An Early Jennifer Aniston Movie Just Became Available On Netflix
Check out Jennifer Aniston in one of her earliest roles, currently on Netflix.
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In 1994, Jennifer Aniston charged into a cafe in a wedding dress and charmed audiences as Rachel Green on Friends. One year prior, she started an eight-movie franchise. With eight movies in a series, you might expect to know more about this. However, Aniston is not in the sequels, and not everyone is up for watching a horror-comedy series with murderous leprechauns. Yes, the 1993 movie Leprechaun, starring Jennifer Aniston and Warwick Davis, is now streaming on Netflix. You can watch the trailer below.
Movie trailers from 1993 are certainly different than the ones we see today. You may notice that this Jennifer Aniston movie is listed as a horror-comedy, but the trailer isn’t particularly funny. The movie may have been called a comedy due to the premise being ridiculous, and some of the wild ideas that happen for events in the movie, but it isn’t exactly a laugh out loud experience. The comedic elements have been described as “ill-advised slapstick” and reviewers have said it “isn’t dumb enough to be fun”.
That being said, there are only four deaths in this horror movie, and in one of them, someone is violently murdered by a leprechaun bouncing on them with a pogo stick. This may be what they meant when they described it as “ill-advised slapstick”. There are going to be people who read about the kill with the pogo stick and immediately need to stream this one on Netflix. There are others who will take that bit of information as a warning.
The story follows Tory, as played by Jennifer Aniston. The young actress is center stage in this story where an evil leprechaun is willing to do whatever it takes to get his pot of gold. Aniston’s character spends the movie struggling to figure out how to kill a leprechaun.
At the time of release, Jennifer Aniston thought she was about to make it big with this film. She told the Howard Stern Show that she fully expected this movie to be a hit when she signed on. That makes sense, because while she’d had a few roles on television series prior to this, she’d never been in a movie before. She had a central role in Leprechaun. She was young. And Warwick Davis was in it, and he’d been in Willow. That was what really led her to sign onto this movie with high hopes. Meanwhile, the movie has often been considered her worst film. While she cringed when she revisited the work herself many years later, that’s to be expected for her first movie.
Leprechaun is often rerun on television in March for St. Patrick’s Day. The movie was made on a budget under a million dollars. It earned $8.5 million worldwide at the box office. In 1993, this wasn’t bad for a horror movie. The movie doesn’t have the kind of staying power we see in series like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween, but the premise makes it an easy choice in the month of March and Jennifer Aniston’s later star power lends a lot to this one.
The series has six sequels and then one reboot. Jennifer Aniston isn’t in any of the sequels, but that’s not uncommon for a horror franchise. One of the sequels to gain a fair amount of attention was 2000’s Leprechaun in the Hood with Ice-T. The movie even got its own direct sequel in 2003, Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood.
After Leprechaun, Jennifer Aniston went onto star as Rachel Green for the rest of the 90s and beyond. While that’s still her most famous role, she’s also been in dramas like Cake in 2014 and comedies like We’re the Millers and Horrible Bosses. Most recently, she did two seasons of Apple TV’s The Morning Show.
Often, when stars become particularly famous for a single role, they resent it. They dislike being known as their most famous character. It reduces their work, limits their possibilities, and drags them down. While Jennifer Aniston seemed to have to refind her footing after years on Friends, she still presents herself as very well-humored about the character. She is set to appear in a special Friends Reunion for HBO. That was delayed due to the pandemic, but we hear that filming is finally scheduled. Hopefully, that means fans will be enjoying that soon.
Meanwhile, you can catch Aniston in her very first movie role on Netflix with Leprechaun.
