Zonked-out Christmas confection with claws

Rating: 5/10 (14 August 2005)

A furry, cooing mystical creature called a mogwai is adopted by a small town American family with the proviso it must not get wet...or eat after midnight. Turns out water causes the mogwai to multiply trouble-making little duplicates, while late night snacks turn the spawn into terrifying demons with an appetite for murder. Well-produced special-effects package in a Christmas setting was generally thought at the time to be director Joe Dante's wicked variation of E.T. (even with Steven Spielberg as its executive producer); but the film "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" had three-dimensional human characters as well as the adorable alien, while "Gremlins" writer Chris Columbus doesn't reach that far (in fact, he hardly reaches at all). Columbus sets up his cut-out characters to be targets, and then unleashes a barrage of nasty pranks on them (staged by Dante to get quick, cheap laughs). It's intended to be a black comedy, but some of the satire is too outrageous (such as with the break-dancing gremlin) and much of the mayhem is more mean-spirited than funny. There's OK work from Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates as the young couple at the center of the story (Cates once again working her cherubic, Lolita-like innocence to her advantage); yet the whole film has a sleepy, lethargic feel, as though it had been overworked at its earliest stages and arrived on the screen exhausted from all the effort. Followed by a sequel in 1990. ** from ****