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WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S II
Rating: 
USA. 1993.
Director/Screenplay – Robert Klane, Producers – Victor Drai & Joseph Perez, Photography – Edward Morey III, Music – Peter Wolf, Production Design – Michael Bolton. Production Company – Artrimm Productions.
Cast:
Andrew McCarthy (Larry Rosen), Jonathan Silverman (Richard Parker), Terry Kiser (Bernie Lomax), Barry Bostwick (Arthur Hummel), Tom Wright (Charles), Steve James (Henry), Troy Beyer (Claudia), Novella Nelson (Mobu)
Plot: Larry Rosen and Richard Parker are asked to identify their late boss Bernie Lomax’s body at the morgue. Meanwhile in The Virgin Islands the local voodoo queen, The Mobu, forces two hoods to go and steal Bernie’s body in order to locate the voodoo money that he embezzled. They take Bernie’s body from the morgue and conduct a voodoo ceremony to resurrect him. But the chicken they need to sacrifice runs away and they are forced to substitute a pigeon, which causes Bernie to come to life whenever music is playing. Fired from the firm because of their associations with Bernie, Richard and Larry then come up with a plan to steal Bernie’s body and go to the Virgin Islands, pretending he is still alive in order to reclaim the embezzled two million dollars in his account.
Weekend at Bernie's II is proof of the complete and utter dearth of imagination that exists in Hollywood. The first Weekend at Bernie's (1989) – a lame and unfunny comedy about two jerks forced to pretend that their boss’s body was still alive – was a one-off idea. But the idea of a sequel brings a groan of disbelief. I mean, how can you really expect to credibly float a film with the same two jerks forced to pretend a dead body is alive all over again? The sequel’s sole purpose can only be that of milking money from the people who enjoyed the first film.
The first film was just dumb and annoying, but the sequel’s attempt to milk the thinness of the idea creates a film that is mind-numbing in its stupidity. Some of the scenes in the first film with people at a party not noticing Terry Kiser is dead had mild amusement, but scenes here with Kiser being caught in a parasail, snatching two girls tops off as he is dragged down the beach and catching a shark on his leg as he is pulled through the water; or the sequence where he is hooked up and made to dance to music in order to drag a cart along which then runs out of control are just so over-the-top as to be really incredibly moronic. This is a film made by people who expect the only possible audience for it is people sitting around half-drunk and laughing at the sheer stupidity of what they are watching.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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