of the biggest electronics company from back in the day. You probably wouldn't know about it nowadays, because RadioShack is no longer a thing. At least, as far as I know. Basically, they went out of business like Kmart and Blockbuster did. And if you don't know what those two companies are, then I feel really sorry for you. But I'm getting way off track here. So, I'm going to assume RadioShack had some level of involvement in this movie, because their name was advertised quite a few times in this movie. Such as the beginning, where as Johnny Five is first making the toy robots, he's watching TV in which some guy was desperately trying to up-sell his products at RadioShack, because he owned that particular store. And it also get's brought up again towards the latter half of the movie, during an important part where Johnny Five and Ben are there for certain reasons. I'm not going to tell you what those reasons are, you're going to have to watch the movie for yourself. But anyway, RadioShack got the biggest plug from this movie. I don't know how much of a success it was in the aftermath of this movie, but I'm not going to go into that here. Point is, the product placement in this movie is definitely noticeable, so it's something that you have to take for what it's worth. Me personally, I don't mind it, as long as it's not your only selling point for whatever movie or TV show it's in.
Camerawork here is really good. Lighting is lit very well. Sound-mix here is fine. Music is also another thing that this movie improves on. You'll recall in my review of the first movie that while the music was mostly decent, the one thing that brought the soundtrack down was the usage of disco music. And I complained that by the mid-80's, disco was already dead and that we should've moved past all that. Thankfully, as far I could hear, there was no disco music in this movie. Most of the score was pretty good. Granted, there were several moments where the movie will play itself dramatically with some rather corny piano music. However, those few scenes are pretty few and far between, so it's not going to ruin the film for you. Soundtrack, however, is great. There are two pieces of music that I could recall. One of them was "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler, which is a really good song by itself. And the other one is when this movie, at one point, plays the theme song to "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood". Which, having seen quite a bit of that show when I was kid, hearing it in this movie kinda made me smile. Overall, guys, the music in this thing is great, and it certainly beats the shitty disco music from the first movie.
Overall, guys, when all is said and done, can I recommend "Short Circuit 2"? Oh yes, certainly. In fact, I could almost say that you can skip the first movie and go straight into this one, without having to worry about what wasn't carried over from the first film. Like I said, the first film is barely referenced here. Which is a good thing, even though the first movie was kinda average. But if you really must check out both "Short Circuit" movies, then I would recommend getting this 2-pack that I have on DVD. It's certainly worth it, mostly for the 2nd movie. However, even though I did say that the first movie was kinda average, I would still say that there are things there that kinda worked. Mostly it's just Johnny Five, but he is what saved the first movie. So yeah, I can recommend both movies. Especially, like before, if you're into studying robotics, then I would instantly recommend both movies. I, personally, am happy that I have both these movies together, because Johnny Five is what made these two movies fun to watch. And I'm certainly happy that I got to cover both of them for this series. And now, I'm gonna go watch another movie that has robots involved. And the first thing that comes to mind is "Transformers: The Movie". I'm gonna go watch that, and this 2-pack is certainly going to have a nice spot on my DVD shelf.
And with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all in the near future. Peace.
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