Leprechaun 4's most memorable addition to the Leprechaun oeuvre involves the titular character bursting out of a space marine's penis during a moment of foreplay. Not only is this the most painful urethral torture of a space hero since the kidney stone William Shatner passed in 2005; it's also an apt metaphor for what you'll no doubt experience yourself if you try to watch this to the end without being really high. Plus, while the canny Bill Shatner turned lemons into lemonade by selling his kidney stone to Goldenpalace.com for a cool $75,000, renting Leprechaun 4: In Space will only net you four bucks in recouped expenses, assuming you take it back to Blockbuster and refuse to leave until you get a refund.

It's a wonder why more coming-of-age films don't do this. For instance, one of the characters in Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants tells a story about her mom making a pizza once. The logical consequence would be a direct-to-video sequel called Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2: All Dressed, in which an entirely new cast of girls playing the younger sisters of the original characters open a pizzeria with the help of Bradley Whitford, reprising his father role from the first movie. The result would be unwatchable, of course, but that hardly seems to be the point of these things.

What It Adds To The American Pie Film Canon

This one time at Band Camp? A lot of actors you've never heard of did a lot of obvious gross-out comedy? And Eugene Levy got paid to sleepwalk through a performance as the band camp's conflict resolution officer!

Tad Hilgenbrink takes over the role of Matt Stifler, younger brother of Steve Stifler from the original films and the vanguard of a wave of heretofore unmentioned Stifler brothers appearing in subsequent direct-to-video sequels full of feces-eating and sex gags. You'd think someone as talented as Eugene Levy would have something better to do than find increasingly implausible reasons to anchor each of the direct-to-video American Pie sequels. It's clear from his constant appearances in the Pie movies (and the equally unnecessary Dumb & Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd) that he either doesn't have enough hobbies or owes someone dangerous a lot of money.

With a second direct-to-DVD sequel already on shelves (American Pie: The Naked Mile) and a third currently wrapping up production (American Pie Presents: Beta House), it's a little unsettling to realize that there are now as many Pie films as Star Wars films. It boggles the mind to imagine an American Pie Expanded Universe or MMORG or regrettable holiday special, though admittedly intriguing to consider an Alyson Hannigan action figure, where much as with Luke's light saber, flicking a plastic tab slides a little flute in and out of her nether regions.

Pretty much a direct visual spoof of a key scene from the first film where a character holds up a newborn infant, leading one to the uncomfortable conclusion that a five-pound meercat's just given birth to a warthog.

Why It Was Made

One can say a lot of nasty things about Walt Disney: that he was an anti-Semite, that he spied on suspected Communists in Hollywood, that he refused to lower the flag to half-mast after the Kennedy assassination, that he was the illegitimate son of a Spaniard. But what's really soiled the legacy of the Walt Disney Company is the series of direct-to-DVD sequels cranked out in recent years to cash in on its classic properties.

The Fox and the Hound 2? Sure, okay. Who remembers the first one anyway? Bambi II and Cinderella II? Now you're messing with the classics. The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2 is simply inexcusable, considering the original novel ended with the gypsy girl Esmeralda hanged, the priest Frollo hurled to his death from a balcony and the grief-stricken hunchback Quasimodo voluntarily entombed with Esmeralda until his eventual death by starvation, with only her pet goat getting to enjoy a happy ending.

What It Adds To The Lion King Film Canon

Six years after the release of its first unnecessary sequel, The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride, Lion King 1½ goes back to fill in the holes in the Simbaverse canon to tell the previously unrevealed story of how Timon met Pumbaa. What's that? The story of how Timon met Pumbaa was already revealed in the animated TV series The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa, which aired from 1995 to 1999? And the version given in The Lion King 1½ actually contradicts the earlier account?

Well, in that case, The Lion King 1½ is mostly good for doing for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead what the original Lion King did for Hamlet (i.e., shamelessly ripping it off), for reprising the irritating tune "Hakuna Matata", and for providing a wholly unnecessary dose of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, as though anyone could possibly want any more of these guys after two previous Lion King movies and 2,502 performances of The Producers.