Movie Review: Leprechaun 5: In the Hood (2000)
Synopsis: Twenty years after discovering a leprechaun's gold, trapping the leprechaun with a magical medallion and stealing a golden flute, Mack Daddy O'Nasses is a successful record producer in Los Angeles. When he turns down three wannabe rappers, Postmaster P., Stray Bullet and Butch, they get revenge by stealing both the medallion and the flute, setting the leprechaun free and putting them in the crosshairs of both the evil creature and Mack Daddy while the flute's magic helps their music career.
Who's in it? The movie stars Warwick Davis, Ice-T, Anthony Montgomery, Rashaan Nall and Red Grant.
Review: My wife and I were both a bit tired out yesterday evening so I decided to find a movie to watch while we crashed on the couch. Despite quite a bit of hesitation after watching the previous four movies, I ended up picking Leprechaun 5: In the Hood. As it turned out, I probably should have picked a different movie.
There are a lot of things wrong with this film, but the biggest one (for me at least) is the decision to focus on the three wannabe rappers (Montgomery, Nall and Grant) instead of the much more interesting Mack Daddy (Ice-T). He was, after all, the one who found the leprechaun and stole from him, a movie about how he used the flute to rise to his current status then being forced to face the creature he stole it from could have been entertaining. Yet, after being freed, it was as though the leprechaun (Davis) barely acknowledged he was around.
In fact, for being the title character, my wife and I both noticed the leprechaun really didn't do a whole heck of a lot, disappearing for significant chunks of time and not really putting in as much effort to recover his lost treasure as you would expect. Compared to the previous movies, he felt like he was phoning it in or, at minimum, more interested in having sex than killing the people who wronged him.
I also had the same complaint about this film as I had with the previous four - there is no consistency when it comes to the leprechaun's powers and mythology. For example, in the first movie, a four-leaf clover could kill him. In this one, it just knocked him out. This movie also brought back the amulet that was able to trap him but once again didn't really explain why it worked or where it came from (though, unlike the first time, it at least didn't completely forget about the amulet later).
The end of the movie is also a head-scratcher because it cut from a scene that made it look like the leprechaun was being defeated to another scene that had him rapping on stage. I wonder if there was supposed to be some sort of deleted scene that explained what happened or if the writers just ran out of material and figured "a rapping leprechaun would be cool."
Final Opinion: This movie just didn't work for me, either as a horror film or as a comedy. There was too much emphasis on "the Hood" and not enough emphasis on the leprechaun or even on the right human.
My Grade: D
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Here are some reviews of other movies from 2000:
Movie Review: The 4th Floor (2000)
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