Trees 2: The Root of All Evil

This sequel to "Trees" is far better than the original. The addition of some movie professionals has helped improve the product. The plot of this movie picks up where Trees left off. Ranger Cody now has a fear of trees. When killer Christmas trees invade the town of Hazelville no one believes the ranger. Mayhem and chaos ensue. I live in the town where this was filmed, and the sight of killer Christmas trees running down Main Street is absolutely hilarious! The second film in a "treelogy," this is a great movie to watch on a cold, rainy night.

Most of the main cast of the Jaws spoof "Trees" return for this sequel that adds Horshack to the mix. This time around the main villain are Christmas trees. This film, while having its moments comes nowhere near as good as the first film. It goes off on tangents fairly often and just isn't as funny. Whereas I found myself laughing or chuckling at a good 80% of the original, I managed to laugh less here, even though it was a bit of a longer movie. It's humorous but some of the sub-plots and even some characters could've been left on the cutting room floor without harming the film in the least bit. And those flashbacks could've been done away with to as long as I'm on the subject.

This is the follow up to the 2000 effort Trees, which was a homage to Jaws.

This, however, tries to flesh out the story. In the original the town of Hazlewood is terrorized by a great white pine. In this the town is beset by a horde of Killer Christmas trees.

I did think that the original was a bit interesting, but this did not live up to that one. It looks like this had a bigger cast and more in the budget and the general look of the film was more professional. However if there was any film that shouted out "less is more" then it's this one. I feel that showing the Killer Christmas trees so frequently and full frame was a mistake, as the CGI that was used for this effects was poor and instead of adding anything, just made it look silly.

The cast seem to take it seriously enough, but I really struggled through this one. In the films defense. This may have been due to the poor sound quality on my copy of the DVD and I really struggled to hear what was going on, which did not help.

This movie is a must see. Watch Trees then watch Root of all evil. You will be on the ground laughing. "Horshack" Ron Palillo did a great job as a wimpy rich man. The rangers wife did great snubbing the husband for the money man. She was awesome. The lumberjacks were hilarious running around trying to kill killer trees in the streets and at the gym. The big guy Fang was a tough customer, and his partner Petey was pretty funny too. He farted everywhere he went. Cheers to the hottie playing the agent. Vavavoom! The graphics were totally cool too. The last time I went camping I was very cautious about how the wind blew and which way the trees were migrating. Those sons of saplings ate my picnic.

Flesh-eating, genetically mutated trees are running rampant in the ski resort of Hazelville; Ranger Cody (Kevin McCauley) and botanist Max Cooper (Phil Gardiner) try to alert the locals to the danger, but their progress is hampered by Bentley and Royce (Brandi Coppock and Brian Reid), two National Forestry Service agents who are part of a conspiracy to cover up the existence of the carnivorous Great White Pines.

If you haven't already twigged from the above synopsis, The Root of all Evil, from writer/director Michael Pleckaitis, is a dumb, low-budget parody of Jaws, only with man eating trees instead of sharks—which sounds like it could be a lot of fun, but isn't.

Although Pleckaitis does a commendable job with both the direction and editing, his scriptwriting skills are far less impressive: the characters are weak spoofs of those in Spielberg's classic movie (Cody rhymes with Brody, Cooper with Hooper, and there's even another character called Squint!), the dialogue is terrible, and the humour is dreadfully puerile. To make matters even worse, the cast are simply awful (the trees are less wooden than the actors), and the monster-tree special effects are embarrassing (achieved by z-grade CGI that would have looked bad in a mid-90s video game).

If the approach taken had been much trashier, with outrageous OTT gore and nudity to help compensate for its crappier qualities, then this might have been a blast—a demented nutzoid effort destined for cult status. As it stands, however, it's an unmitigated disaster.