"Top" 10 Worst Sequels

A version of this list appears in my collection Everyone Else is Wrong (And You Know It): Criticism/Humor/Non-Fiction. Click the link to purchase the hardcover or paperback edition along with some of my other published work.

While this has not been updated to include more recent fare, the bad taste left by these films listed has never left me. The list is based purely on the let-down factor of a great film preceding it or by the sheer nonsensical nature of their existence. Unlike in my book, I elaborate more fully below on why these 10 were chosen. Happy reading(?)

10. The Neverending Story III: Escape from Fantasia (1994)

While many detest The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter (1990), this second sequel to Wolfgang Peterson's 1984 fantasy epic The Neverending Story makes that film a masterpiece by comparison. Michael Ende's engrossing and too-little read novel has never really been transferred properly to the big screen (and the book's second half would be unfilmable), but the original film has become a cult classic over time and has a charm of its own, especially with its striking special effects. This clunker, starring Free Willy's Jason James Richter, is the epitome of shark jumping into cheesy effects, unfunny comedy, and adding nothing either to Ende's folklore or the spirit of children's fantasy films.

9, Big Top Pee-wee (1988)

Tim Burton's debut Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) was a watershed in children's entertainment for my generation. We got our first glimpse of Burton's style, albeit in brighter colors than he would ever use again. With Randal Kleiser's sequel, Paul Reubens is given nothing to do (odd, since he is partially responsible for the screenplay). A talented cast (including Kris Kristofferson and Valeria Golino) and Danny Elfman's score are completely wasted in this lazy box office bomb.

8. The Odd Couple II (1998)

With the advent of the Grumpy Old Men franchise, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau traded on their original chemistry in the 1968 film version of Neil Simon's play The Odd Couple. Checking in on Oscar and Felix thirty years later is not a bad idea in itself, but Simon was never as adept a screenwriter as he was a playwright, often simply translating his plays with very little changes to the silver screen. His worst film scripts, however, are based on his original film ideas and The Odd Couple II is the definition of a let-down.

7. American Psycho II: All-American Girl (2002)

Technically, this straight-to-DVD horror comedy is not a sequel to Mary Harron's 2000 adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' transgressive novel at all, but was an original story entitled The Girl Who Wouldn't Die. Knowing they had a stinker on their hands, Lions Gate Films attached the Psycho brand to it and embarrassed everybody involved, including Ellis, Mila Kunis, and William Shatner (and that's saying something*).

6. National Lampoon's European Vacation (1985)

John Hughes adapted his National Lampoon magazine short story "Vacation '58" into the 1983 film starring Chevy Chase that spawned a franchise well into the mid-2010s. While National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2 (2003) is perhaps the worst, as a follow-up to the original adventure to Wally World, European Vacation is an tepid, incoherent mess as the Griswolds win a trip to Europe leading to consistently head-slapping running gags. This is not a film about ugly Americans traipsing around the Old Country, but an ugly film about ugly people who apparently populate the world. Perhaps they do, but that doesn't mean we have to see it.

5. Muppet Treasure Island (1996)

I'm often contrarian to my generation. Many will fight me on this, but their love of films like Hocus Pocus and Muppet Treasure Island mystifies me. Overblown, overcrowded, and with unquestionably worse songs than the four previous films, this Muppetized Treasure Island is saved only by Tim Curry. But, when camp is all you have to save you...let's just say there's less treasure and more bilge and barnacles.

4. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)

While Superman III plunged the original Superman franchise into over-the-top comedy, that is nothing compared to the low-budget nonsense of Superman IV. When the franchise was sold to the masters of schlock Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the cost-cutting and crude storytelling make fools of Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, and Margot Kidder, rending almost everything that came before it a joke. Perhaps I've got blinders on, but Richard Donner's original film remains the best film version of the Superman story while this piece of garbage is best left under lock and key.

3. Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

Another movie that proves when you've come to Part IV you'd better stop, Jaws: The Revenge contains perhaps the most asinine plot of all the films on this list. Since Roy Scheider refused to return to the series after Jaws 3-D sent the series into free fall, this time the shark is out for his family, including Lorraine Gary (who happened to be married to the president of Universal Studios). Legend has it Michael Caine could not accept his well-deserved Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters because he was shooting this. I personally would have chosen to pick up my statuette, but Caine is an old-school pro even when churning out big budget D minus movies.

2. Batman and Robin (1997)

It is normally not kind to speak ill of the dead, but with Joel Schumacher and his ridiculous filmography, I'm willing to make an exception. This overblown, campy, and toyetic film was typical of the malaise of late-'90s Hollywood although so many Oscar-winners and nominees were attached to it. You sit agog at the dreck of the whole enterprise. The series had already taken a left turn with Batman Forever (and, in some ways, Batman Returns), but Holy Cow, Batman, this movie stinks.

1. Caddyshack II (1988)

Perhaps the original 1980 Caddyshack is not a great film, but Caddyshack II remains, to this day, the worst professional Hollywood film I've ever seen. James Mason takes the reins from Rodney Dangerfield and, while his standup was something to admire, he belonged in movies the way he belonged in figure skating. Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd make special appearances (unfunny ones), but it is characters like those played by Randy Quaid that make this film so painful to endure. Robert Stack remains professional throughout, but that (and a sillier gopher even than in the first film) had audiences scratching their heads and wondering, "What am I doing with my life watching this? Can I get my time and money back?"

*This is a cheap joke. I like William Shatner a lot.

TV Review- HITLER AND THE NAZIS: EVIL ON TRIAL

NOTE: Unfortunately, I was unable to make the deadline last Friday due to illness. To catch up, another blog post will appear tomorrow at 10am on the site.

***½ out of ****

Joe Berlinger became known as a documentarian of extraordinary power with films he co-directed by the late Bruce Sinofsky. Both were responsible for a trilogy of television docs concerning the West Memphis Three trial, another legendary case during the “Satanic Panic” of the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Those three films—Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory—were made as the events were unfolding and helped (partially) exonerate three innocent men of a wretched homicide, the investigation of which was botched from the get-go.

Recently, Berlinger has been responsible for many docuseries on Netflix, the latest of which also covers a famous trial—perhaps the most important trial of the 20th Century: the Nuremberg trials. My interest in how Western Civilization could have achieved such a failure as allowing the Shoah to take place has led me to comb through as many movies on the subject as I possibly could, the standouts being Stanley Kramer’s magnificent 1961 epic Judgment at Nuremberg (featuring the finest performances of both Spencer Tracy and Maximilian Schell's careers) and an all-star television film, Nuremberg, from the early 2000s. Books such as Raul Hilberg’s massive and essential The Destruction of the European Jews show how the National Socialist German Workers’ Party meticulously plotted, mostly through documents, first the expulsion, the ghettoization, and then, later, the mass murder of more than six million Jews during the reign of the Third Reich as it was perpetrating wars on both its Western and Eastern fronts.

Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial has its faults, but there is perhaps no better dispelling of the myth that if Adolph Hitler had not come to power, someone else would have gone down the same road. After all, antisemitism in Germany pervaded the society for centuries after Martin Luther spent the last days of his life choking on his own bile, excoriating his Jewish brothers and sisters.

Often, Hitler is thought of as a cypher who was caught up in the Zeitgeist and gave Germany what it craved. Instead, the six-part series shows Hitler’s evil genius as he rose from humble beginnings in Vienna as a frustrated painter to become a fascist dictator unlike anyone excepting Stalin. The series probes his life, his political thought, his ruthlessness, and his flair for surrounding himself with sycophants—evil geniuses in their own right such as Goebbels and Göring—who did his bidding.

The story is told primarily through the reports of American war correspondent William L. Shirer who came as close as any foreign national to witness Hitler’s rise to power. Audio from his radio broadcasts (sometimes, unfortunately, “recreated” by AI—hey, guys—hire actors!) and extensive film and audio from the Nuremberg trials (most of which has never been heard or seen before) ground the series, ultimately making it compulsive and necessary viewing.

When the documentary turns to its talking heads, however, we are treated to academics who are clearly making comparisons between Hitler and Donald J. Trump. Not one, but many of the interviewees portray Hitler’s campaign as “Make Germany Great Again.” Perhaps that’s true, but every time this is mentioned, you find yourself scoffing at such blatant attempts at making connections from the ‘30s and ‘40s with our present day in an election year. Whatever your feelings about Trump, the way the term “Hitler” is thrown around to just about anyone we don’t like is as tired a trope as revealing it was all a dream at the end of a movie.

That being said, there were stories of the Holocaust I had never heard before or seen portrayed—Himmler, himself a maniac, becoming disgusted at watching the compulsory mass shootings of Jewish civilians prior to the creation of the death camps, a deep dive into the feelings of Germany after bearing the brunt of World War I on its back, and the despicable “answers” given by top Nazi officials at the trials themselves who keep passing the buck: “We were only taking orders.” Perhaps they were, but they obviously could not live with what they had done for the few who were not killed in war or hanged took the easy way out—suicide by cyanide capsule.

On the whole, if you have a strong stomach, I encourage you to watch it. There is always trepidation when I approach a Holocaust film. One wonders if the magnitude of the carnage could ever or should be visually demonstrated. And, yet there is enough in this series to recommend that I would say it is perhaps Berlinger’s best work since he lost his collaborative partner.

Lost Classics: DON JUAN DeMARCO

Searching for something to watch this last weekend, I stumbled upon a movie that loomed large in my mind as a kid while, when it premiered, it was pretty much derided by critics and audiences. It just so happens that the Spring of 1995 was when I was falling in love with both film and music. I had always loved movies, but I was developing a deeper appreciation of them, and I had contemporaneously been pulled into the world of Latin music. Then came Jeremy Leven’s Don Juan DeMarco, a shamelessly romantic comedy with a fabulous, Latin-tinged score by the late, underrated tunesmith Michael Kamen (who co-wrote Bryan Adams’ “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” for the film). Quite simply: I fell in love.

It’s okay to talk favorably about Johnny Depp now, isn’t it? Well, regardless, Depp is a serious craftsman despite his persona in popular culture today. While I’ve not been a fan of most of the films he’s done in the 21st century, his early collaborations with Tim Burton revealed to the world a serious and fine actor. The 1990s saw Depp acquiring his sea-legs in difficult parts that allowed him to still be a matinee idol while showing the rest of us, he did, in fact, know what he was doing. He had something of the great American film actors in him, including Marlon Brando who had to do nothing but listen to his fellow actors onscreen and yet, you were drawn to him—couldn’t take your eyes off him, in fact. There is still no finer American actor to hone his craft on film quite like Brando.

So, when Depp was offered Don Juan DeMarco, he accepted on the condition that Brando play the stymied, secretly romantic psychiatrist who treats a young man with suicidal tendencies who delusionally believes he is Don Juan (the character having been made famous in a play by Moliere, an epic poem by Lord Byron, and an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). The film begins with you believing this young man actually might be Don Juan except walking around in the wrong century. At a hotel (where Selena is singing!), Don Juan embarks on a final sexual conquest before swearing to end his life.

On top of the building where Depp is threatening his demise, Brando’s character is genie-lifted and plays into the delusion by introducing himself as Don Octavio de Silva, a Spanish nobleman who invites Don Juan to his villa (in fact a psychiatric hospital). It just so happens that Dr. Mickler retires in ten days and Don Juan is to be committed for ten days and be his final patient. He keeps the Casanova-in-training off medication while he soaks up the Don Juan mythology and tries to deal with the fact that, on the one hand, he believes the young man to be Don Juan and, on the other, it can’t possibly be the case.

Nevertheless, Brando’s turgid professional and love life are awakened to new scents and flavors as he hears the story of this Don Juan, who claims to be the child of an Italian American father and Mexican mother whose honor he avenged in a duel that leaves his father dead. He is accidentally sold into slavery (where he becomes the world’s most famous lover with a Sultan’s harem) and then falls in love with Dona Aña, the true object of his heart. Part of the hospital staff is partially carried away by the patient’s magnetism and the other half are having none of it. Additionally, Brando meets the boy’s grandmother who parries the story with a more realistic version and his mother, who seems to back the legend.

In the end, Brando’s character reconnects with his wife and find his romantic side again as Depp agrees to finally be medicated. When the judge comes to evaluate him, he tells a story along the lines his grandmother laid out: he is an impressionable young man, never good with women, who falls in love with a centerfold and dripped into delusion. Whether he is telling the truth as Don Juan or, in the penultimate scene with the judge, is left to the viewer though the clever, cheeky ending argues both the reality and the romantic story can exist in the same universe.

Anchoring the film is Faye Dunaway, a true professional, who plays Brando’s wife in a role that could easily be a throwaway part. Bob Dishy has some great scenes as the hospital administrator. But the stars are clearly Brando and Depp. I would argue it is Brando’s last great performance. Again, it is not just when he is acting, but when he is simply listening and soaking up the romance just like the audience, he is most terrific. Depp may have gone a little too method with the Castilian accent that makes some of the voice-over hard to hear, but otherwise, holds his own.

Nevertheless, when it premiered, DeMarco was hailed as either charming but pointless or a springtime zest that was sweet but could have been better. I found myself equally enamored of the film on Sunday as I was as a child. In fact, I understood it more and allowed the romance to wash over me all over again. What makes the whole thing work, even with its lapses in continuity, are the three central performances and a script that is witty and breezy. At one point, the film was performed as a musical with a book by Craig Lucas and though it never reached New York, one can see why it would make a good musical property.

So, if you are not a die-hard empiricist, and can enjoy a little romance and adventure, watch Don Juan DeMarco and enjoy three of America’s finest film actors wallowing in love, buoyancy, and joy.