Vacation Friends 2
Comedy gains action but loses heart in process.
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I liked but didn’t love the first “Vacation Friends” (my review here) and didn’t feel like it was a flick screaming out for a sequel. It’s with slight trepidation that I checked out and am now reviewing “Vacation Friends 2” (currently streaming on Hulu). (In regards to the film’s generic title I’m implored to quote Saul Rubinek’s Lee Donowitz from “True Romance” – “Oooo, that’s imaginative. I’ve got more taste in my penis.”)
It’s a year or so after the first film. Marcus (Lil Rel Howery) has been flown out to a Caribbean resort to audition for a contracting job by Mrs. Kim (Julee Cerda) and her underling Yeon (Ronny Chieng, playing his third a-hole-ish Asian businessman this year after “M3GAN” and “Joy Ride” and the second to engage in a drinking contest). Tagging along for the trip are Marcus’ wife Emily (Yvonne Orji), their titular pals Ron (John Cena) and Kyla (Meredith Hagner) and Maurillio (Carlos Santos), the concierge from the first flick’s Mexican resort where these goofballs all met who’s on hand to manny Ron and Kyla’s infant son.
Comedy sequels are a tricky business. Generally they recycle the first movie’s jokes to diminishing returns. For every “Hot Shots! Part Deux,” “Addams Family Values,” “Clerks II” or “22 Jump Street” there’s plenty of shlock like “Teen Wolf Too,” “Caddyshack II,” “Weekend at Bernie’s II” and “Blues Brothers 2000” out there. “Vacation Friends 2” falls somewhere in between.
I will give “Vacation Friends 2” this, after its first half where it reverses the scenario in which Marcus attempted to impress his father-in-law-to-be Harold (Robert Wisdom, not returning) by having Ron strive for the acceptance of his recently paroled father-in-law Reese (a sleazily amusing and very welcome Steve Buscemi), it transforms from a comedy into an action-comedy. This transition isn’t entirely successful, but at least returning writer/director Clay Tarver is attempting to do something different … even if it’s at the expense of the first film’s heart.
“Vacation Friends 2” has its fair share of laughs – seeing Ron blow cocaine up Kyla’s butt is debaucherously funny, Ron and Kyla later mistaking a substance that isn’t coke for coke and snorting it had me chortling – but there ain’t enough of ‘em. It’s always amusing to watch Howery react to random sh*t and the picture is enlivened upon Buscemi’s appearance, but I needed more. The action needed more WTFs and the comedy more LOLs. (However, I did enjoy seeing Jamie Hector, whose work I’ve admired on “The Wire” and “Bosch,” who turns up as Warren, a gangster to whom Reese is indebted.)
Entries to the “Vacation Friends” franchise are kind of like trips to Vegas for me – shorter is better and I could probably go five years before my next excursion.