With today being St. Patrick’s Day I figured I’d dig out one of my old LEPRECHAUN reviews, this of the sequel that looks to possibly be the actual last in the franchise since there don’t appear to be anymore in the works.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not much of a fan of the LEPRECHAUN movies. I stopped after LEPRECHAUN 4: IN SPACE because I just didn’t feel there was any territory left for the franchise to mine. After all, it took Jason ten movies to go intergalactic and the HELLRAISER franchise has pretty much been floundering ever since we saw Pinhead on a starship getting outsmarted by a hologram. Hell, I’m still waiting for a CHILDREN OF THE CORN sequel set on an outer space colony of sorts. But as I said, once you’ve been shot into space there is pretty much nowhere to go but down. In LEPRECHAUN’s case, down to the hood.

I completely skipped the Leprechaun’s first trip to the hood. However, quite a few of you didn’t since that sequel was a big enough DVD hit to warrant another sequel, a sequel that if you really think about it is actually a sequel that’s also a sequel to a sequel.

Now I’m not surprised that I didn’t like LEPRECHAUN: BACK 2 THA HOOD. What does surprise me is just how much I disliked LEPRECHAUN: BACK 2 THA HOOD. Being intentionally cheesy doesn’t change the fact that LEPRECHAUN: BACK 2 THA HOOD suffers from a lame script, lousy editing, and a fatal identity crisis; by that I mean it clearly doesn’t know what it is or what it wants to be. The LEPRECHAUN films have always mixed horror and humor but this one attempts to do so in the most piss poor manner possible. Let me give you an example.

The Leprechaun enters the room with a guy smoking pot. The guy thinks he’s hallucinating and offers the Leprechaun a hit on his bong. The Leprechaun gladly accepts and becomes so stoned that he falls on the floor rolling around and giggling like a schoolgirl. He then spots one of his gold coins lying on the floor and instantly sobers up, angrily demanding to know where the rest of his gold is. When the high guy fails to give the Leprechaun the answer he wants he ends up getting bludgeoned to death with one of his bongs followed by the usual post-mortem taunt provided our the title character. In the very next scene, the Leprechaun is shown stumbling around the kitchen so stoned out of his mind that he doesn’t know where he is despite having been perfectly sober mere seconds earlier.

Much of the movie is just like that. One second it wants to be scary or silly and constantly transitions between the two tones whenever it’s convenient regardless of whether or now it jives with the previous scene. Sorry; it doesn’t work that way. Somebody here needed lessons on how tension works and how to balance differing tones. And I hope you don’t come looking for gore or some good kills as the gore is minimal and you don’t even see most of the kills, not that the kills are at all inventive anyway.

LEPRECHAUN: BACK 2 THA HOOD not only fails to be even the slightest bit scary, unless you’re easily amused (or in the right state of mind, if you know what I mean) it isn’t funny either. Okay; there is one scene where the Leprechaun is doing his usual pre-kill diatribe only to have it get interrupted when his impending victim gets a phone call from his angry girlfriend and proceeds to argue with her on the phone while the Leprechaun is left standing there waiting impatiently. I laughed. A pity the majority of the humor isn’t nearly as sly. How many times can one be expected to laugh at a leprechaun taking a pratfall? The Leprechaun is constantly either taking pratfalls due to being punched, kicked, hit with something, shot, or just so high he can’t stand up. It gets old real quick.

Frankly, the whole script feels like it was slapped together on the fly. Just as the transition from horror to comedy is handled so poorly so is the entire structure of the movie. It just jumps around from place to place in such a disjointed manner that there’s no flow; a collection of set pieces loosely tied together and nothing more.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the editor overuses unnecessary swipes as a means of transitioning between scenes. One particular scene has two characters on a motorcycle being pulled over by the cops, then there’s a clockwise swipe and the cops are now out of their cars talking to the twosome. Was there really a need for a fancy swipe just to jump forward 30 seconds or so? Stuff like that only adds to the shoddiness of the production.

Oh yeah, the plot of the movie, what little there is of it...

LEPRECHAUN: BACK 2 THA HOOD opens with this scene set at a construction site for a planned youth center (or something along those lines) in the hood of a priest who sacrifices himself to defeat the Leprechaun by summoning these demonic hands that look like tree roots to drag the title character down into the dirt. If this scene reminds you of the ending to JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY then prepare yourself for plenty of homages since LEPRECHAUN: BACK 2 THA HOOD features quite a few scenes that will look very familiar to slasher movie viewers.

We then flash forward to sometime later where the planned youth center is now just an abandoned construction site. From what we’re told, it would appear that priest was planning to build the center using the Leprechaun’s gold. I’m assuming all this is from the end of the previous sequel and the movie is just picking up where that one left off, otherwise it appears they completely skipped an entire movie and just tacked on a stand-alone ending to the beginning of this one in what would have to be one of the most desperate excuses for a set-up I’ve ever seen.

So there’s a group of African-American friends living in the hood: the nice girl who wants a better life, the nice girl’s nice friend who wants to go to college, the nice girl’s other friend who is very materialistic, the nice girl’s motorcycle riding ex-boyfriend who happens to be a drug dealer with a heart of gold, and my personal favorite, the nice girl’s pot smoking platonic male friend who is pretty much the epitome of what Spike Lee’s film BAMBOOZLED was all about. I’m beginning to believe that the wisecracking African-American toking up is the modern day equivalent of Stepin Fetchit with a piece of watermelon in his mouth.

The friends gather for a barbecue on the grounds of the unfinished youth center because, well, who doesn’t love having a cookout on an abandoned construction site? The nice girl falls through a hole and soon discovers the magic box containing the Leprechaun’s gold. The friends divide it amongst themselves and use it for a variety of things such as paying to get into college, having a gold tooth made, and purchasing hefty bags full of marijuana. The Leprechaun (who by now looks less like a leprechaun and more like a pint-sized version of Lon Chaney’s LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT fiend) wakes up unhappy about someone yet again stealing his bling and stalks them one by one in order to get his gold back by killin’, chillin', jokin', and tokin'.

Oh, there’s also a neighborhood psychic who warns the nice girl of the evil creature that will come seeking its treasure. Psychic characters like this have become such a bad cliché that it’s just death to horror movies these days. Let’s not forget about the other drug dealer that doesn’t have a heart of gold who is out to get the nice girl’s motorcycle riding ex-boyfriend or some of the other stereotypes that populate the movie: overly aggressive cops, an obnoxious Mabel King look-a-likes who populates the hood’s beauty parlor, and the dorky Jewish guy who tries to bond with his "ninjas" in the hood.

Who will the Leprechaun kill? Will the evil drug dealer kill the good drug dealer? Will the drug-dealing ex-boyfriend give up the criminal life and get back together with the nice girl? Will the friends escape their harsh life in the hood? Can the Leprechaun be stopped? That’s pretty much it to the plot. Not much imagination, huh? But just wait until you get to the movie’s finale set at (Where else?) the abandoned construction site. Not only does it play itself out way too seriously, if you’re like me then you’re going to be shaking you head at the way the Leprechaun meets his demise in this movie. Lame! Lame! Lame!

In the end, LEPRECHAUN: BACK 2 THA HOOD is pretty much critic-proof to the fans of the series and, let’s be honest, fans of the LEPRECHAUN series don’t expect the movies to be and damn good to begin with so they probably don’t give a damn whether or not this one is competently made either. I realize the LEPRECHAUN movies are supposed to be bad. They even know they’re bad. However, LEPRECHAUN: BACK 2 THA HOOD is just plain bad. Not even fun bad - just bad.