An unexpectedly successful skit on Spielberg/Disney movie culture -- that itself became something of a franchise.
Comment
11/27/07
Gremlins (1984)
78 %
Reviews Counted: 40 Fresh: 31 Rotten:9 Average Rating: 6.7/10
Runtime: 1 hr 51 mins
Synopsis: Joe Dante's hilariously funny, wickedly scary film is about a loveable, furry little Christmas gift that multiplies into many little Christmas gifts, with savage consequences. Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) is an inventor who hasn't successfully invented anything. But this Christmas he's... [More]
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Starring: Zach Galligan, Hoyt Axton, Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, Frances Lee McCain
Reviews
Top Critic
Dante gleefully sinks his teeth into the kind of fluffy, sugary, sickly small town fantasy beloved of his pal and sometime producer Spielberg.
06/24/06
Top Critic
A movie that lives inside our memories of movies, and tramples all over them with a crazed, subversive joy.
12/14/03
Top Critic
The pitch black comedy works, and it makes you wonder how a generation of parents took their kids to see this -- as children's entertainment -- without question. Ah, salad days.
01/01/00
Top Critic
Either the slyest satire of consumerism you will ever see or a filmmaker, reared on action figures and electric trains, acting out his childhood fantasies of being locked in a department store at night.
02/04/08
Top Critic
What's confusing yet ultimately illuminating is the way his gremlins function as a free-floating metaphor, suggesting at separate junctures everything from teenagers to blacks to various Freudian suppressions.
11/27/07
Dante is perhaps the first filmmaker since Frank Tashlin to base his style on the formal free-for-all of animated cartoons; he is also utterly heartless.
11/27/07
Yes, Dante gleefully trashes cliches and sentimental Capra-esque notions, but one should not forget this movie was given a "PG" rating and cynically aimed to draw an audience of small children who would no doubt be terrorized by this myth-shattering film.
12/04/06
Top Critic
Taking a second look back at Joe Dante's career, I realize he was actually one of the most interesting American directors working.
08/14/06
At the level of Serious Film Criticism, it's a meditation on the myths in our movies: Christmas, families, monsters, retail stores, movies, boogeymen. At the level of Pop Moviegoing, it's a sophisticated, witty B movie.
10/23/04
Top CriticRelated Forums
For all you Gremlin Fans out there!
by: JyPsy 3/20/01
by: JyPsy 3/20/01
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