Wayne’s World 2

A disappointing sequel, Wayne’s World 2 follows Mike Myers’ Wayne and Dana Carvey’s Garth as they set out to launch a massive music festival in their hometown of Aurora, Illinois. There’s little doubt that Wayne’s World 2 fares best in its irreverent and freewheeling opening half hour, as filmmaker Stephen Surjik, working from a script by Myers, Bonnie Turner, and Terry Turner, does an effective job of recapturing the engaging, entertaining vibe of the movie’s 1992 predecessor – with the affable atmosphere heightened by Myers and Carvey’s typically winning efforts as the iconic central characters. (And it doesn’t hurt, certainly, that Surjik has elicited charismatic work from an eclectic periphery cast that includes Kevin Pollak, Chris Farley, and James Hong.) The film’s downfall, then, is triggered by a storyline that grows more and more tedious as time progresses, with the emphasis generally placed on subplots that are either entirely misguided (eg Garth’s relationship with Kim Basinger’s sketchy Honey Hornée, Wayne’s tedious The Doors-inspired encounters with a half-naked Indian, etc) or frustratingly familiar (eg Wayne worries that Cassandra is being wooed by a slick producer, in a narrative thread lifted directly from the first picture). The climactic stretch, involving the characters’ frantic rush to get the show off the ground, is hardly as exciting or engrossing as Surjik has obviously intended (ie the entire third act just drags to a fairly unreasonable extent), which ultimately cements Wayne’s World 2‘s place as an ill-conceived followup that generally misses far more often than it hits.

** out of ****