Johnny Five Takes Manhattan!

Short Circuit 2 sure as shit might not be anyone’s favorite movie, and it’s definitely received a decent amount of hate as far as sequels go. But I’m here to set the record straight: It’s really not as bad as it’s made out to be.

I’ll admit to most people’s standards, you could consider my taste in films to be pretty awful. I was that kid who actually enjoyed terrible films like Garbage Pail Kids and Mac and Me. Are they badly made films? Yes, of course, they are. But I do find some sort of sick nostalgic joy in them every once in a while? Also, absolutely yes. There’s a sly charm inside “Black Sheep” films such as these that you won’t see elsewhere. A great example is the campy and comedic Howard the Duck as it was and still is, panned critically by a lot of cinephile snobs. But, honestly, how can you hate on a movie that showed us the first pair of duck tits ever on a theater screen?

Also, they were, indeed, the first pair of legit boobs I saw as a kid.

The sequel made two years after the original cult-classic Science-Comedy debuted to audiences didn’t seem to fare over well to the same group of people that embraced the now-named Johnny Five as their machine-wired counterpart to our human existence via the glorious 80s. Plenty of people talk a lot of shit about this sweet and sensitive robot turned vigilante scooting around New York City in the 80s- and I’ve had enough of it.

In fact, I’ll just let Johnny himself tell those people exactly what I think about their distaste for Short Circuit 2…

Number Five, now dubbed Johnny Five as he so enthusiastically named himself at the end of the first film, now finds himself in New York helping Ben Jahveri (Fisher Stevens) and tag-along scumbag street-slinger “friend” Fred (Michael McKean) get Ben’s business going into mass production with mini Johnny Five robot toys for kids. Cute, right? Well of course in the middle of this old warehouse Fred had scrounged up as ground zero for the assembly line, is right in the way of a couple of diamond burglars’ plans to heist a very valuable set of jewels. And of course, we all know that our formidable heroes will have to face off against these scoundrels towards the end of the film so we have to throw in a bunch of zany subplots to fill the void until then. Such as:

• Upon Johnny Five realizing he’s in a city, the once midwestern town robot immediately gets duped into ripping off car stereos by a Latin gang; and then make him an honorary member. “Los Locos kick your ass! Los Locos kick your face! Los Locos kick your balls into outer space!”

• Ben falls in love with the girl who discovered his toys and got him a deal for a line and is too socially awkward to tell her how he feels. J5 to the rescue as he hijacks a Times Square billboard where he helps woo his friend’s love interest while teaching us some insults in Spanish.

• Fred tries to sell J5 on the side of his Rolex watch hustle, and our pre-Wall-E robot falls out of a skyscraper via the fear of him being a corporate slave. Just like Batman, this guy has all the gadgets and is saved by his backpack wing glider, and we get a fantastic pre 9/11 view of the New York City skyline!

• Johnny gets arrested on the street because the cop thinks he’s a man in a suit or someone playing a joke.

• Ben and Fred get locked in a freezer by the jewel thieves and are rescued in the most ridiculous way possible: calling Ben’s love interest (Cynthia Gibb) and using ye’ old faithful touch tones keypads to play oldies pop songs that give her clues to their location. Oh, with the help of a very nice taxi driver- which is already bullshit fantasy because ain’t no taxi driver in Manhattan that friendly.

All those filler antics have their place in the film for some sort of progression I suppose, be it the hammer over our heads that Johnny Five has emotions like the rest of us, or that we goddamn better remember the exact tune to “Doo Wah Diddy” if ever I get locked in a fish freezer. But perhaps the best moments in this follow-up film that originally starred Alley Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg, is when J5 is cornered by the jewel thieves and beaten to a “battery fluid bloody pulp” in broad daylight on a public sidewalk.

Hey, just another day in New York in the 80s!

What a fucked up segment in a movie that was aimed more at kids this time around. But eh, that’s just the beauty of 80s movies’ trauma.

This is where you might get some sort of feels going, or just laugh your ass off depending on what kind of sick fuck you are, (personally a mix of both is totally acceptable). Left for dead, J5’s backup power kicks and miraculously gets up, rather painfully and makes his way down an alley where Fred finds his frenemy. Lucky for them, Johhny damn near collapses by a Radio Shack and as we all know, that place is the Johns Hopkins Hospital for robots. With a little aid from Fred, the former military robot rebuilds himself into Travis Bickle from TAXI DRIVER and goes on a revenge rampage to track down the men responsible.He is so pissed off, he ignores his low battery warnings and literally revenges himself to death. Well, close to it anyway because what kind of ending would that be for kids?

It’s a 80s flick aimed at kids, so it would be a proper ending if you asked me.

Let’s get one thing straight. This movie may suck to a lot of people. But for the rest of us, it’s a feel-good kind of suck that we want to revisit over and over again. As a kid, we all liked these movies, this one in particular, but as I grew older, the child in people just died and formed some sort of disdain for this film; like it was idiotic to like this movie or something. And honestly, the hell with those people.

Worth noting, however, is the “Brownface” donned by Fisher Stevens as an immigrant from India, whereas looking at it now is a tad cringe and unacceptable. At the very least, they made the guy a scientist and not some corner store worker. This isn’t a dig at Fisher Stephens by any means. From what I understand, he worked very hard at getting the accent down and he is a talented guy. However, to this very day, the only guy able to pull this off and get away with it is Robert Downey Jr in TROPIC THUNDER. Other than that, looking back at films like this and SOUL MAN (1986), it’s just a little uncomfortable, especially in today’s climate of change.

Aside from the unpolitically correct problem there in SHORT CIRCUIT 2, the film does a pretty decent job of sending a good message about not being accepted in America and the tribulations of those going through the system to become a citizen. It’s a little subtle for young eyes, but upon viewing it as an adult, the theme seems a little more apparent. And hell, we get to see our Johnny become the first robotic citizen!

As zany, whacky and ridiculous as most of the movie is, at the end of the day, it really isn’t that bad of a sequel. In fact, I actually PREFER it over the first! Yeah, I said it. I just wish they would have made a third one!