The brawls were hilarious. The one in the first movie was just a humorous reference to Gangs of New York, but I just fell down laughing when one of the news teams called in an airstrike in this movie.
Its got a lot of funny bits sure. But its very clearly "we know everyone loved the original brawl here's another one" and they made it as big as possible to make up for the lack of novelty.
For me the biggest laugh out loud moment was when it turned out that Gary the psychologist really does have psychic powers.
^ It's a very brilliant case of foreshadowing. If Ron didn't accuse him of having powers early in the movie, it would have been an Ass Pull, but the fact that the foreshadowing accusations came from the mouth of a troubled person prevented the Chekhov's Gun from being too obvious.
That and the presence of a Minotaur and a ghost set it up too. Before that point, there are no supernatural elements in this entire franchise (unless you want to count animals talking to each other) By the time you see the ghost and realize they are throwing that kind of stuff in the blender, they're able to keep you distracted from thinking about Gary until the payoff.
I also loved Ron trying for a joyous reunion with the shark. I dunno, this movie is actually starting to grow on me. Might bear a rewatch.
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A lot like the first.
Completely unsubtle commentary? Check. Uneven comedy that runs screaming back and forth between painfully bad and inspired? Also check. I give this movie an A for the effort. The first movie was an uneven mess but we all remember the good stuff because it was good enough to justify the mess. The weird Brick quotes, the newscaster brawl, etc. If you don't go back and watch the first movie, you'll think this one is awful by comparison. If you do rewatch it, you'll find this is a worthy enough sequel. It looks like they chose to handle the burden of following the first movie by just ignoring that burden and doing what they wanted and it kind of works. Its worth watching but inevitably won't be as memorable.
Spoilers:
The sequel's newscaster brawl kind of sums the whole situation up. They make it even bigger and more bizarre than the first. Brick inexplicably had a gun the first time, now he inexplicably has a gun from the future (doubles a brick joke, and its probably my favorite bit). There are probably 2 to 3 times as many celebrities in the fight, the weapons are bigger and badder, and they tried to add to the randomness factor by adding various mythical creatures. I think they knew that they couldn't recapture the magic of the first fight. That one worked because it was new and completely unexpected. But they could celebrate the first fight by making the second as big and random as possible. And that's kind of how this whole movie works. More is less in this sequel but its still better than nothing.