Munchie

The release of Spielberg's masterpiece E. T. created a trend of movies that tried to ride on its coattails that stretched well into the early 90s. Munchie may not be the worst one of all, but it's still bad.

Some kid named Gage (Jamie McEnnan) stumbles into an abandoned mine shaft and discovers a leather jacket clad, wise cracking, greaser monster named Munchie locked in a chest. After releasing him, Gang befriends Munchie and promises to help him with typical problems for a kid in a thousand other films, like impressing his crush, Andrea (Jennifer Love Hewitt, amazingly) and dealing with bullies. But instead, Munchie just causes all kinds of chaos for Gage and the rest of the cast.

There isn't really any story besides Munchies shenanigans. Half the cast is unlikeable, like the hostile Principal Thornton (Ace Mask) who has it out for Gage, his mother Cathy's (Loni Anderson) slimy new boyfriend, Elliott (Andrew Stevens), a couple of bullies; that's it. All the acting is awful, especially from the child actors; the best acting we see here comes from the kids performing Romeo and Juliet during a school play. Some of Muchy one-liners and Gages frequent day dreaming might be worth a chuckle here and there, but that's about the only humor you can hope to find here.

Munchy is one of the most uncanny and disturbing looking puppets I've ever seen, like a horrifying combination of Bubsy Bobcat and Greaser Greg. His lip-syncing doesn't match up at all and his constant wise cracking and corny jokes make him really annoying, even with Dom DeLuise (RIP) voicing him. It's no wonder he was locked in a trunk and thrown off a cliff by some guy in the intro. And he's not the only cheap looking effect; he summons and levitates a clearly plastic pizza through the air, and his magic powers are made with unimpressive green sparkles.

While not quite as bad as Nukie (then again, what movie is?), this was still a trashy ET rip-off and Dom DeLuise' voice talent was wasted on it and I'm pretty sure it sure that it ruined Jamie McEnnan's career, but luckily not Jennifer Love Hewitts.