Are you ready for the summer? Are you ready for the sunshine? If so, sorry — you’re bound to be disappointed by Meatballs Part II.
Although Ivan Reitman’s original is no great shakes, Ken Wiederhorn’s in-name-only sequel is uninspired idiocy — a half-assed, quarter-hearted attempt to lovingly spoof the summer-camp subgenre, as well as the rite of passage itself.
Run by Richard Mulligan (Scavenger Hunt), who deserved better, Camp Sasquatch houses misfits of various school grades for four weeks. The newest counselor-in-training is a bad boy (John Mengatti, Tag: The Assassination Game) only there to avoid reform school. Mulligan grooms the teen — not that way, calm down — to don the boxing gloves for the annual Champ of the Lake competition against the neighboring military-minded Camp Patton.
Meanwhile, the nerdy counselor (Archie Hahn, Amazon Women on the Moon) tries hard — really, really hard — to get the busty counselor (Misty Rowe, National Lampoon’s Class Reunion) alone for nookie. And, most memorably, an alien that looks like a gray turd is dropped off by his parents’ spaceship for camp. The younger Sasquatch boys hide the E.T. in their cabin and name him Meathead. Soon, Meathead gets stoned, which is the movie’s idea of high comedy.
The product of three writers and Eyes of a Stranger director Wiederhorn, Meatballs Part II suspiciously lacks sauce. It best serves as a time capsule, capturing the moment just before bit players Paul Reubens and John Larroquette saw their dwindling careers rescued — if not supercharged — by, respectively, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and a four-Emmy run on TV’s Night Court. After being reduced here to a lisping, gay-panic stereotype, Larroquette has to be especially grateful.
Establishing pieces suggest the pic aimed for an Airplane!-style spoof, then prove it fell far short. Even the unmemorable theme song is lazy: “We’ve been waitin’ for the summer to hit the beach / No more apples for the teacher, gonna eat a peach.” Wow, movie, you really went all out to earn that rhyming badge. —Rod Lott