Movie review: 'Vacation Friends 2' as humorless, annoying as original

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Had Vacation Friends come out in theaters, it probably would not have warranted a sequel. Enough people watched on Hulu to beget Vacation Friends 2, on Hulu on Friday, and nothing has improved.

Marcus (Lil Rel Howery) and Emily (Yvonne Orji) met Ron (John Cena) and Kyla (Meredith Hagner) in Mexico in the first movie. Now they're on vacation together in the Caribbean.

Marcus actually is at the Kim Wae resort to meet with company executives about hiring his construction company for a project. When the executives arrive early, Ron and Kyla embarrass Marcus.

Also, Kyla's father, Reese (Steve Buscemi), visits fresh out of prison. Ron and Kyla have hired the Mexican resort manager Maurillio (Carlos Santos) to baby-sit their newborn, so he can return for the sequel, too.

The flawed premise of both movies is that Ron and Kyla are so outrageous that their screaming alone is funny. At one point, Ron cries, but Cena already did a better version of that joke in Trainwreck.

Ron and Kyla swear a lot, but it's neither shocking nor funny. It's not that the vulgarity is too much. It's just boring.

Bottoms shows how clever raunchy comedy can be. So does Joy Ride and so do There's Something About Mary and American Pie.

The schtick is Ron and/or Kyla act really angry, and then they reveal they're not angry at all. If one found that amusing in the first movie, there's more of the same. but once the plot gets underway, they stop doing even that.

Marcus, Emily, Ron, Kyla and Reese go on an island misadventure running from drug dealers, thanks to a scheme of Reese's. For the second half of the movie, the five protagonists go through generic misadventures without even adding jokes.

Marcus babbles and panics, Kyla naively assumes the best in every situation, Ron tries to act like a tough guy, Emily tries to outsmart her group and the drug dealers.

During down time, Emily randomly confesses to Kyla that she doesn't actually want to have kids. They never deal with this until Emily blurts it out during the film's climax.

Emily and Marcus' pregnancy attempts only exist to serve a running joke in which Marcus has an ovulation tracker on his phone. The tracker does pay off, but it's never funny.

Mediocre chases, escapes and gunfights are no substitute for comedy. They certainly can't compete with devoted action movies, which inevitably have more comic relief than this.

Despite securing A-list talent, Vacation Friends is not the comedy franchise to prove the value of streaming exclusives. Adam Sandler has done some good ones for Netflix and even Hulu has better ones like Rosaline and Rye Lane.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.