Waynes World 2 review by Matt Fuerst

@JackassMatt

One is never enough. Just ask Jason, Freddy, Michael Corleone or Ash. Yes, the sequel is a spotty endeavor. You know if a sequel is being unleased upon our entertainment starved world that the original was likely successful in terms of the box office, so much like we have learned in our lessons on macroeconomics, if there is an unusual amount of profit to be made in a market, that market will fill up until that profit has eroded away. Lorne Michaels, generally a stranger to the world of profit at the box office, undoubtedly was overjoyed by the $160M worldwide box office, huge merchandise sales, and injection of interest in SNL which was in it's 16th year straight of being proclaimed "stagnant" that Wayne's World brought him, I'm sure gladly welcomed a sequel. 1992 brought us Waynes World and a mere year later, 93, Waynes World 2 was in the theatres waiting for your 1993 movie buying dollar.

The plot of this one is fairly straightforward. Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey) have a success on their hands with their TV show. They have both moved out of their parents homes and into their own apartments. Wayne is still dating Cassandra (Tia "January 2003" Carrere) who has been assigned Producer Bobby Cahn (Christopher Walken) by Mr. Big as her record producer. In spite of achieving what he thought was the pinnacle, getting paid to do his television show, he feels an emptiness within. During an evening snooze, Jim Morrison (yes, that Jim Morrison, played by Michael Nickles) visits him and tells him that he should put on a concert in rock-starved suburb of Chicago. Wayne goes about the kooky hijinks of putting the show together with a few subplots getting in the way: Cahn is putting the moves on Cassandra, Garth is getting seduced Honey Hornee (a very hot looking Kim Basinger in a role that is definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel of her career).. and well, that's really about it.

That's OK though since putting together the show, Waynestock is the main focus of the movie. Except, this part isn't really all that funny. Jim Morrison points Wayne towards a worn down roadie, Del Preston (Ralph Brown, who provides some of the movie's best lines) and they spend some time convincing him to come onboard. Then there is the big issue of whether or not the bands will actually come. Wayne cannot sell tickets to the concert because none of the bands are booked, and none of the bands will call Wayne back because he hasn't sold any tickets. Don't worry, I know it sounds stressful and you're probably worrying right now whether or not Waynestock, but don't worry, the tension I have managed to build using merely my third grade level command of the English language will have you squirting in your shorts compared to the tension the flick.

Ok, I lied. Waynes World 2 ends up doing the Scooby Doo ending for a total of three different endings. You've got the happy, the sad, and the Thelma and Louise ending. First you have the downer ending. Which goes a little something like this. Wayne sells no tickets and the next time he sees Jim he says what's the beef. Jim basically says that it was important just to have tried even if you fail miserably and end up dying in a barren wasteland; which nearly happens, except that we move on to ending two. The Thelma and Louise ending. This is from what I understand is a direct knock off of the actual, which is yet again a downer unless you find Wayne and Garth in drag driving the mirth mobile over the side of a cliff funny. And now the mega happy ending. Wayne tracks down and steals back Cassandra in another knock off from a famous movie ending (The Graduate). This ending is actually quite amusing and they obviously spent more time on this ending and prolly just threw the other two together so that they would have another three ending movie, possibly a witty knock off of themselves but more likely they just needed to fill another twenty minutes. So in the end Aerosmith shows up and rocks the freakin joint as everything works out for everyone in the end (except for Bobby Cahn who gets screwed much the same way that Rob Lowe's character got screwed in the mega happy ending in the first one) as an aside, do we now see how important name recognition is? Just get yourself a big name actor, rehash some old movies and boom $100M. Why do people get so pissed at the formula anyway?

I watched Waynes World 2 on Laserdisc, and it is also currently available on DVD. The Laserdisc doesn't have any extras other than the traditional chapter stops. The DVD is similarly slim in the extras department. The picture however is very nicely composed and well presented on Laser, and I am sure on DVD as well. Both present the movie in it's intended aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The sound is actually quite good and since there are some performances from some bands the attention to the sound is appreciated. The disc actually gave my subwoofer a little workout which I appreciate since it blew some of the cobwebs out of it.

Overall though, the movie is just too boring with too few bright spots. All the originality and spontaneity of the original is gone by this point, and you can tell by the quick turnaround from WW1 to WW2 they were in a pretty big hurry to get the product out the door in front of the teenagers while they were still yelling "I'm not worthy" to each other and asking people if they have Grey Poupon. Lightning was not caught in the bottle again and you're likely going to want to watch some Austin Powers or So I Married an Axe Murderer if you have a real itch for Mike Myers humor.

Mad props to Johnage (AKA the couch) for his help touching up this review.


5 out of 10 Jackasses
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