popular thinking

MEET THE SUCKQUELS: Memo to John Travolta's agent...do not, under any circumstances, allow Mr. Dance Fever to sign another contract that obligates him to make a sequel. It's poison - poison! poison! never trust a big butt and a smile - for the Saturday Night Scientologist. Or do you not remember the classics Staying Alive, Look Who's Talking Too, Look Who's Talking Now and now, Be Cool. As much as we might want to forget these flicks, we cannot. We must not. Which brings us to today's dispatch of mine from the Boston Herald...

The actors in Be Cool seem as if they had a lot of fun making the movie sequel to Get Shorty.
But their enjoyment - though it shows onscreen - doesn't always translate to our enjoyment.
You can get big laughs from big stars, but you typically need such things as, oh, a screenplay, plot and character development. Not that Hollywood cares for such things. Be Cool could be part of a disturbing new trend evidenced by such recent sequels as Ocean's 12, Meet the Fockers and The Whole Ten Yards, except for the more disturbing fact that the silly, sucky sequel - let's call it the suckquel - has been around for more than a few reels.
You don't have to trace it back to the Rat Pack, although its members did contribute to Cannonball Run II.
Full-fledged suckquels have four main components: 1) An all-star cast, 2) joined together for the sole purpose of squeezing as much profit as the movie studio thinks it can make off the original hit concept, 3) so the budget pays for the stars and not the screenplay, 4) which leads to lots of goofing around, insider jokes and pop culture references.
That's not a movie. That's a blooper reel.
In the end, these suckquels succeed at the box office (because we line up like P.T. Barnum's suckers) but fail to reproduce the spark that made us love the original movies.
Before you can say Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, let's review Hollywood's biggest suckquels of the past 25 years.

Smokey and the Bandit 2 (1980): Two words - Terry Bradshaw. Need more? The premise has the Bandit transporting a pregnant elephant.
Cannonball Run II (1984): So many stars mocking their previous roles that nothing makes sense to anyone except Shirley MacLaine, who knows a little something about reliving the past.
Caddyshack II (1988): Like watching the replacement NFL. Jackie Mason is no Rodney Dangerfield, and the rest of the subs aren't better.
Look Who's Talking Too (1990): The baby-talking gimmick from the original becomes thebasis for this suckquel, adding the voices of Mel Brooks, Damon Wayans and Roseanne.
Blues Brothers 2000 (1998): Can't even get the year right. John Goodman is no John Belushi. Buy the soundtrack, forget the movie. Then again, you might provoke another attempt at a concert tour. Scratch that.
The Whole Ten Yards (2004): Three and out is more like it.
Ocean's 12 (2004): Don't hate them because they're beautiful. OK, hate them for it.
Meet the Fockers (2004): All the effort put into the punny title left little in the tank for a meaningful script. But don't you just laugh saying focker over and over?

Related story: Stars can't make unfunny sequels `Cool' (Boston Herald)