1998 family leprechaun movie
Bad Movie Rating: 2/5 (Libby: 1/5 ["Pure feces."]; Josh: 1/5; Kristen: 5/5; Fred: 1.5/5 [with a bonus point for a leprechaun mooning]; Jeremy: 2/5)
Actual Movie Rating: 8/20
Plot: A pair of annoying children discover that their future step-mother is a witch. They seek the help of a leprechaun--apparently the last one--in order to stop her from getting more power and engaging in unexplainable acts of evil. Seriously, I doubt anybody can even explain them.
This was not a very engaging bad movie, but I did really like the unhinged but enthusiastic performance of Veronica Hamel as the witch. Special effects in 1998 must have been in a transitional stage. Or maybe that's just an excuse that the producers of The Last Leprechaun could use. There are still those jagged colored lightning effects that were ubiquitous in movies that featured wizards or Jedi wannabes in the 80's, and then there was some really weird CGI stuff that clashed with everything real around it. It was jarring. The leprechaun effects were simple but effective enough. He zipped around quickly like he was in a Benny Hill skit sometimes, he disappeared in glittery bursts, he disappeared without glittery bursts. And in one wild climactic scene, he expanded for reasons that didn't make a lot of sense to me. Of course, I'm not exactly up on my leprechaun lore. Bad special effects in a family movie like this could be forgiven if the story was any good. Or even if it was comprehensible. This really isn't either good or comprehensible. There was a weird dynamic between the children and the villains. Most of the movie seems to be Veronica Hamel threatening the children or attempting to do terrible things to them while you know that the children are going to survive the movie unscathed. Actually, you're a little disappointed about that because the children aren't exactly likable. They're jerks even before they've got concrete evidence that their step-mom is up to no good--a couple "little shits" as one of my bad movie pals said. And the leprechaun isn't really all that likable either although I'm not sure leprechauns really are supposed to be. Maybe that's the problem with this movie. The leprechaun, even though he gets to be in the title of the movie, just isn't in the movie that much, and when he is, he really is never interesting. The closest he comes to being interesting is when he's walking up at the beginning of the movie (probably because we're not bored with him yet), mooning people (leprechaun trash talk), or stealing a cake (just because). Oh, and there's a scene where he catapults himself a great distance, a method of transportation that I didn't know leprechauns employed. "Big Mick" (Michael Walter) plays the leprechaun although most of him is make-up. He does have an impressive and--dare I say--sexy physique. The best thing about him is his name--Finn McCool. Any enjoyment I might have gotten from seeing a little person in a leprechaun outfit or watching Vernica Hamel do her thing might have been ruined by a really irritating score.
New masturbation euphemism I learned from this movie: "Take care of business down at the logging camp"
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