By Geno McGahee
In 1986, the debatable classic SHORT CIRCUIT was released with the debatable stars Steve Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy. Hey, they had their time in the sun. Guttenberg had more than 15 minutes I would argue. He had the POLICE ACADEMY run and he was in COCOON. COCOON was about a bunch of old people that were having sex, I think. I haven’t seen it in years and I don’t remember if Guttenberg joined in or not. He probably did.
In the end, Sheedy and Guttenberg never really amounted to megastars, but they were far too big of a name to be part of a sequel to the film SHORT CIRCUIT. The producers needed a familiar face though and they elected to get Fisher Stevens, who played the Indian stereotype, Ben Jabituya, a robotics engineer that made Johnny 5, a robot that was hit by lightning and grew a personality and claimed to be alive. He did impressions and beat up bad guys. The impressions were unfunny in the first and they are worse in the sequel.
Jabituya is in New York City and is selling small versions of Johnny 5 on the street alongside Fred Ritter (Michael McKean), who is selling fake Rolexes. When Sandy (Cynthia Gibb) finds one of the runaway robot toys, she finds Ben and asks him to make a thousand of them for her department store. Not knowing how he will accomplish this, Ben teams up with Fred, and brings Johnny 5 down to the city to create the toys.
Hilarity ensues as Johnny 5 gets consumed with the city and the need for “input” as he retreads on tired old jokes from the first one. They didn’t work then and they don’t work now, but they keep trying them. For instance, Ben, being from another country, has to screw up every saying that we have in the United States…and it’s not funny. By the way, when I said hilarity ensues, I was being sarcastic. Just in case there is any confusion.
There was one laugh and I will give them credit for that. Johnny 5 learns the term “crap-head” and goes to a book store and asks the girl “how much for this book crap-head?” I laughed. So, big win there for the movie, but I did watch the entire thing and that was the only time that I laughed.
I have to give credit to Michael McKean. He tried very hard to make this role work. He did the bad guy turns good guy role pretty well, but he didn’t have much to work with. I was never a fan of the first SHORT CIRCUIT and this is just a sad retread on the first. The jokes are just worse and the story is all over the place. Just to give you an example of the quality of the jokes, Johnny 5 is riding down the street with McKean on his back and he’s nervous. Johnny 5 says: “Don’t worry. My cousin was a Harley Davidson.” If you laughed at that…kill yourself.
SHORT CIRCUIT 2 is as bad as it gets. If you like robots that do impressions of John Wayne and the Church Lady from SNL, this movie is for you. If you are the other 99.9%, you will agree this movie is shit. How did I make it to the end of it? I guess I was just hoping to laugh again. That crap-head line was great! Other than that, it was horrible.
Rating: 1.5/10 – Watch it for the crap-head line.
