"Vacation Friends 2" is a movie that serves as a perfect example because not every good movie should have a sequel. In the first film, we laughed and had fun with the antics of the inconvenient friends of the couple Emily (Yvonne Orji) and Marcus (Lil Rel Howery). After meeting on a crazy vacation in Mexico, for some reason, they felt comfortable inviting them to their wedding, giving us a true show of inconvenience and gifting us with hilarious scenes. Here, they miss the mark and make us die of boredom. Seriously, it was the most tedious 105 minutes of my life. I had to make a considerable effort not to fall asleep. Okay, now that I've vented, let's get to the movie review and the reason why I found this movie incredibly boring.
Here, the couple Emily and Marcus take their inconvenient friends Kyla (Meredith Hagner) and Ron (John Cena) with them on a trip to the Caribbean. It doesn't make any sense here because they say they're trying to get pregnant, yet they invite another couple of friends to come along. What's up with that? Is Marcus expecting Ron to father the child for him? I believe that for something to be funny, it needs to be spontaneous, and here the forced situation starts right in this first scene. Then, another friend of theirs, MaurÃlio (Carlos Santos), who is single and therefore serves as a babysitter for the couple Kyla and Ron, joins the trip. With the group formed, they head to their destination, and upon arrival, chaos ensues, as Marcus didn't inform the group that this wasn't just a vacation but also a business trip. Marcus is there to seal a multimillion-dollar deal for his construction company, and being the good and sensible person that the film wants us to believe he is, why would he bring his trouble-making and clueless friends whom he hasn't seen in a long time? Right? Why not mix a business trip with a big family reunion? What could possibly go wrong, especially when your friends are only trying to embarrass and hinder you all the time?
Honestly, buddy, either you suffer from a severe self-sabotage problem or you really just don't want things to work out. What's the logic of bringing anyone other than your spouse on a trip where you're closing an important deal and trying to get pregnant? Frankly, it doesn't make any sense, and it only reinforces how weak the script is and how forced the story is.
And this becomes even more evident when Kyla's father suddenly appears at the resort, having been released from prison, and Marcus, with a super important business deal, simply doesn't pull his friends aside and tell them that the father can't stay. On the contrary, he believes that friends who know about his important business affairs would take them to a party on the first day, get them drunk, and nearly get them into trouble with the bigwigs of the company. When they say Kyla's father is "cool," how is he "cool"? Not having someone who just got out of prison on your tail when you're trying to close an important deal is not exactly the smartest move.
Especially when that character has anything but good intentions. Dude, it's totally forgettable, forced, and tedious to see how hard the movie tries to be funny. I think they thought we would say, "Wow, now things have gotten complicated, how hilarious!" but no, I must admit I had to fight sleep a lot here because, frankly, that whole sequence of mishaps with the boss, with high school-level bickering with Marcus, challenging him to surf and almost drowning him, their friend accidentally drinking breast milk, and as if it couldn't get any worse, they introduce a whole drama with Emily discovering last minute that she doesn't want to be a mother, blah blah blah, just to try to add some emotion, but all they managed to do was bore me even more.
When they deliver cocaine in a package to Marcus's office, and he doesn't ask for Kayla, her father, or Ron to just go the way for me, that was the last straw, and I was already wondering when this movie would end. Because, frankly, seeing a guy who's working hard almost have his career ruined by clueless friends and a malicious guy is frustrating and not funny. And when it's revealed that it was actually Kayla's mother's ashes and not cocaine, it's still not funny at all, especially since Kayla herself was sniffing her mother's ashes, and that's sad, lamentable, and disgusting.
Then, Kayla's father almost gets everyone killed, so he can steal money from a drug dealer. It completely killed any desire I had to laugh at this movie, and Kayla talking about "we're a family" after her father nearly killed everyone and had everyone kidnapped can only be meant to infuriate us because there's no humor in that.
After a long wait, something funny finally happened, and it was Ron smoking weed in a sinking container and even so electricity had after it submerged. That, indeed, was laughable. The ending, with all the chases, the fake drug dealer, and Marcus getting the job thanks to the boss who had always been against him, was kind of okay, but it only served to reinforce how weak the script of this movie was. Full of flaws, and with humor that felt completely forced, instead of entertaining me, it just bored me, annoyed me, made me spend two hours as if I were in the dentist's chair, praying to God for it to end soon, and left me with the feeling at the end that I had been deceived and wasted almost two hours of my life on something completely forgettable and nonsensical.
