Fisher Stevens

(Second Viewing, In French, June 2021) I remember seeing Short Circuit 2 as a teenager and not liking it very much, strongly objecting to the French dub voice of one character, but being somewhat amazed that I recognized quite a bit of Toronto in the result. Decades later, second impressions can be amazingly consistent: It’s still not a particularly good movie, the French dub voice is still irritating and Toronto is almost as big a character as any of the human or robotic ones. If you’ve seen the first Short Circuit, you already know what to expect: Here’s book-smart and street-dumb Johnny Five, a robot designed for war whose sentience was an unexpected feature. In this sequel, Fisher Stevens is the only actor returning on-screen, as he (a Caucasian actor) plays the genial engineer (of Indian ethnicity) of Johnny Five. In this instalment, his attempts to sell robotic toys require some assembly-line assistance from Johnny Five, but bringing an information-hungry robot in the big city is a recipe for trouble, especially as subplots regarding romance (cribbing from Cyrano de Bergerac) and diamond heists are brought into the mix. Clearly designed for kids, Short Circuit 2 only marginally exceeds mediocrity: The 1980s puppeteering work required to transform a robot into a likable character is still impressive and finds its apex late in the film, as we’re outraged that Johnny Five gets severely damaged by the antagonists. In French, though, the chosen voice of Johnny Five almost completely destroys whatever sympathy we may have: high-pitched, ingratiating, with distinctive exasperating intonations that I could remember decades later. I suspect it’s not quite as annoying in English. On the other hand, I can’t help but love the obvious use of Toronto as a filming location for an American metropolis. Short Circuit 2 makes no attempt whatsoever at hiding where it is, with numerous local landmarks, businesses, transit vehicles and even a boat clearly marked as being from Toronto. It often gets weird, but never as weird as recognizing the seat of Ontario’s legislature, Queen’s Park, being used as a backdrop to an American citizenship ceremony. Wow. Still, the film amply justifies its existence simply for the extended sequence set in front and inside the much-lamented landmark Word’s Biggest Bookstore, of which I have some extensive and fond memories. In other words, very little of what I do like about Short Circuit 2 can be found in the screenplay — it’s all about watching the background shots and being amazed at how late-1980s Toronto was captured so brazenly on celluloid. And that, now more than when I first saw the film, is what’s worth remembering about it.