7th Worst Sequel of all Time – Highlander 2: The Quickening – The original Highlander is one of my favorite movies. When the sequel was announced, I waited with great anticipation for the opening. Fortunately, I was warned of how horrible it was beforehand. Apparently, Highlander was even bigger in Europe than it was in the United States. As a result, the sequel opened in Europe about six months before it opened here. A co-worker, who had just moved from Germany, saw it while he lived there. He let me know that watching Highlander 2 might well ruin the original for me. So I’ve never watched it.
6th Worst Sequel of all Time – Legally Blond 2: Red, White & Blond – Yes, “Legally Blond” was a chick flick. But being able to stare at Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair for an hour and a half, while still gaining points with the significant other is a huge win. And best of all, the movie is actually fairly entertaining. Don’t fall for it with the sequel. “Legally Blond 2” is boring and insipid. What is lacking in plot is made up for with the absence of humor.
5th Worst Sequel of all Time – Caddyshack II – The greatest golf movie of all time spawned a sequel that is quite possibly the worst sports movie of all time. When Chevy Chase, who “starred” in the movie, pans it after the completion of primary photography, you know you have a bomb on your hands.
4th Worst Sequel of all Time – Grease 2 – The original “Grease” was fun movie, a Broadway hit, and has always had a special place for me as we performed it my junior year in high school (closing night saw us perform the original words to “Greased Lightning”). Michelle Pfeiffer singing. What more needs to be said.
3rd Worst Sequel of all Time – Men in Black II – The ideas of the plot weren’t all that bad, but the implementation of the script was horrific. A red pen should have been taken to much of it. I can’t think of another movie with so many awkward pauses. It was clear that Will Smith couldn’t believe he had signed onto the movie.
2nd Worst Sequel of all Time – Star Wars: The Phantom Menace – The hype for the new Star Wars movies was so over the top, that “The Phantom Menace” could not help but disappoint. And it certainly delivered on that front. I was working at Globeset at the time, a company with no shortage of sci fi geeks. So many of us were putting in for time off on the day of release (or St. Lucas Day, as we called it), that Globeset instead decided to rent out an entire movie theatre that afternoon and let us all go together for free (thus getting at least a half day’s work from us). Three hundred people walked out of that theatre with stunned looks on their faces. Jar Jar Binks? What the hell was George Lucas thinking?
Worst Sequel of all Time – Bush II – The original George Bush was economically clueless, but wasn’t too bad on foreign policy, presiding over a war to remove Iraq from Kuwait, and wisely not being dragged into the quagmire of Iraq itself. His sequel combines a stunning degree of hubris with a complete lack of accountability. The only thing potentially worse would have been Clinton II.