VACATION FRIENDS 2 - Mark Reviews Movies

Vacation Friends 2, Hulu

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 25, 2023

The first Vacation Friends felt like a bit of an anomaly among mainstream American comedies, in that it utilized a really good cast for a solid comedic premise, instead of hoping that its stars could carry weak material. Now, here's Vacation Friends 2, and unfortunately, the original film still feels an outlier, especially compared to this sequel.

The cast remains the same and game for material that starts with a fine and fairly simple premise, only for director Clay Tarver's screenplay to let them down with all sorts of extraneous complications. This is a movie that seems to know exactly what it needs to do in order to replicate the success of its predecessor, but somewhere along the way, Tarver sent himself or was guided down the wrong the path.

Once again, we're back with Marcus (Lil Rel Howery), the workaholic who appears to have found some balance between his professional and personal lives, and his wife Emily (Yvonne Orji), who's happy her husband isn't consumed by his construction business during their upcoming vacation to an unnamed island in the Caribbean. Well, the trip is actually for business, since a South Korean hotel company is planning to build a resort in Chicago and is considering Marcus' company to oversee the project, but before his big meeting with the head of the company, Marcus just wants to relax and enjoy the company of Emily, as well as the two friends they met on their previous vacation adventure.

They were Ron (John Cena) and Kyla (Meredith Hagner), a couple of rowdy but well-meaning partiers, and they more or less remain so, too. Yes, they're new parents, although the two lose track of their infant child at the airport and have hired Maurillio (Carols Santos), the hotel manager from the previous film, to babysit while the four friends live it up on this weeklong getaway.

Things appear to be on the right track from the start. These characters remain essentially the same, despite those significant changes that turn out to be minor ones when it comes to the group reassembling for plenty of drunken debauchery, and their clashing attitudes and ways are still an issue, if only because Marcus wants to make sure that Ron and Kyla are nowhere to be found when the occasion of his big work meeting arrives. Plus, Tarver is smart enough to include Santos' Maurillio again—a character who made a considerable impression in only a few scenes in the original film. With all of that in place, it's just a matter of waiting to see what shenanigans are to come.

What's the worst that could happen in this situation? Well, that would be the early arrival of some representatives from the hotel company at the resort, ready to talk business and get started on negotiating a deal when Ron and Kyla are still there. Sure enough, enter Yeon (Ronny Chieng) and some other executives from the Korean firm, prepared to discuss the plan and get some terms on the table, and yes, there are Marcus' loud friends with no filter, unwittingly ready to put the entire deal in jeopardy.

The first film got a lot of mileage out of a pair of similarly uncomfortable scenarios and the cast's dedication to playing straightforward archetypes navigating through those awkward moments. This one starts that way, as Marcus tries to keep Ron and Kyla away from his potential business partners as much as possible, only for circumstances to force the two exactly where Marcus doesn't want them. It's the stuff of classic situational comedy, but Tarver, who doesn't have the four other writers from the previous film joining him this time around, is too eager to add more and more material that doesn't fit in with the basics of this premise.

The result is that the movie does less and less with these characters. There's some promise, for example, when the story introduces Kyla's father Reese (Steve Buscemi), who has been in prison for "tax stuff," into the mix. The joke here is that Ron, who somehow gets everyone to like him and likes everybody he has ever met, can't find a way to connect with his father-in-law, no matter how hard he tries, and, boy, does he try.

That's a solid joke, especially in the goofy Cena's hands, so what ultimate purpose is there to have Reese involved in a sketchy scheme involving local drug dealers? The whole plot eventually becomes about that, ignoring just about everything to do with Marcus' own scheme to keep his friends at bay, while transforming the third act into a series of chases and assorted perils. Just because a gag is bigger doesn't necessarily mean it's better.

Such is the case here, for sure, as the movie loses track of what these characters want, what they don't want, and how their conflicting personalities lead to, well, comedic conflict. There's plenty of potential for that in Vacation Friends 2, and how Tarver squanders it is, perhaps, best exemplified by the way the story includes Maurillio, gives him a goal to find romance while trying to babysit, and forgets about him until the plot is way too busy with the drug dealer stuff for his character to even matter.

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