Spellbreaker: Secret of the Leprechauns Reviews

This sequel to the direct-to-video LEAPIN' LEPRECHAUNS! (1995) indicates the major difference the least bit of freshness makes. Same cast, same producers, same director; but in a second go-round, the bloom is off the clover. American boy Mikey Dennehy (Gregory Edward Smith) visits his grandfather Michael (John Bluthal) in rural Ireland, where the elder Dennehy has long consorted with the mischievous local leprechauns. If you capture a leprechaun you can have three wishes, and when the wee King Kevin (Godfrey James) spies pretty lass Morgan de la Fey (Madeleine Potter) in the woods, he is not displeased at all to be hoisted up in her pouch and obliged to grant her desires. But Morgan is really Nula, Queen of the Dead. She bewitches King Kevin into leaving his leprechaun realm unguarded and open to conquest by the skull-faced King of the Underworld. Mikey, however, is owed a leprechaun wish himself. Yolked and forced to tow a box of imprisoned wee folk into Underworld, he tricks Nula into poisoning herself, then wishes everyone back home safely. Grandfather Michael, however, has been shrunk to leprechaun size, and that particular spell cannot be broken. But he doesn't mind too much as the freed leprechauns welcome him as a guest, in what looks like the setup for yet another sequel. While the first LEAPIN' LEPRECHAUNS! brought the title figures to the US for a cute twist on the fish-out-of-water formula, this stays less rewardingly on home sod (Ireland here is actually verdant Romania, where both movies were done) and leaves imported British actors to carry most of the action with frantic hamming. White-bearded James seems King Lear-y indeed, gamboling about in the throes of enchantment, and there are double entendres on the word "fairy" that should safely elude young viewers. But even kids may be disappointed by the cheap special effects, with a crude illusion of miniaturization attempted merely by posing "leprechauns" as far away from the camera as possible, with magnified objects in the foreground. On the other hand, ornate costumes and interiors (even a properly spooky, fiery Underworld) are quite impressive, and most likely creditable to the opera and theater craftspeople of Bucharest.