Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Short Circuit 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Input! Input! Input!!!

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown December 7, 2023

No joke. For three straight years, trips to the video store ended in my renting one of six VHS movies: Return of the Jedi, The NeverEnding Story, Flight of the Navigator Back to the Future (I, II or III honestly, I wasn't picky), Harry and the Hendersons or my favorite robo-twosome, Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2. Viewed today, plenty of love and nostalgia remain. Does that make Short Circuit 2 a great movie? A great sequel? No. It certainly doesn't stand very tall next to the likes of Star Wars, Story and Back to the Future. And yet there's something about the innocence and thrill of revisiting a childhood favorite. Other people can't see what you see. Hell, sometimes you can hardly see it. But the more you watch, the more it becomes clear: the reasons a movie connected with you at a young age. It often doesn't connect in adulthood, but so what? Travelling back to simpler times, free of stress and strain, when you could simply immerse yourself in the quaint misadventures of a sentient robot and his genius owner/friend/companion (in 2023 a wildly offensive portrayal of an Indian by a white dude in, ugh, brown face). Fun? Sure, if you can tap into your inner child. Funny? Maybe, if you can regress to the days of unrefined, easy gag humor. Full of memories? Oh yeah, and that's the sweet spot with Short Circuit 2, a fairly bad movie dripping with the sweet, sweet nectar of '80s nostalgia.

God, I love Johnny Five...

From Casey Broadwater's 2011 Blu-ray review: 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.

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 eight-year-olds today will feel when, in twenty year’s time, they rewatch, I dunno, whatever CGI adventure 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 

Short Circuit 2 was first released on Blu-ray in 2011 by Image Entertainment, and Sony's 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer appears (to my eyes) to be sourced from the same or a comparable master. Typically that would be a complaint, but in this case, I'm not sure the film could look much better than it does here. I've given the transfer a 4.5 score (reasoning ahead), while Casey Broadwater gave the Image Entertainment encode a 4. However, I really think that comes down to our subjectivity rather than the suggestion that Sony's encode is noticeably superior. All that said, wow! I thoroughly enjoyed my revisit with Johnny Five, especially since Sony's video presentation left me with little to nitpick. Colors are bright and vivid, skintones are largely natural (albeit a bit hot and oversaturated on a few occasions), and black levels are nice and deep without sullying the image's shadow delineation. Edges are crisp and clean too, though a scant few shots border on exposing too much of the remaster's post-sharpening, and textures are surprisingly well resolved, particularly in regards to close-ups. There are plenty of scenes that struggle with softness but it all traces back to the original photography. And the grain field, faint and consistent, doesn't draw attention to itself. Moreover, banding, blocking and other anomalies are absent, leaving Short Circuit 2 to stand on its own two treads. I was pleased from beginning to end.

Short Circuit 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sony's DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo track is also quite similar, if not identical, to Image Entertainment's 2011 LPCM 2.0 mix. From Casey Broadwater's review: 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 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.

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

Holy crap (he says with full 1988 inflection). Short Circuit 2 actually earns a full supplemental suite that's as impressive as those produced for far more beloved classic films. In his 2011 review of Image Entertainment's barebones Blu-ray, Casey Broadwater doubted -- as did I -- that any special features for Short Circuit 2 even existed. But lo and behold, extras! Sony's new Blu-ray edition offers a nice package of content that adds value to what could be an otherwise average release.

• Audio Commentary - Director Kenneth Johnson's audio commentary is a fun listen. He even sounds a bit surprised to be chatting about the film. Production details, on-set anecdotes, stories of various challenges overcome (often in regards to the practical robotics) and more are discussed at length.

• Here's Johnny Five: Making Short Circuit 2 (HD, 16 minutes) - A newly produced behind-the-scenes featurette rife with retrospective interviews and vintage photos and production footage.

• Nuts & Bolts: Writing Short Circuit 2 (HD, 12 minutes) - Dreaming up the sequel and putting it to paper.

• Storyboard Sequences (HD, 11 minutes) - With non-optional director's commentary.

• Rehearsal Videos (HD/SD, 27 minutes minutes) - Another surprise comes with this lengthy rehearsals reel.

• Actor Profile: Fisher Stevens (SD, 3 minutes) - Danger, danger! You're going the wrong way! Look, I get it. In 1988, Stevens' return as then fan-favorite Benjamin was problem free. And this is the only archive featurette on the disc. But today his performance can be so problematic. All the same, here it is, circa 1988.

• Behind-the-Scenes Still Gallery (HD, 15 minutes) - An array of still photos.

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

Johnny Five will live forever in my heart. Is Short Circuit 2 a great flick? No. A good movie? Maybe, if you have plenty of nostalgia and can overlook its... um, outdated qualities (looking at you, Fishie). But as a Blu-ray release? Sony delivers a strong video presentation, solid lossless stereo mix and -- shock of all shocks -- quite a full little supplemental package, with newly produced features and everything. Fans won't be disappointed. Newcomers? Well, hope you love 1988. Like, a lot.