No…. WAYYYYY
Wayne and Garth have returned! So, party on. After being visited by Jim Morrison, and a naked Indian, in a dream, Wayne looks to put together the Waynestock concert series. Much like Woodstock, it’s a totally free event that will feature hot bands. The problem? He doesn’t have any hot bands. Outside of his girlfriend Cassandra, who is being led down the wrong path by a sinister record producer, Wayne must find a way to gather the bands and must save Cassandra on the side. Sound complicated? Not really.
Wayne’s World 2 is a more refined version of Wayne’s World, except this time it’s not as funny. Some of the same jokes from the first one show up here, like bowing to Aerosmith and saying, “We’re not worthy!”, which was cute on the first go around. The problem really is that these jokes, while certainly more polished, just aren’t as amusing as the first go around. Had they been this way the first time around, the first film would be in AFI’s top 10 comedies of all-time. Anyway, the biggest problem with Wayne’s World 2 is that it’s very aware of itself. The first go around was more like a test to see if the five-minute sketches from SNL would work in a two-hour span. Once Michaels and Myers found out that it did, they refined it and tried to capture lightning in a bottle a second time. The second movie isn’t as cute and lovable as the first.
Outside of the humor, the story itself is a bit too simple. You have two things going on here: Wayne is trying to put together a concert series and Wayne is trying to stop Cassandra from falling for Christopher Walken’s Bobby Cahn (great name for a record producer, eh?). The story splits and it’s okay for it to do so. The problem with keeping these two things going is that Myers patches the story together with small sketches, such as fighting with Cassandra’s father or a remake of the end scene out of The Graduate. All of these things, while funny individually, are poorly placed in the overall story. This is where the movie ultimately fails.
Give credit to the cast, though. They worked their asses off to make the whole thing decent. The movie is a bit all over the place, and they seem very aware of it, but they still brought their ‘A’ game in the end. And what type of person would I be without mentioning the fabulous performance by Kim Basinger? Sure she’s really not in the limelight right now, but man she was smoking hot as Honey Hornee in the film. Garth hit that, by the way.
Blu about features
While I can’t argue about how well Paramount preserved one of its finer comedies from the 90s (or at least one of its comedies), I can be sad that there are no features outside of commentary by Stephen Surjik and cast and crew interviews. I wish there was a bit more here, but there simply isn’t. I would have given a small/large amount of money to hear Myers do some commentary, but I guess I’ll have to wait for the holodisc version of the film (seriously, that format will never make it — it case it does this writing will be deleted).
With that said, you will be happy with how the film to HD transfer went with Wayne’s World 2. It looks incredible in 1080 and sounds incredible (especially with Aerosmith playing) in a 7.1 environment. Just unbelievably good stuff for the eyes and ears.