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Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood (2003)

DVD Cover (Lions Gate)
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Overall Rating 41%
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Ranked #5,557
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Connections: Leprechaun

When Emily Woodrow and her friends happen on a treasure chest full of gold coins, they fail to to heed the warnings of a wise old psychic who had foretold that they would encounter trouble with a very nasty and protective Leprechaun. --TMDb
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Review by Crispy
Added: January 18, 2008
To be honest, Leprechaun in the Hood didn't do too much for me. It wasn't bad per se, but it really didn't grab me, and I wasn't too happy to see it was immediately followed with this. Now, I was kind of expecting a complete rehash, using mostly recycled jokes that I didn't find all that funny the first time. If only, if only. Back 2 Tha Hood can best be described as 'ghetto as fuck.' The movie has a very unbalanced place in the series, because even though it was horrible, I'd say this quite possibly the most entertaining that Warwick Davis has been in the leprechaun's buckled shoes.

Life is hard in the hood. Emily and Lisa (Tangi Miller and Sherri Jackson, respectively) barely make enough to live on, and yet they're both trying to save up for college. On top of that, Emily is still trying to deal with losing Rory (Laz Alonso) four months ago for some skank, despite the fact that she dropped him. You see, Rory makes his money dealing weed; damned good weed too. In fact, he's been getting so much business that a local gang in the same area of expertise has been threatening him lately, and Emily didn't want to put up with the bullshit anymore. On the way to a barbecue in the construction site (where we saw the Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) and his gold sucked into the ground a year before), Emily drops in on the local psychic. The medium quickly freaks out and tells her she is about to become richer than her wildest dreams, but it comes at a price, and she must refuse to accept it. Mystified, the two go to the barbecue, where Rory and their friend Jamie (Page Kennedy) have also shown up, and Emily falls into a hole while dancing in a rainbow. In the cavern she finds a chest of gold, and the four divvy it up equally, completely unaware that they've woken the leprechaun, who is once again out for blood and gold.

Well, it can safely be said that the first, and currently the last, Leprechaun released under the Lions Gate banner was a dud. At what point did they decide it would be a good idea to just reuse the gimmick from the last movie? Leprechaun in the Hood can best be summed up as sort of a satire. Back 2 Tha Hood plays more like a standard hood movie (pick one, they're all the same) with the leprechaun chucked in after the fact. I'm not sure if director Steven Ayromlooi just really wanted to make a hood movie, and this was all he could manage to get signed to, but the man hits every single stereotype you can possibly think of. There's the stoner black guy whose use of ebonics are off the charts. An actual verbatim quote of his: "Oh, look who the expert on leprechauns now. How you know sumin' like that gone work? You don't know. For how come you think you know eh'thing all the time?" Then you got the thug who's trying to change his ways. His loud, self-obsessed girlfriend who steals a coin and turns it into a gold tooth. The obligatory police brutality. The goofy white guy trying to act black. Had this been done using the same satire as the last movie, it would have worked out, but as it stands, calling these characters one dimensional would be giving them too much credit. Even the piss poor attempt at characterization is a no-go due to the combination of clichés and these kids' utter uselessness in front of a camera.

Yes, without any exception, anyone who stands taller than four feet was bloody awful. But below that height limit stands the saving grace. At around the thirty minute mark, Warwick Davis makes his first appearance, and from that point on any time he was on screen I had a huge smile on my face. I don't think I've ever been entertained by the leprechaun's antics this much in the entire series. Now, you can argue that it was just in contrast to the travesty happening around him, and that may enter into it, but I think what did it for me is this is how I always felt the character should be. In the past, he had always been shown as either malicious or ambitious, but here he finally gets to show the level of mischief that I associate with the mythical creatures he based on. Before watching this series, I was kind of expecting a magical gremlin with Krueger's penchant for wisecracks, and this is the closest to that he's ever been. Incidentally, he doesn't use a lot of magic this time. Instead, he takes more of a slasher approach, content to kill his victims with his bare hands.

I'm a bit iffy on whether or not to recommend this one. Even for fans of hood movies, the clichés are all over the place and will probably kill your enjoyment of the film. Not to mention the movie has one of the most anticlimactic endings you can think of. But on the other hand, Warwick Davis is outstanding in this film, and it's almost worth sitting through the bullshit just for him. And as an added bonus, the movie starts with some back-story on the leprechaun's origin, and that's always fun. I think I'll go with a 4/10 for this one, and every single one of those points comes from Davis.

One final note, this has seemingly been the end of the series, but word on the street is that Darren Lynn Bousman, the director behind Saw II, III and IV, is trying to get signed on for Leprechaun 7, which he wants to place in the Old West. If this is greenlit, I can only hope that Bousman is able to bring the fun back into the franchise.
Ginose #1: Ginose - added January 18, 2008 at 1:07pm
WAS THIS THEGREATEST MOVIE EVAR OR WHAT!?!?!1!?!/1!?!?1?!?/1?1?1Q!?1?1?

...I hated this with an intensity fewmen will ever understand in their lifetime. -4/10
grain of sand #2: grain of sand - added January 18, 2008 at 7:53pm
yeah, this was horrible dude. saw it on BET one rainy day and felt cheated
Optimus Prime #3: Optimus Prime - added January 29, 2009 at 8:03pm
Can't really do the same joke twice. He did stab someone with a bong though. Still funny. 4/10
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