Gremlins (PG) Reviews

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Good Points: Great movie, Original idea, Special affects and puppetry still look good today in the age of computer generated animations

Bad Points: Maybe a little to scary for young children. (although it is a P.G certificate)

General comments: Gremlins is a movie about a boy called Billy who receives a strange creature as a pet from his father. The creature is a Mogwai, and is sold against the owner of the shops wishes, (Mr Wing) by his grandson, who sells the Mogwai to Billys father for $200.
The grandson then warns Billys father the three golden rules you must always abide by in keeping the Mogwai. Rule one: No direct sunlight on the Mogwai. Rule two: No water to touch the Mogwai, and the most important rule of all, Rule three: never feed the Mogwai after midnight.
Billys father names the Mogwai "Gizmo" and brings him home for his son as a christmas present. Billy is fascinated by him, he is very intelligent and even learns to hum a tune. One of Billys friends accidently spills water on Gizmo causing him to convulse and instantly multiply. Billy now has five Mogwai's and they are all much more aggresive than Gizmo and they trick Billy into feeding them after midnight, with disasterous consequences.
Gremlins was Directed by Joe Dante and released in 1984. It was a commercial success and has a P.G certificate.
Maybe i am i being a little too critical here but going back to rule three; Never feed the Mogwai after midnight. I would like to know when it is then ok to resume the feeding of the Mogwai, at what time after midnight is safe to give him a bite to eat.?
For me, midnight marks both the start and the end of each day, therefore two midnights are associated with each day, conventions are needed to distinguish between them. The solution is simple "00:00" refers to the start and "24:00" to the end of a given date. In other words today at "24:00" is the same point in time as tomorrow at "00:00.
The film makes no reference to suitable times to resume feeding, and what happens if you took the Mogwai to a different time zone? Worse still what happens if you take the Mogwai to the United Kingdom where we put our clocks forward and back an hour in summer and in winter? This suituation would really cause problems for other owners of Mogwai's and the film misses them out. They even had the opportunity to clear this matter up in Gremlins 2 the new batch but failed to once again.
Saying that, i would not let this point distract you from an otherwise great film.