Movie Blog: A Tale Of 2 Sequels
You know we're in the thick of summer movie season when every movie has a number behind it. Apparently, there are something like a dozen high-profile follow-ups among this season's tentpole movies. And that's not even including all the Marvel franchise startups like Thor and The Green Lantern, which are basically intended to be pre-sequels anyway.
This weekend's two big openings are both sequels number 2 (Electric Boogaloo), and they're an interesting compare/contrast in how studios attempt to repeat that initial surge of success.
The Hangover was a surprise juggernaut, a movie that tapped into a zeitgeist few knew was quite so ravenous. The movie's no holds barred endorsement of the male id somehow became the highest grossing R-rated comedy ever, a record that will likely stand for quite awhile.
Hedging bets, the sequel will be the most widely-released R-rated movie of all time, opening on no less than 3,615 screens. "Hedging bets," for that matter, seems to have been the filmmakers' overriding attitude in committing the poker-facedly titled The Hangover Part II to film.
There is not one single punchline, not a solitary plot development in the new installment that isn't directly inherited from the original movie's scenario. I'm not sure I've ever seen a sequel so blatantly rip off its predecessor on a near scene-for-scene basis (outside of maybe the Friday the 13th series).
And yet, I admit I laughed more during the second one, mostly out of sheer reflex. The charming profligacy of Vegas here gives way to the ominous dissolution of Bangkok. Given the unfamiliar setting, the wolfpack goes for the gut this time around, and more than a few times, their hits land directly.
Which is to say there are at least a couple scenes in the movie that might make the jocular Hangover target demographic squirm in their seats, leaving them likely unable to identify with Ed Helms' milquetoast closet freak.
That said, nothing in the film could possibly make them squirm more than the suggestion that its across-the-world exoticism and unabated brashness basically pin it as a male version of Sex and the City 2.
In contrast to The Hangover Part II's reheated gags, Kung Fu Panda 2 actually positions itself as an ensuing installment in a series that was always supposed to have multiple chapters. Of course, since the original movie wasn't a "surprise" hit but rather a "built-in" hit, the sequel could've already been in development long before the first movie hit screens.
In any case, the saga of Po the plump panda and his quest to be a kung fu master is given a zippy, cute follow-up, complete with adorable flashbacks to Po (Jack Black) as a baby panda cub and spatially impressive 3-D sequences. The story doesn't wear out its welcome, and indeed the movie was over before I even realized 90 minutes had flown by.
But it lacks that sui generis feel even Pixar's sequels manage most of the time. This is still machine-tooled, careful filmmaking.
Kung Fu Panda 2 is diverting, but it is no less derivative than the sequel that simply recues everything that worked in the first movie. The Hangover Part II is no masterpiece, but its callousness manages to say something compelling about the movie industry's habit for recalcitrance. When Ed Helms muses that he'll probably keep making the same mistakes for the rest of his life, that he literally can't help but do bad, he may as well be speaking on Hollywood's behalf.
