Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) moves its story from a small town to a state of the art skyscraper in Manhattan, where Gizmo gets wet spawning more mogwais who eat after midnight turning into gremlins, which get wet spawning more gremlins and so on. This time things are complicated by an on site genetics lab where some of the gremlins are able to ingest formulas that merge them with spiders, bats, vegetables, and electricity. There's even a gremlin who increases his intelligence and becomes voiced by Tony Randall. Much of the original cast is back and together they must keep the gremlins contained within the building until they can develop the means to destroy them.
Somehow, I've never seen this movie until now. It was a real mixed bag for me. While I admired the social commentary and satire, sight gags, and the numerous homages to various pop culture touchstones, the gremlins themselves were really irritating. Joe Dante decided to go for a more cartoony approach than in the first movie, and Rick Baker came up with a lot of individualized gremlins that fit the bill, but their silly slapstic and screaming was like trying to watch an hour and a half of Tazmanian Devil cartoons if you removed Bugs Bunny from them. Gizmo was strangely absent from most of the movie with much of his screen time a build up to a one note bit based off of a movie scene, much like Gizmo's race car scenes from the original movie, only here it's not nearly as endearing.
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