A Leprechaun Retrospective: Part 2: Leprechaun 2 (1994)

Next up in my tour of this inexplicable series about a killer leprechaun is a movie that, through the power of a bigger budget, has more powers and more dickery for its titular character to do. Is it a step up from the original? ...Honestly, with this series, it's hard to tell.

Today on Movie Russian Roulette, Alex sees a vision of himself in 40 years, maybe.

not the leprechaun, thank the gods

Overview: The leprechaun, somehow fine after being exploded and buried alive in the last movie, is suddenly in L.A. This time, he's cruisin' for a bride on his 2,000th birthday. On St. Patrick's Day. Yes, this movie goes into the backstory of the leprechaun, and it's about as hackneyed as one might expect: evil creature uses sneeze-related magic to get bride, creature's human slave tricks creature, creature swears revenge on slave's line, blah blah blah. (More after the break)

pimpin ain't easy

In the modern day, a teen named Cody is just trying to spend some time with his girlfriend when she gets kidnapped by the leprechaun. He enlists the help of his alcoholic, vaguely Jewish con artist father figure Mortimer, AKA Morty

aka my hero

to battle this menace. Comedy legitimately ensues.

Notable moments/quotes: Warwick Davis having far too much fun: "Scream as you may, scream as you might, you'll be dead on this night."

Cody, to girlfriend: "Hey, this job's important. Gotta pay for my sis's eye operation."
"If only you had a sister."
"You know me too well."

Morty: "What is rule number one?"
Con artist in training: "Never turn away a paying customer."

Student becoming the master: "What's rule number three? There's no such thing as a refund."

Our pint-sized menace, after stealing a hobo's whiskey: "Blended Canadian? The only whiskey is Irish whiskey!" He then yanks out the man's gold tooth in retribution.

Bland Protagonist: "You missed your calling; you should've been an actor."
Drunken Master: "Eh, no money in it."

The Green Killin' Machine, after tearing a man's finger off his hand because he was wearing a gold ring: "Methinks I'm going to like this town." He then takes a lick of the still-bloody stump. "Ah, finger lickin' good! Ahahaha!"

Morty, abruptly opening the door to his office as his watch goes off: "Thirty-one minutes, it's free!" He then grabs the pizza and slams the door in the delivery man's face before the poor fool has a chance to say anything.

After a local lech tries putting the moves on Cody's girl after she leaves him, the leprechaun lures him in with an illusion of a naked lady, awaiting the sexings. In reality...

this can't be anyone's fetish, but it surely is

When the leprechaun is using his barely explained "sneeze three times without a 'God bless you' and you're married to me" magic, Cody starts to bless his girl Bridget to unintentionally foil the plot. The leprechaun responds in the most subtle manner imaginable.

"This is my ACTING FACE"

The leprechaun, immediately abandoning his plans to rape his child bride because VENGEANCE: "But before I go... kiss me, I'm Irish." He then licks Bridget's face, leaving a long ling of murky spittle.

Morty: "I don't know what ya saw, but there's no such thing as leprechauns!" The leprechaun then immediately appears.

When our heroes try to lose the leprechaun in a bar, he appears there. Morty goads him into a drinking contest, with Morty secretly drinking "Red Special Rye" which is nonalcoholic, as established earlier.
Villain rising to the bait: "Drink what you want, drink what you're able. If you drink with me, you'll be under the table!"
With the leprechaun drunk, his magic doesn't work, and Morty can't resist a chance to gloat.
 "You thought you were fast, you thought you were clever, you thought you were sporty, but not as clever as Morty!"

The leprechaun goes to a coffee shop to sober up, and the barista gives him this gem: "I prefer cash, but maybe you're a little short!" The leprechaun responds by killing him with espresso steam.

 After the pair cleverly trap the leprechaun, the series' best alcoholic fucks everything up by making a deal, wishing for "all the leprechaun's gold." He gets it all... directly teleported into his stomach, killing him.

yeah, that bag there is supposed to be his stomach. BUDGET!

Just like last time, Michael Bay returns to direct the demise of the main villain.

yes, he's back in the sequel. no, it's never really explained

My thoughts: This movie aims more for comedy than terror, showing the filmmakers learned that a movie about a serial killer leprechaun is not going to be taken seriously by audiences. Who knew?! The series as a whole generally follows this trend, with the later films getting goofier and goofier until they approach a kind of zaniness singularity. Sadly, this movie does not reach such heights as, say, the series' fourth iteration, but this goes a long way towards making the movie more palatable.

Just like the previous film, we spend a fair amount of time getting to know our main characters, and once again it's to the movie's benefit. As we have only two characters rather than four, we get to know and like the important characters, which is to say we get to know and love Mortimer. Nobody likes Cody. He's super bland. Bridget, too, gets some time despite mostly being a damsel in distress. She uses trickery and guile to try to get out of the situation herself rather than just waiting around to be rescued. It's a nice little touch to see her, y'know, actually do something. Unfortunately, the movie rapidly goes downhill after Mortimer dies, and there's around 20 minutes of movie left. I literally wrote almost no notes for this section of movie, because it's just a dull, unfunny showdown with the clown in green. That alone soured me on this movie.

So, I brought this up in yesterday's review, but there's very little point to making the bad guy a leprechaun if you're not going to do anything fun or clever with it. In this movie, they at least give the leprechaun the weakness to wrought iron, which is kind of a classic faerie thing, but that's about all they do with it. Sure, it's kind of fun to have a killer leprechaun running around on St. Patty's Day, but when that's the extent of the connection... it ends up feeling a tad pointless.

On the subject of his nature, his magic is even more lolrandom here. For some reason, he's able to magically marry girls he targets who sneeze three times without getting a "god bless you." He's also able to command plants to bind people, perform perfect illusions, and even transform himself into other people, at one point using this ability to mimic Bridget and seduce the last bit of gold away from Cody. Again... it's just fucking lazy to use "magic" as shorthand for "do whatever we need it to for the plot." Magic is always more interesting when it has a set of rules and limitations. It adds flavor to your world and prevents characters from being all-powerful and thus invincibly boring.

although occasionally OP characters are fun

On a completely different tack, there's zero continuity between this movie and the last. There's no mention of how the leprechaun escaped his prison of explosions from the end of the first movie, no mention of his gold stash from then, and of course not a word about Jennifer Aniston's character, as she was off doing more respectable things by this time.

I actually don't have much to say about this film. It's much peppier than the first, has some moments of genuine humor, but is largely pretty forgettable. The franchise was still finding its footing, and the best was still yet to come. Yet still, this movie can be a pleasant surprise if one's expectations aren't set too high. Please look forward to it if you plan on seeing it, or sit back and enjoy my reviews of the rest.

I give this movie a Nic Cage Fills His Prescription out of five. Still Facebook. Still Patreon. It's 3:03 AM, I can't come up with anything better so I'm comma splicing.