Short Circuit 2 (1988)

Director: Kenneth Johnson

Cast: Fisher Stevens, Michael McKean, Cynthia Gibb, Tim Blaney

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, yes. Many, many times. For many, many years the only copy of the film I had was a hastily record VHS taping from an airing on HBO. So hasty, indeed, that we only got the tape started after the rather charming sequence where a toy Johnny 5 careens through a Simpson’s department store. Until DVDs could finally set me straight, for all I knew this movie began with the line “Silence is better than Little Richard?” Weird that I could be so enamored with a film I’ve only seen a part of.

Did I Like It: Ok, so we all know what the problem is with the film, beyond the fact that your relative enjoyment of the film might be directly tied to how close to the age of 5 you were when you watched it. And this is a difficult age to compartmentalize the elements of art, to say nothing of light entertainment. But if you’re wondering whether this movie holds up nearly forty years later, let me assure you with this: When the movie is about (and I am choosing to believe this is canon in the film) a clearly disturbed white guy (Stevens) in brown face trying to get his US Citizenship, despite clearly living in a truck in downtown Toronto, it’s an unblinking, if awkward, dark comedy. Taken on its own terms, however, its really awful.

When the film is a light comedy about a haphazard jewel heist thwarted by a robot with a soul (Blaney) who just wants to understand people better despite losing all self-control when he is within eyesight of a book store (relatable) it is still the film I remember, the one I kept only part of for years, with “SHORT CIRKIT 2” scrawled on its label, that was punctuated with an episode of the short-lived Encyclopedia Brown tv series from the 80s.

There are parts of the film to still enjoy.

Short Circuit (1986)

Director: John Badham

Cast: Ally Sheedy, Steve Guttenberg, Fisher Stevens, Austin Pendleton

Have I Seen it Before: The year is 1989. I am on the cusp of joining the ranks of school-aged children. Naturally, I was required to get a full litany of immunizations before being enrolled. Such a requirement is a big part of the reason I’m still alive today, but that’s not even remotely what this review is about. To assuage the fears of an assault from incomprehensible needles, my mother got me two movies I had never seen before on VHS. One was Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), the other was this film. I instantly and equally fell in love with both. Perhaps beggaring all sense, this film is one of those key jewels in my early movie watching crowd.

So, yes. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it probably more than most people on the planet.

Did I Like It: It bears mentioning that even now in the clear vision of adulthood, Johnny 5 (Tim Blaney) is every bit the effective robotic character as either See-Threepio or Artoo-Detoo. Even more so, where Johnny 5 is tasked with being the central star and protagonist of his film, and the other two droids are content to be supporting, largely comic relief characters.

Now the film that surrounds Johnny is where the imbalances become apparent. The first Star Wars film is one of the peak pieces of all pop culture, whereas the adventures of the human characters around this robot are… fine. Guttenberg plays Guttenberg (the story doesn’t really ask him to do anything else), Sheedy admirably marches through a movie that only needs her to squeal things like “You’re killing/paralyzing/huring him!” that should be obvious from the film playing out before us.

And then there is Fisher Stevens. Even now, I find myself laughing at many of the things Stevens (a white actor) does as Ben (a character one assumes to be East Asian, despite claiming to be from Bakersfield), but I have long since stopped feeling good about it. It’s hard to damn so thoroughly a movie of this era so pointedly turning away from anything resembling meaningful representation, but I’m not prepared to grade it on much of a curve either. Such is the way with many of the films from our youth, I suppose.