Short Circuit 2

Directed by Kenneth Johnson. Written by Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson. Starring Tim Blaney, Fisher Stevens, Michael McKean, and Cynthia Gibb.

David Foster Productions -1988

A Star and a Half of Review! *1/2

Sigmund Freud once said, “I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash...” and if there is anything I have learned from growing up in the 80's it's the profound truth of this statement.

This is a lesson that I learned not from Republicans or Reagan era politics, nor did I learn it from supposed capitalists, but instead from the one source whose intent was supposedly pure and nurturing: children's entertainment!

Think back to your childhood. Remember Captain Planet, Furn Gully, The Muppet Babies, Harry and the Hendersons, and Alf? What was the central message behind these supposed bastions of edutainment? It is that man is a twisted homunculus of God's design whose exists to taint this planet with his evil. Expect that in Hollywood God does not exist so it was probably evil ape like creatures from Marvel comics... I mean the multiverse.

How often have we seen feature films about the former harmonious balance of nature? As cartoons have demonstrated at one point bears and rabbits got along. They loitered in coexisting animal societies, but then man came along with his guns, his chocolate bars, and free market economics, forever tainting the perfect socialist balance of nature. That's right! Bears only kill because of Global Warming!

So it is in this thematic tradition we have Short Circuit 2, a film that so precisely strips away the mask of the American character (America being the ultimate culmination of human malevolence), and shows us for what we are: a callus and niggardly people.

The hero of this passion play is Ben Jahvri an immigrant who wants what all immigrants want when they come to this vial rock: safety, comfort, a roof over his head, and to have sex with a white woman. How pure and unaffected by the American disease he is, for he is from a place that is more simple and lacking the white skin. If Hollywood has taught us anything it's that white people only want to buy shoes and oppress blacks.

Jahvri is suckered into a toy manufacturing deal, but is unable to feed the glutinous maw of capitalism, and enlists the help of a talking robot named Johnny Five. Mr. Five is the only other innocent character in this picture. He is not human, but like Data after him, wishes to affect the trappings of our species. This of course makes him more human than the rest of us despite him being a robot, and lacking every single genetic and physical characteristic of a human being. Thus is the poetry of existence.

Literally every single person outside of Johnny Five and Jahvri is a crook, a murderer, and a scoundrel. What else can we conclude about humanity from such damning evidence? Watch when Johnny is arrested after ripping apart a bookstore? It's not that it would be a concern to have your business annihilated by a talking lunch box. It's that the white man has eternally failed to hear the cry for equality.

Of course if there is anything to be learned from decades of this type of indoctrination it's that Hollywood is ceaseless engine of hatred and destruction. It is the most racist, sexist, purely bigoted institution on the planet. It speaks under the pretense of enlightened left-wing political naval gazing, but really does nothing except attempt to suck in dollars. I say that Capitalism and Liberalism are indelibly intertwined. Capitalism wants to sell you things, and Liberalism promotes a moral void that allows them to do so by any means necessary.

Is man so rotten and so worth destruction as Freud and Satan... I mean Hollywood seems to think? Are we really the cause of all problems, and is ending our existent the inevitable cure? I am a humble man and cannot answer these questions, but if man must be removed in order to heal the lacerations we have inflicted upon mother Earth, then maybe we should start with the entertainment industry. Did I mention the robot says “balls?”

Available to watch for Netflix subscribers.