Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Short Circuit 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Johnny 5, alive and well—again—on Blu-ray.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater April 21, 2011

My VHS copy of the first Short Circuit was well worn by the time I grew out of my obsessed-with-robots phase. (Okay, alright, I’ve never entirely grown out of it.) Johnny 5, the film’s sentient robot hero, was a childhood icon right up there with He-Man and the Mario brothers, so much so that I even begged my mom to buy the “Five Alive” brand of juice at the grocery store because I was convinced it had something to do with the film. (Obsessed, right? At least I stopped short of shouting “Input!” before guzzling it.) That fervor carried over to the sequel, which I remember loving—and being traumatized by—precisely because of how dark it seemed. The mohawked punks! The slimy loan shark! The car stereo- stealing street gang, with their threatening chant: “Los Locos kick your ass, Los Locos kick your face, Los Locos kick your balls into outer space!” For a kid’s film, Short Circuit 2 has an inordinate share of colorful language, including plenty of hells, more than a few damns, and at least one bullshit. And then there’s that scene—if you saw the film as a kid, you know the one—where Johnny 5 gets brutally chopped up by two ax-toting thugs. This didn’t exactly scar me for life—like, say, watching Salo at twelve would’ve—but I can’t imagine a scene with that kind of intensity making it into a children’s film today.

Johnny 5, robot about town...

I caught the original Short Circuit on cable a few years ago—and was in a nostalgic enough mood to watch it—but until last night I hadn’t seen Short Circuit 2 since I was maybe ten or eleven. I had a good idea what to expect, though: lots of cheesy 80s keyboard music and slap bass, a few take a look at that brick of a cell phone-type moments of marveling at how far technology has come, and the inevitable sour disappointment I always feel when revisiting something I loved as a kid, only to discover that it’s actually garbage—pop culture detritus. I imagine this is how 2011’s eight-year-olds will feel when, in twenty year’s time, they rewatch, I dunno, whatever CGI adventure that currently sits on top of the box office charts. For the most part, I got exactly what I expected. The music in Short Circuit 2 is indeed ridiculous, and the outdated tech is worth a laugh, but—but—I can’t quite bring myself to dismiss the film entirely as a junky ephemeral novelty from the 1980s. Yes, the Short Circuit sequel is corny and occasionally obnoxious, and no, it’s not what anyone would call a great or even good film, but it’s still fun and funny, even twenty-five years after its theatrical debut. While adult me may not—understandably—enjoy movies like this anymore, I can see smart-aleck members of today’s under-10 set getting caught up in Johnny 5’s big city exploits.

You know what else is weird? For a long time—an embarrassingly long time—I thought Fisher Stevens was, in fact, ethnically Indian. He’s not, of course, but he plays an Indian here, Benjamin Jahrvi, the engineer sidekick from the first film who takes top billing here in the sequel. (His last name is also changed, inexplicably, from Jabituya.) Benjamin has since moved to New York, where he sells tiny replicas of Johnny 5 on the street, hoping he can follow the rags-to-riches American Dream trajectory by getting his toys sold in chain stores across the country. He gets his big break when department store buyer Sandy Banatoni (Cynthia Gibb)—cue love interest—sees one of the mini-Johnny 5s and orders 1,000 units. Jahrvi has no way of manufacturing the robots in bulk, but two-bit hustler and con man Fred Ritter (Michael McKean) sees a way to make a quick buck and, after borrowing start-up money from a loan shark, helps Jahrvi set up shop in a decrepit warehouse. (“You borrowed money from a fish?” Jahrvi asks.) There’s one problem: the warehouse is also home to a pair of bumbling thieves who—at the bidding of Oscar (Jack Weston), a crooked bank teller—plan to tunnel from the basement into the vault next door, which temporarily holds a collection of jewelry worth some thirty-seven million dollars. When the stars of the first film—Steve Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy—send Johnny 5 to the warehouse to help on Jahrvi’s assembly line, the sentient bot with a heart of gold finds himself in all kinds of urban trouble, from getting kicked out of bookstores to inadvertently falling in league with the jewel thieves.

There’s not much of a story here—the sequel is less politically charged than its predecessor—but the film bumbles its way graciously enough through a series of comedic sticky situations. Johnny 5 gets graffitied by thugs—who cover him from antennae to tracks in bright neon paint—and helps Jahvri woo Sandy like a mechanical Cyrano de Bergerac. Meanwhile, the criminal goings-on play out with predictable, but entertaining, certainty. First-time director Kenneth Johnson—perhaps best known for the horrible Shaquille O’Neal superhero film Steel—works hard at pulling our heartstrings while he tickles our funny bones. This is a kind of modern day Pinocchio tale, after all, and we’re meant to sympathize with the self-aware but perpetually misunderstood Johnny 5. When the charismatic robot goes to a Catholic church with questions about his soul, an angry priest, thinking it’s a prank, chases him off. Poor Johnny just wants to fit in, and if the film has an underlying theme, it’s about outsiders trying to be accepted. Jahvri, in a way, is Johnny’s human analogue, a gullible immigrant who wants nothing more than American citizenship. It’s a shame a real Indian couldn’t have been cast as Jahvri—the Short Circuit films fit in that long, slightly embarrassing lineage of Hollywood movies featuring white dudes in brown face—but to his credit, Fischer Stevens is quite good here, speaking in charmingly dorky malapropisms. (“Oh, my, how time is fun when you’re having flies, huh?”) As always, Michael McKean plays a terrific sleaze. The star, though, is the Tim Blaney-voiced Johnny 5, rockin’ a red bandana and a metal chassis adorned with Greenpeace and rainbow stickers. Try not to cry when he gets axed.

Short Circuit 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Color me surprised. Given its age and, well, genre—live action 1980s kid flicks don't always get the best high definition treatments—Short Circuit 2 looks fantastic on Blu-ray, miles better than it ever looked on DVD. Working off a nearly pristine print—there are only a few scattered white specks, and no major scratches or debris—Image Entertainment has assembled a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's consistently sharp and colorful. It doesn't appear that Image has tampered at all with the source material; grain is natural, DNR and edge enhancement are absent, and the image hasn't been boosted or altered in any significant way. No tampering is necessary. A few soft shots aside, the picture is surprisingly crisp. The back streets of Toronto— standing in for New York—are revealed in all their grimy, graffiti-covered glory, and the actors' faces and clothing all display discernable textures. Better yet is Johnny 5 himself, whose mechanical workings are rendered with satisfyingly fine detail. The film goes for a realistic, unstylized palette, with balanced skin tones, sufficiently deep black levels, and frequent splashes of vivid spray paint color. Finally, although the film sits on a single-layer Blu-ray disc, I didn't discern any apparent compression issues. This is definitely the best the film has ever, and perhaps will ever look.

Short Circuit 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While it's unfortunate that the film couldn't have been given a full 5.1 presentation—there are, after all, sequences in Short Circuit 2 that practically call out for city street ambience and swooshing cross-channel effects—I have no real qualms with this disc's uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo track. Sure, some of the effects lack punch and there's little separation between the left and right channels, but there's really nothing wrong with this capable, if understated mix. The most prevalent element is probably David Shire's bouncy, stereotypically 1980s score—complete with popping slap bass straight out of the Seinfeld theme—and the music sounds as clear and dynamic as can be expected. Likewise, the front-anchored mix does what it can with the film's action scenes, and while there's little low-end presence, I can at least say the mix doesn't sound tinny, mid-heavy, muffled, or clipped. Throughout the film, dialogue is always well-balanced and easy to understand. The disc comes with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, but the white-lettered subs are somewhat unnecessarily contained in black text boxes.

Short Circuit 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no bonus features whatsoever on the disc, although, really, I can't imagine many supplements exist at all for Short Circuit 2.

Short Circuit 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Short Circuit sequel isn't quite as good as the first film, and it definitely shows its age, but there's something lovably goofy about Johnny 5, the predecessor to future cinematic robots like Wall-E. Image Entertainment's Blu-ray release features a strong audio/video presentation, so if you were a childhood fan of the series and you're looking for a nostalgia kick, I see no reason not to pick this one up. Newcomers might want to try a rental first, though.