Leprechaun In The Hood

“Lep in the hood, come to do no good.”

That quote, as cheesy as it may seem, is used frequently throughout Leprechaun in the Hood.  It is quite funny that it is used so much since it really isn’t all that true.  Leprechaun did some good.  He made his best movie yet.

In the fifth instalment of the Leprechaun series, Warwick Davis reprises his role as a Leprechaun out to get his gold back.  This time, it has been taken by Ice-T playing a character named...I think his name is Mac Daddy?  Then Mac Daddy gets robbed by a group of hopeful hip-hop artists.  There is a magic flute involved which could help the musicians rise to stardom, but will they be able to make it with both Mac Daddy and the Leprechaun after them?  Yes, this is a rather complex plot for a Leprechaun movie and I appreciated that very much.

The acting in the movie was alright.  Warwick Davis was doing his thing again.  I can never complain about him, I can only complain about the dialogue that he is given.  The guy can act.  The problem I have had with the Leprechaun character is when they play him too jokey.  They brought back the rhymes for this one which had me a little bit worried.  However, Warwick Davis delivered them with both his own Leprechaun conviction and an underlying intimidation that I didn’t quite see before, especially at the beginning of the series.  I am convinced that by the time of the fifth movie, Warwick Davis had perfected the leprechaun character.

As for the rest of the cast, they played their parts well.  Aside from Ice-T.  He was oddly the comic relief of the film.  His character was first shown in the opening in a 70’s style scene and when the movie got advanced to a different decade, he was still playing it as though he was in a hokey 70s parody.  Everyone else was doing what was needed for the movie but Ice-T seemed like he was coming from a different movie.  It was a strange contrast whenever he was in a scene.

All of that behind me, here’s what really put this movie over the other ones, in my opinion.  The deaths actually meant something.  Unlike the other movies where it was people’s first or second scenes in the movie when they got killed, this one took characters you had gotten to know and put them in dangerous situations.  Some did not make it out.  This movie made the danger real for the characters as opposed to something happening to people they had seen once for about ten seconds.  It was the first time that I actually felt anything for the deaths.  Okay, Leprechaun in Space killed characters you had seen throughout the movie’s span, but did you really care about those who died?  I did not.  This time around, there were characters that I had grown to appreciate in some way who were in life-threatening situations.  This was good growth for a series that was wearing out its welcome.

This might be the most in depth I’ve gotten to actually analyzing a Leprechaun movie.  Cool.  This also might be the only Leprechaun movie that I’ll rewatch at some point.  I quite liked this one.  It didn’t need to have the Leprechaun rapping at the end but I can look past that for the rest of the movie actually being enjoyable.  Not in a completely “so bad it’s good” way either.  I think it’s actually an ambitious and semi-successful movie.  I fully recommend that you check this one out.

There’s one more Leprechaun movie left: Leprechaun Back 2 tha Hood.  Judging by the title, they might have stripped what I liked and made it more of a “so bad it’s good” type of movie that might not be good in any way.  I’ll have to see.