Os Munchies

Not a knock on Korman as he was very funny on the Carol Burnett show. He was also good at playing secondary characters in Mel Brooks' movies ("High Anxiety" comes to mind). He is, however, not a person who can carry a movie in dueling roles no less. This one is basically a "Gremlins" knockoff, following a tradition of such movies as "Critters" and "Ghoulies". It is not a very good knockoff either, on par with "Ghoulies", but with a much lighter tone to it as it is no where near as dark as that movie got. In fact, this one is too light and frothy, and unfortunately many of the jokes end up falling flat. Though I did give it a 3 for a score, this is only because there is a movie that is even a worse "Gremlin" knockoff. If you watched Mystery Science Theater 3000 you know the one I am talking about...the infamous "Hobgoblins". This one has a guy finding a little critter in some underground place (I only saw this movie once a long time ago so I don't remember everything to clearly) and it starts out friendly enough. However, this creature quickly becomes unfriendly and of course more are spawned and that is the movie. More misses than hits in the joke department, and it is also really lame to see Korman playing the evil brother role. Best to skip this one, but then you may want to check it out just for kicks.

This Roger Corman produced comedy could be labeled as a Gremlins rip-off. Well, it is. The Munchies are short little dudes who multiply rapidly and are into creating mischief and wreaking a little havoc. Sound familiar? The funniest thing about the movie is all the Gremlins references. There's a newspaper with Gizmo on the cover, Robert Picardo (of Gremlins 2) stars in the film, and the absolute highlight is the Munchies driving around in a Gremlin. Truly some classic stuff. Other stars of the film include Summer Camp Nightmare's own Charles Stratton and Nadine Van Der Velde from Critters. If you want to see the extremely poor man's version of Gremlins, rent the Munchies, if you can find it.

Munchies is an interesting film. It's definitely trying to ride off the popularity of creature feature critter movies like "Gremlins" or "Ghoulies," but it does so in an interesting manner. The first part of this movie is a little more straightforward with a few jokes here and there. But a little over halfway through, we go to just straight up comedy. By the end of this movie, rather than being a knock off of the previously mentioned movies, it's more of a parody. Just straight up spoofing movies like Gremlins and Ghoulies. The budget for this film is also so low that we barely even actually get to see the munchies in action. They're hidden for most of the movie and it shows. Overall, if you can turn off your brain for an hour and a half and just have fun, you'd enjoy watching this movie. But if you're looking for absolute cinema, this movie is not for you. Just goofy fun, nothing major.

OK, now... I won't lie... This film IS basically a Gremlins rip-off, but many reviewers like to trash films solely on how they felt about it, instead of at least appreciating the artistic integrity of the film and seeing it for what it is, a rather good comedy, and may I say a blatant stab at Gremlins.

It seemed obvious to me, even as a boy, that it was intended to have a similar plot to Gremlins. This being a lighter touch on such a film, which was deemed scary by many youngsters at the time... The more comedic creature features are a fine way to introduce and draw kids in to the wide world of horror, of which I am now an avid fan and obsessed collector.

I haven't even seen this movie in years, in fact since I was about 12 or 13, but I still remember it clearly as one of the funniest B-grade 'critter-comedies' I saw as a youth.

Let's face it people... Reviews are never that much help anyway. They really are nothing more than one person's own humble opinion.

My advice: Watch any film that YOU think sounds even remotely interesting and make up your own mind. What have you lost in the end? The few bucks it takes to hire a movie and maybe the 2hrs of your time it takes to watch it.

I guess this is supposed to be a parody of Gremlins and ET but they forgot that parodies are supposed to be funny. They only character who is even slightly funny is Corman's wife. Most of the comedy is just having everyone be named after a musician. The worst thing is that almost nothing that happened made any sense.