Vacation Friends 2 (2023) – Vacation Acquaintances

IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Released: 25th August
Seen: 31st August

In 2021 there was a half-decent little comedy called Vacation Friends, it was fun enough but also pretty average. Mostly it was a showcase for a quartet of comedic actors who managed to make for a pretty enjoyable time. Indeed that main quartet of actors is so objectively great that I may have said that I wanted a dozen more films with that exact set of actors because they had such great chemistry… and then a finger of the monkey’s paw curled slowly and my wish was granted. Stupid me forgetting to add “but not another film in this specific franchise” when I was wording that wish.

Vacation Friends 2 rejoins Marcus (Lil Del Howery) and Emily (Yvonne Orji) who are taking another vacation, this time to the Caribbean and the two of them have invited Ron (John Cena) and Kyla (Meredith Hagner) to join them. For some reason Ron and Kyla also have a kid now and dragged along Maurillio (Carlos Santos) to act as a babysitter because we can’t have a baby taking part in the shenanigans of this film, that might be interesting.

Turns out that the reason Marcus was able to somehow afford to bring 4 people and a baby along for a trip to the Caribbean is that he has a work meeting there and the people who he’s trying to pitch a job to are paying for everything, but since no one else knows that (for reasons) naturally Ron and Kyla push Marcus and Emily into partying and heavy risk-taking behaviours. Oh and also Emily’s formerly incarcerated father Reese (Steve Buscemi) turns up and causes trouble, that’s it.

Doing a sequel to a comedy film is kind of a cursed prospect, more often than not they end up just not really working out because it’s often just regurgitating the same jokes in a slightly different location. There are many exceptions to this rule, Vacation Friends 2 is not one of those exceptions because it is quite literally the same jokes but in a slightly different location with Steve Buscemi occasionally walking in to tell John Cena that he’s a useless sack of shit before leaving the screen for 10 minutes to prepare for when he has to return and do it all over again. There is no new ground here, nothing interesting added to make things even a little bit shocking or funny.

If there is something that looks like it might be added to the mix, like a goddamn baby, it’s quickly pushed off to the side and off-screen before it can do anything to actually impact the plot. Nope, instead we’re just going to repeat the old jokes where everyone gets drunk and regrets things. John Cena pushed Lil Del Howery to do something extreme that results in some kind of injury for Del (yes I’m calling them by their actual names and not their character names because who gives a shit?) or it’ll have Lil Del Howery having a mild breakdown at some weird shit happening because he’s the straight man of the movie and that’s his job. It’s the same stuff from the last movie, you can predict the exact second the punchline will be spoken. I would say “the second the punchline landed” but that implies the jokes land at all – and they don’t.

Almost every joke in Vacation Friends 2 is just a dud, mostly because it’s the same joke from last time and even then, they were straining to work. Here, even this insanely talented cast (who are all still great for the record) just can’t make most of this work. The ONLY scene that got a genuine laugh involves a bag of cocaine and John Cena’s absolutely incredible ability to deliver a deadpan line, that’s the one scene where genuine laughter came out but every other scene is either just tired or doesn’t work. The timing of each joke feels off, enough that by the time they get to the thing that’s meant to make the audience laugh there’s a good chance the audience has already worked out what’s coming and thus the surprise is gone, that or whatever the actual punchline is just wasn’t good in the first place.

It’s not for a lack of trying, you can certainly tell each of the actors are putting their all into every line to try and make something funny happen and maybe if the script had an ounce of humour in it then the actors would have something to work with but they don’t. It’s almost like this isn’t the kind of idea you can spin off into a franchise, almost like just doing the same film in a slightly different location wasn’t going to be enough. For this to work it needed a more drastic change, put them on a cruise and go full Poseidon Adventure or something, but just having the same slightly exotic hotel stay isn’t going to work, as evidenced by how much it didn’t work in this film.

Vacation Friends 2 proves an old adage to be true, there is nothing worse than a bad comedy. A bad film in any other genre can at least be accidentally entertaining by becoming a joke, there’s a reason that bad movie nights are a thing that people do. Bad comedy is a little different because if you can’t laugh at the movie, you’re left with nothing to really react to. It doesn’t shock or horrify or even upset, it just kind of bores the audience who spend the entire time hoping that maybe someone will save the film and make things funny again. There’s a brief moment where that happens with the scene mentioned earlier, but most of the time it’s just watching a cast of talented people who we know can be funny floundering for laughs that never come. If they do decide to reunite this cast again, maybe give them something different to work with… something funny, just for a treat.