Goofy charm overcomes flawed pacing and story
Happy Death Day 2U
(out of 4) Starring Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Phi Vu. Directed by TK. 100 minutes. Opens Thursday at GTA cinemas. PG Christopher Landon’s Happy Death Day was one of the nicer surprises of 2017, an unabashed ripoff of Groundhog Day and
Scream in which a college girl, Theresa “Tree” Gelbman, must relive the day of her murder until she kills the killer.
It shouldn’t have worked, but the movie wisely downplayed the blood and cranked up the YA appeal, focusing on its youthful cast, romantic subplot and dorky sense of humour. Horror movies are rarely endearing; this one went so far as to include cute, animated end credits.
The sequel, Happy Death Day 2U, offers diminished returns, but it’s not completely unrewarding. Plotting, pacing and logic are weak points, and the source material — this time it’s Back to the Future — seems like a less inspired theft. The good news, though, is that the original movie’s strengths are all here as well.
They include Jessica Rothe, who gives Tree a late-’90s, post-Sarah Michelle Gellar aura — blond hair, delicate features, eyes brimming with emotion. Carter, the calm yin to Tree’s chaotic yang, is played once again by a likable Israel Broussard. Phi Vu returns as Ryan, a minor character now elevated to the role of catalyst: It’s his lab project on quantum mechanics, a pulsating ma- chine named SISSY (after the endless rock-roller Sisyphus), that caused Tree’s initial time loop.
It takes many false starts and much wheel-spinning just to get Tree to her central dilemma: She’s now trapped in an alternate universe, one in which her dead mother is still alive but Carter is dating someone else (Rachel Matthews as the snotty sorority sister Danielle). Which of these deeply flawed realities will Tree choose?
If that sounds complicated, don’t forget: There’s still a murderer on the loose. I haven’t even mentioned Dean Bron- son (Steve Zissis), a tyrannical administrator straight out of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. There’s also a climactic heist sequence that recalls just about any movie with a heist sequence.
What saves the movie is the hell-withit attitude of returning director (and now writer) Landon, who goes for broad slapstick, sick humour, teen drama, telenovela shockers, sitcom silliness, you name it. Once again, stay for the end credits. The final sequence may be a tossed-off joke or it may point this budding franchise in an entirely new direction.