The Stream: Poor storyline pacing and not enough laughs

The Big Screen: A couple okay chuckles

The Final Bill: Same movie with less raunchy laughs

– S2S: Movie Review
Director: Clay Tarver
Writers: Clay Tarver, Tom Mullen, Tim Mullen
Stars: Lil Rel Howery, Yvonne Orji, John Cena, Meredith Hagner, Carlos Santos, Ronny Chieng, Steve Buscemi
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy
Rating: R (strong language)
Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes
Production Companies: 20th Century Studios, Broken Road Productions
Platform: Hulu released August 25, 2023

Streamers, here’s the thing… we’ve been watching way too many movies to write reviews all the time. Sorry for the hiatus as we decided to take a vacation; and then, here comes the friends we didn’t ask for in Vacation Friends 2. If you remember, Vacation Friends came out about 2 years ago and starred Lil Rel Howery, Yvonne Orji, John Cena and others. Well, it’s the end of the summer and the friends have taken another vacation but this time on purpose and in the “Caribbean”. Let’s see what hijinks they get into this time.

Let’s start with the good and move to the mediocre. First, the movie was filmed in Hawaii, and I hope we all support Hawaii to help them rebuild from the fires. Next, the cast works well together, but the writing unfortunately wasn’t as adventurous as the vacation. John Cena is a comedic genius, but they barely used his potential. Lil Rel and Yvonne Orji while still honestly fledging comedians have more in them than just this whining comedy. Sidenote: they could’ve casted Kevin Hart in this role, and it probably would’ve worked better with his whining. Anyway, Meredith Hagner was really the only character that had the same spirit as the first movie but all in all it became just the same. The movie felt like the same movie, jokes, etc. except it lacked the life and surprise of the first movie. There’s a chuckle here and there but that’s a fall off from the first movie. Shoot, you might as well just watch the first movie all over again instead of watching this one because you’ll laugh more. Vacation Friends 2 is an average movie for streaming services but with the cast they had you’d expect more, especially with Steve Buscemi. I mean he’s a classic! While his character was fine, we should have gotten more. Don’t even get me started on how useless Carlos Santos is until the end. I am watching you, Chencho!

Long story short, Vacation Friends 2 is a tamed down version of Vacation Friends. Unfortunately, that’s actually not a good thing since the wild, raunchy, random behavior made the first movie work so well. Yes, there’s a “baby” in this movie but the friends should’ve taken it up a notch on vacation. Instead, we’re given a handful of popcorn to eat during this streaming Hulu flick.