Vacation Friends 2 review – painfully unfunny comedy sequel
Tossed into the stream during the second summer of Covid, Vacation Friends was a throwback to the kind of big, bright studio comedy that doesn’t get made as much any more. It wasn’t anywhere near as entertaining as it should or could have been (think more Couples Retreat than Forgetting Sarah Marshall) but it was a hit for Hulu, scoring a record-breaking opening weekend, and showing that while audiences still might be reticent to rush out to one of these movies on the big screen (the summer has proved to be another rough one for theatrically released comedies), a low-stakes home-watch is an easier yes.
While Vacation Friends 2 might then make commercial sense, it’s not something that carries any creative reasoning to it, comedy sequels historically struggling to find ways to justify their own existence, repetition trumping reinvention. The bar was low after the first, a half-assed waste of actors who deserve better, but the sequel is somehow even worse, a maddeningly unfunny string of bad decisions, the worst of which was deciding to make it in the first place.
In the original, the Silicon Valley coshowrunner Clay Tarver (who also cowrote 2001’s hugely entertaining and hugely underrated thriller Joy Ride) had the loose semblance of an interesting set-up, exploring the tenuous friendships many of us make on holiday when options are limited and inhibitions are loosened, the lighter flipside of another vastly underappreciated thriller, 2009’s A Perfect Getaway. But by playing everything at an 11 when a seven would do, it became impossible to believe a shred of it, the film never smart enough to explain why a straitlaced couple (played by Lil Rel Howery and Yvonne Orji) would continue to allow a wild criminal couple (played by John Cena and Meredith Hagner) to destroy their precious time away.
It’s therefore even harder to understand why the couples would find themselves on a another vacation together in the sequel, this time deliberately, and so every predictably farfetched scrape they’re then forced into becomes even more alienating than the last. No one is ever anything more than a crude cartoon character moved like chess pieces through a procession of wacky happenings followed by eye-rolls followed by shouting, none of it making the slightest bit of sense (characters change motivation and often personality from scene-to-scene), something that would matter less if any of it were remotely funny. But it’s a film entirely devoid of jokes that land, Tarver choosing to distract from his laugh-free oneliners with dizzying chaos. It’s a creaky, 00s sitcom expanded to a movie, the actors almost waiting for studio laughter to follow their labored jokes.
The work subplot (involving Howery’s plan to win a hotel contract) and the action one (involving Steve Buscemi as Hagner’s ex-con father involved in some nefarious local crime deals) are written in such broad strokes and presented so hammily that one would be tempted to think this was a movie for children, waiting for a talking dog to centre the action, but instead it’s an R-rated comedy that treats its audience as if they were children instead. Even the cast, who tried to overcome the rotten script of the original, are drowning here with Hagner’s often incredibly funny shtick (utilised far better this summer in Joy Ride – no relation to the 2001 film) and Howery’s charming buttoned-up everyman persona both wearing thin.
It’s all as lazy and unfocused as the majority of viewers who’ll end up double-screening it, never once demanding more than the smallest amount of our attention. Because if those involved don’t seem bothered about the film they’re making, then why should we be?
Vacation Friends 2 is out now on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK
took me back. The whole ride home I was silent: all I could think about was making music for a living. That day confirmed it. I’m sure everyone who went to those Def Jam shows in the 80s left feeling inspired.
Big Boi of OutKast on the revolution of NWA’s Fuck tha Police
When it came to the police in Atlanta, there was a lot of corruption. I was in high school when the Rodney King beating happened. It sparked the riots in LA, but there were also protests out here in Atlanta. We caught the train downtown to see what all the hoopla was about. We wanted to see the uproar and ended up getting caught up in the rowdiness a little.
Hearing Fuck tha Police was like the ultimate moment of rebellion. Rap music was the voice of the youth, so hearing NWA lash out in that way really resonated with me. Knowing you could have that kind of voice, and say “fuck tha police” out loud, was something felt across the globe.
That song taught me that OutKast had a responsibility to say something about social issues whenever we got on the microphone. It wasn’t just about dancing or playing around. You really had to put some substance into your music.
Pete Rock on the body positivity of Heavy D
My first cousin Heavy D and I made cookies in the kitchen together and would borrow each other’s clothes as children, so when he was suddenly on songs with Michael Jackson [Jam] and Janet Jackson [Alright] it was freaking bananas! We owe everything to DJ Kool Herc for starting hip-hop and we’re all cut from his cloth, but without Heavy D blowing up, so many rappers wouldn’t exist today.
He convinced Uptown to hire Sean “Diddy” Combs, inspired the Ruff Ryders and he was the one who made me believe I had skills as a rap producer. He also gave people like Biggie, Fat Joe, and Big Pun their confidence.
Heavy D was the first rapper to show the bigger guys how to love themselves. Rather than be teased or cracked on, he showed us how to turn the insults around and that you could still be a sex symbol even if you were overweight.
Heavy D and the Boys were the first rappers that your mom liked, too, which helped to cement hip-hop in the mainstream, globally. I get so angry when they don’t mention his name; you can’t celebrate hip-hop without mentioning Heavy D.
Kool Keith on hip-hop going international
I remember me and Ced-Gee [from Ultramagnetic MCs] toured France and all the people were eating 30-year-old cheese that smelled like feet. It was nuts! We also got a chance to go to a nudist beach over there, and there were 90-year-old women and men walking around naked with afros for pubic hair.
I also played a show up in Brixton, where the Jamaicans were going crazy and there were red phone boxes just like in the movies. We went out of the city and ended up getting lost in the woods; this British farmer threatened us with a shotgun, because we accidentally walked through his back yard!
I was lucky to tour across Australia and even performed in the Cayman Islands. No matter what city I would go to, I would find the local [instrument] store and practise playing funk on the keyboards and guitars. I was exposed to the different food and delicacies but I guess I was too Bronxed out and didn’t understand it, because I always ended up going to McDonald’s or KFC. But going to all these places showed me how international hip-hop was and how it transcended cultures. Hip-hop allowed me to travel. Not bad for a kid from the Bronx, right?
Young Jeezy on the death of Tupac Shakur
I first heard Tupac when I was locked up in prison. When I played So Many Tears it felt like he understood me. It was more like a great sermon than a rap. None of my uncles were teaching me about politics or why we were suppressed as Black people, but Pac was preaching and it gave me a moral compass.
When Southern trap took off, we were trying to give the people a class on the blood, sweat, and tears that the hustlers in the street go through. We let the outsiders walk in our Air Force Ones for a day. If you are in the wilderness and trapped there, you do what you have to do to survive. Even though making money through dealing drugs might be negative to some, for us it wasn’t about being evil or harming others; it was purely about survival.
Tupac was one of the first to understand our pain. He humanised the people in the trap. The Black men who play this role always end up dying young. They get taken out from their own people because they become too powerful. When Pac got murdered [in a drive-by shooting in 1996], the culture lost its heart.
Rapsody on Lauryn Hill winning the Grammy for album of the year
I was a teenager falling in love, so when I heard the Fugees’ Killing Me Softly for the first time, I was obsessed. In the music video they are in the theatre; no one ever looked cooler eating popcorn than Lauryn Hill! I connected with Lauryn because of the truth and honesty she displayed in her music.
When she won the Grammy for album of the year for The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, it was a huge moment. It was special because of what she represented. Lauryn had this fearlessness and made us question the things around us. She didn’t get caught up in the fantasy or illusion of American capitalism. She was always asking: what is the truth?
Sometimes it can be easy to get caught up in the program, but Lauryn was our Neo in The Matrix and our compass. Today there aren’t enough Lauryn Hills in the mainstream. But Lauryn showed us how to love ourselves and that there was a space for all versions of Black women.
Mykki Blanco on how Lil Kim’s No Matter What They Say video spoke to LGBTQ youth
I was only 12 or 13 when Lil Kim’s No Matter What They Say music video came out. I was living in a tiny house in the countryside in North Carolina, so to see Kim looking so glamorous in this ornate, Louis XVI-style dressing room really blew my mind. You had the hair extensions that made her look like Rapunzel and the swinging silver dress. As a queer child, to me Kim’s sense of exaggeration as a performance artist felt like a real affirmation. She was the epitome of glamour.
There’s this moment where she is wearing these cut-up, bleached jeans. Let me tell you: the week the music video came out, every Black girl at every high school in America went out and got a pair. My mom even let me bleach and cut up a pair of jeans. You had Kim alongside Mary J Blige, Carmen Electra, and Missy Elliott in the video: it was this absolute proclamation of sisterhood and self.
Kim’s lyrics about “bitches making faces like Ace Ventura” became my whole attitude. If you were a queer kid who was sheltered and not exposed to much, a music video like that was foundational. When Kim said “I’m just trying to be me”, it made us love ourselves.
Flo Milli on why Nicki Minaj’s Monster verse empowered her generation
Nicki Minaj’s verse on Kanye West and Jay-Z’s Monster is one of the things I remember most vividly from my childhood. Me and my sister would always rap it together in the house. “Pink wig, thick ass, give ‘em whiplash / I think big, get cash, make ‘em blink fast” were my favourite lyrics because of the stamina [of how Nicki rapped them]. It was so crazy. The energy was unmatched, and you had no choice but to be drawn in.
With that Monster verse it was like yes, you can come into hip-hop as a female and still carry that same alpha energy. Nicki was so multifaceted. Whether you were the Black Barbie or the weird kid, she had something for every young girl to tap into.
When I was 10 and told people I wanted to be a rapper when I grew up, it wasn’t really accepted. But in 2023 I feel really strong being a woman in hip-hop. It has been a long road, but we’re no longer dismissed like we used to be. Nicki let young girls know they could still dominate a rap game that was male-dominated.
Monie Love on the ‘turning point’ of Drake embracing grime
When hip-hop first hit London in the 1980s, it was infectious. In Battersea, we first got it in the form of bboying, and it felt like everybody belonged to a dance crew. We would all gather at Covent Garden to play music and everyone was popping, locking, and breakdancing. When the Sugarhill Gang or Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five performed on Top of the Pops for the first time, it made the British Black youth feel seen. The Thatcher years were rough, so hip-hop became this beacon of light for the poor, where everyone was on an even plane.
When I moved to New York, I wanted to elevate young mothers with my raps but nobody wanted a woman rapping in a British accent. So, to see 2step garage evolve into grime and then to see people like Drake start emulating British flows and lingo [in the 2010s] was powerful. There was no more ridicule and it was a turning point.
Over in New York, where I live today, people will proudly tell you they listen to Skepta or Giggs. The Americans want to sound like the British now, and London and New York have this bridge that links them together because of artists like Pop Smoke. Everything has gone full circle.
• The caption for the Cypress Hill image in this article was amended on 25 August 2023. It shows, from left to right, DJ Muggs, Eric Bobo and B-Real; not DJ Muggs, B-Real and Sen Dog as an earlier version said.
are mere shadowy figures in the background.
The trend is about to turn: in the main competition at Venice, Garrone is up against Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s Zielona granica (Green Border), set on the BelarusianPolish border where migrants from the Middle East and north Africa sought entry into the EU in 2021.
Nonetheless, Garrone acknowledges, the inherent risk of making a “refugee drama” is that it ends up telling the story of categories rather than individuals, painting people either as passive victims or elevating them into superhuman heroes.
“I was fully aware of the danger of how delicate this subject would be, and it took me many years to work out the approach I was going to have,” he says. “My guiding light was to be as true to myself and reality as possible, and to keep it simple – and it’s quite tough to keep things simple when you’re making art.”
While visiting a refugee shelter in Sicily, he came across the story of a 15year-old boy who had been incentivised to steer a boat carrying 250 people across the Mediterranean without any navigating experience – a tactic people smugglers have employed since Italian prosecutors started using anti-mafia laws to arrest the vessels’ helmsmen, the capitani of the title, upon their arrival in Europe.
“I was entering a culture that wasn’t my own, and in order to make a movie I had to make it not just about them but with them,” Garrone says. “Every moment on the set, I had people beside me who had actually lived through the experience of being tortured in Libya, or walked through the Sahara, so they could help me tell their experience in detail.”
As his protagonist, he cast Seydou Sarr, an exceedingly shy 17-year-old with no acting experience but a passion for film and music. His waggish cousin Moussa is played by Moustapha Fall, also 17 at time of filming, who had taken some acting classes in Dakar. But language proved a challenge. Garrone’s Italian script had to be translated into French and then orally passed on to the cast in Wolof, the most widely spoken language in Senegal. “I could only rely on the sound of their voices to tell if they were acting well,” says Garrone.
Starting his tale in the west African republic was in itself a potentially polemical choice. Senegal has only in recent years become a country where people migrate from rather than to, and the main driver for those leaving the country is economic insecurity rather than war or famine.
Io Capitano opens with a shot of Seydou looking on in polite boredom as his younger sisters try on orange wigs, braid their hair and paint their fingernails. It’s not unhappiness that is making him and his cousin want to leave their homes, but a longing for adventure. “Europe is waiting for us,” Moussa assures Seydou after their elders warn them that the continent will be nothing like it is in their imagination. “White people will be asking you for autographs.”
“Migration has many different reasons: to escape wars, the effects of climate change, living in absolute poverty,” says Garrone. “The subject of the film is another type of migration, which is connected to Africa’s demographic – 70% of sub-Saharan Africa is under the age of 30 – and globalisation.”
While contemporary migration from Africa to Europe bears some resemblance to that of his grandparents’ generation to the United States, he says, there are some crucial differences. “We sometimes assume globalisation only affects the western world. Well, that’s wrong. In Africa, too, people have access to social networks, smartphones and televisions. They have a window on Europe that is constantly open, and it’s quite human and natural that they are prompted to live in a place that seems more attractive.
“They want to travel and know the world just like we do. They see people their age travelling from France to Senegal, and they don’t understand why they are not allowed to do the same thing heading the other way. The story of that kind of migration is not very much told in films.”
Should Seydou and Moussa have stayed at home? “The answer depends on the personal view of whoever watches the movie. I don’t give answers. I tell the story of their journey and try to let the audience subjectively live their emotional experience. After that, it’s up to the viewers to draw their own conclusions.”
Garrone’s record of crushing his boyish protagonists’ hopes doesn’t bode well. The real-life capitano the film is based on, he mentions at one point, went to jail for six months as soon as he arrived in Italy. “Now with the news we have in Italy, that could be 20 years,” he adds, with a bitter laugh.
Mafia drama Gomorrah caught the world’s attention because it deromanticised an entire genre. But Garrone’s emotional palette has brightened in the 15 years since that film made his name. In Io Capitano, there are moments on Seydou and Moussa’s journey that bear closer resemblance to the fairytale escapism of his version of Pinnocchio: like the wooden boy of Carlo Collodi’s 19th-century folk tale, Seydou doesn’t break easily.
“Youth has the arrogance to challenge life – that’s a quality that Seydou and Moussa also share with the boys in Gomorrah. But I wanted to give the audience a chance to breathe, as terrifying as their experience may be.”
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I was fully aware of how delicate this subject would be – it took me many years to work out the approach I would take