GiraffeDoor

I watched the first one just to "tee up" this one.

Yes, one person did in fact do that.

The first is fine. It's a cute little story that is good for a Sandler movie. Yeah, I said it.

I'd like to tell you that this is a touching homage and legacy sequel about an iconic character during a new era of their life.

It is...but it's also blatant nostalgia bait. Some call back fanservice is obligatory but they over do it with EVERYONE either returning or their son appearing. They recall those jokes from the first movie with a clip from the first movie.

And it has something of a chip on its shoulder about new-fangled stuff.

I doubt the maxi-golf that serves at the antagonist would be a viable project. We already have sports more exciting than golf; it's called "all of them (except cricket)".

No but seriously, anyone who wants golf to get more exciting can just watch gladiators. It's very deliberate how they find adventitious ways to make the CEO of that the antagonist. They should be able to try out a new product and coincidentally they're kind of the bad guys.

The antagonist is so easy to best and humiliate from the offset but it is cathartic to see Ben Stiller's character be handled as he should have been handled in the first movie.

Finally, and I hate to get on my soapbox like this, but there is a vaguely sexist vibe to this.

The boys/sons are all sort of ONE way and the only girl meets every stereotype and they totally NOT playing that for irony. The one girl in the household cooks for them, that is freaking creepy... the 4 sons are interchangeable. Just make ONE of them another daughter and it would be different but no...

These legacy sequels have a way undoing everything that made the ending to the first movie a happy ending (Zoolander 2) and they don't do that here but I suppose we should have seen it coming. They use a narrated opening (again just like the first movie) when maybe beginning in medies res would have been better.

But hey, it passes the time and is never too annoying.

The name "Adam Sandler" is one of those names that makes me think "nah let's watch a different movie".

But this reasonably well structured story of a fish out of water doing what he needs to do to be the good guy while bad guys undermine him holds the attention.

Never that funny (except of course for that ONE joke, you'll know it when you see it) but the humor of a rage filled character, talented in one specific way but still somewhat out of his depth is fine for what it is.

It's not hard to imagine this as someone's comfort movie.

Frankly I thank anyone who wasn't expecting something like this doesn't really know this reality that well.

It's neither amazing nor trash. Vaguely annoying with all the braindead MacCarthyism that plagued all countries of the west (and the east in an inverted way), and Cate Blanchet's character is also irksome in how poorly she mimics a slav and how they try to spin her as some kind of formidable villain.

The set pieces are swell, the plot is fine, the aging Indiana is...well it's just part of it.

Maybe best seen in two sittings, don't trap yourself in a theater for it.

It tried to bait nostalgia and people let their nostalgia make them see a superfluous movie as one that did not deserve the hate it recieved.