Movie Review- Ghoulies II

Ghoulies II is an unnecessary sequel to an already terrible movie. The original Ghoulies was a shameless "Gremlins" ripoff that was strangely lacking in the titular monsters. In a way, this is somewhat of an improvement over the first film, but not by much.

The main problem with the first movie was the lack of Ghoulies, who barely appeared at all during the film. The sequel, however, gives us a lot more Ghoulie-action, but they're still not given enough screen-time to warrant the film being named "Ghoulies". There are several problems with the monsters during their short appearances, though. While there seems to be a little more effort put into the puppets themselves, the special effects and puppetry are severely lacking and stupid. There's even a few instances of visible support wires on the flying Ghoulie. And they aren't very menacing monsters, either. Their design is more comical than anything, which I doubt was the intent. What was intended, though, was the comic relief involving the Ghoulies. In what I feel is an attempt to recreate the monster mayhem of "Gremlins", there is an extended sequence in the 3rd act of the Ghoulies and their inexplicable and pointless shenanigans.

The Ghoulies barely take up any screen time however, and the remaining portion of the film is filled with bland human characters and boring filler that exists solely to get to the 3rd act, and the pointless action that occurs during it. The plot is mostly centered around a group of carnies who are at risk of being shut down by some evil corporation (Although it's never explained why that particular carnival group is so important).  The carnival denizens consist of the usual circus-act stereotypes, which could have made for a mildly interesting protagonist,  but instead the main character is an average Joe who happens to work at a traveling circus.

The main characters are all overacted and hackneyed, which is to be expected from a B-Movie, but everyone in the cast is lacking the campy charm that makes movies like this so much fun to watch. Instead we get a bunch of pointless dialog that leads nowhere and serves nothing to forward the plot, and various minor characters who seem to exist solely to be annoying. The script doesn't help much, though. A few of the actors have been in other movies (Royal Dano and Phil Fondacaro) and gave fairly decent performances. The script really dumbed down the already mediocre acting skills they had.

Overall, this is a very bland and poorly paced movie with almost no plot. It's a really boring movie, and a waste of time. Not recommended.

Enjoyment: 1/5
Quality:  1/5

IMDB Page- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093091/