Critics reviews

The references to E.T.—Spielberg was on hand as producer—are a joke the entire world is in on, but they also put Dante's and Spielberg's presentations of childhood in delightful and provocative contrast. It is as if the film is a riposte to all that's tender in the Spielberg universe, arguing that for every sweet child who badly wants an imaginary friend and a complete family, there's a half-dozen pint-sized anarchists who daydream about kicking over their school like it was made out of LEGOs.

A genre director who truly loves genre films, Joe Dante has also managed to make his share of subversive movies, most famously his exercise in anarchy, Gremlins (1984), the Spielberg film to end all Spielberg films.

Turning a commodity of industrial Christianity, the Xmas movie, into an anti-consumerist satire without losing popular appeal was not an easy thing to pull off. But that is precisely what Dante's greatest hit is: a sly take on that insatiable thirst for consumer goods Jesus Christ's birthday triggers year after year.

American cinema's most conspicuous thief pays explicit homage to a no less reverential but far subtler American genre craftsman. Tarantino's steal [of the Gremlins ending for Inglourious Basterds] was inspired; Dante's invention was brilliant.

Nostalgia has somewhat softened the satirical impact of the film, if only because it's difficult for a beloved childhood memory to attack you for liking it. But divorced from that sort of fondness, Gremlins has retained a lot of its original bite, and, with violent imperialist epics like Avatar capturing the hearts of today's youth, it's never been easier to appreciate the old-fashioned moralism of Dante's criticisms.

Despite giving Chuck Jones a cameo here, Dante really seems like more of a Bob Clampett guy at heart, which may explain why I've never quite embraced him. Here he's got a dynamite black-comedy premise (the one decent thing Chris Columbus ever gave the world—sorry Goonies fans) but gradually loses his grip on the blackness, turning the gremlins into harmless pop-culture clowns decked out in pimp shades and Flashdance leg warmers.

Dante's visual style manages to capture the framing and momentum of Warner Brothers' cartoons while still being scary. Dante has much in common with other American stylists well-received in the 1980s--Alan Rudolph, Brian De Palma, the Coen Brothers--but he's the only one who managed to successfully pass his subversive ideas as family entertainment.

Packed to the gills with in-jokes, regular cameos by Dante's stock company, and a Jerry Goldsmith score (a creative partnership that began on Twilight Zone: The Movie and continues to this day), the film is gleefully irreverent and anarchic.

Much as the depiction of Vietnam in Coppola's Apocalypse Now was designed to placate hawks and doves alike, gremlins is cleverly contrived to please skeptics as well as believers, optimists as well as pessimists about the American way of life. Thanks to a disconnected episodic structure that suggests several separate movies crammed together viewers of Gremlins are invited to chart out their own justifications for enjoying Dante and Spielberg's treasure trove.

Spielberg's finger wagging is overwhelmed by Joe Dante's roaring, undisciplined direction, which (sometimes through sheer sloppiness) pushes the imagery to unforeseen, untidy, and ultimately disturbing extremes. 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.