It's important to remember that Joe Dante's 1990 monster comedy "Gremlins 2: The New Batch" isn't just the director's best film, it's also one of the best films of the 1990s. It functions perfectly well as a comedy, and it certainly boasts some of the best practical creature effects of its decade, but it really serves as a clever meta-narrative on the tenuous relationship audiences have with the movies they watch. Several times throughout "Gremlins 2," the Gremlins break the fourth wall , gleefully deconstructing the very nature of films. In one scene, they strangle movie critic Leonard Maltin with a strip of 35mm film. Similarly, in the sequel's most notorious sequence, the gremlins break into the projection booth and appear to start ripping apart the movie as you're watching it.

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