Same monster, different day...
This time around, I watched It's Alive 2: It Lives Again!, the continuing saga of the Monster Muppet Babies. Yup, you heard right, BABIES, plural. Three, in fact. Nobody puts Babies in a corner!
Father of the year, Frank, is back, minus his wife and son. This time around, the drug company from the first movie has been covering up the scandalous killer baby massacre. Apparently, Frank's baby was just the first mutation: others have been popping up, with alarming frequency, and the company's solution is to track down couples with a particular set of genes, accost them in the O.R., and take or kill the babies before the parents even see them.
Well, since Frank knows the babies can be reasoned with, he's had a change of heart. Travelling all over the country, Frank finds couple who are having babies under the right set of circumstances and tells them his story. He then offers them a chance to be whisked away to have their Monster Muppet Babies, before the government can intervene. His latest rescue attempt? Jody and Eugene Scott, two comedically dramatic, intense people who remind me of Sarah Silverman and a sleazy Ed Norton. I'll let YOU decide which one's which.
Frank crashes their baby shower and waits for all the guests to leave so that he can try to tell them in relative privacy who he is. At first, they of course scoff at him....until he shows them, by way of the goon across the street watching their house, just how much danger the baby is in. They agree to at least hear him out later that night, and he leaves them with his phone number.
And guess what happens next? Yup, Sarah Silverman goes into labor, and Fight Club tries to get her packed and to the hospital. He even calls Frank, who has been distracted, and fails to get back to his motel room in time. The couple gets to the hospital, only to find a veritable army of police officers waiting for their arrival.
Lucky for them(?), Frank arrives in the nick of time, steals some scrubs to disguise himself, and bursts into the O.R., demanding the baby and the couple at gunpoint. They kidnap a Mafia boss moonlighting as a surgeon(seriously, he's an elderly, menacing-looking mafia-type, playing a doctor...WTF???), and have an exciting, pulse-pounding car chase. Okay, not really, but at least I tried...) Yeah, they get away, because they switch vehicles in a tunnel, that fortress of ingenious design. Uh huh. And the truck is big enough to carry the couple, Frank, another team of doctors, and a ton of medical equipment and computers. Riiiiiiiiiiiight. Pull the other leg, movie.)
So, the baby is delivered, and promptly placed in a cage, because everyone in the film forgot that scaring these things is a bad idea. Great. He(?) is brought to a secret lab, where it is revealed that there are two more It-Babies, also in cages. Meanwhile, Jody and Eugene, the not-so-proud parents are in another area of this secret compound, trying to repair their relationship. Remove the killer babies, and this would be on Lifetime, starring Melissa Joan Hart and Luke Perry. Turns out their marriage is pretty much kaput, as she believes he is the reason the baby came out as a monster. Happy Father's Day!!
In the least shocking twist ever presented in the history of films, the three Muppet Monsters escape their cages and attack. The scientists die, the evil corporate guys, even Frank is killed during the "excitement". There's even a morbidly funny scene where the babies attack a child's birthday party. And yet, Eugene starts to come around and see his baby as something less monstrous. Awwwwwwwww. I hope they started a scrapbook: Baby's First Step; Baby's First Fang; Baby's First Decapitated Stranger. Sweet.
Anyway, the movie eventually cops out and ends the same way the first one did, by having Eugene shoot his child. Wow, very original. Still, you get a better look at the monsters this time around, and the (unintentional?) humor is improved as well. Not bad for a movie that asks you to be afraid of little pudgy ankle-biters. Plus you get a really great WTF-esque moment where the geezer Mafia Doc reveals that one of the mutant babies is HIS!!! The guy is old enough to have been the doctor who delivered Adam and Eve's firstborn, so there's an image I didn't need in my head. How old was the baby mama???
The third film in the series, It's Alive! 3: Island of the Alive, will be next in line. It Lives Again, just for the kooky factor, gets 4 baby-eating trees outta 5.
