House Party 2 (1991)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Best movie ever!

Blistering performances.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Kid has lost Pops and the congregation gives a scholarship to him. Play loses the scholarship cheque to con-woman Sheila Landreaux pretending to be a record label talent scout in trouble. Kid's girlfriend Sidney joins him at the school and she befriends social activist Zora. Miles steals away Sidney. Jamal is Kid's white roommate who acts black. Bilal and Play help Kid organize a pajama party to raise funds for tuition.This needs Kid 'n Play to be better friends at the beginning. It's not only Play. Kid is also self-obsessed. Their charming friendship is tattered and that drains the movie of its heart early on. The humor is broad without being funny. The production is distressingly amateurish. It's a struggle but I still like the characters. Even the limited amateur charms of the original has faded.

As you can probably tell, I really did not like this movie. It is a collage comedy which really isn't all that funny. Moreso it is one of those black exploitation type movies made in the early nineties. As such, it wasn't corny like them, rather it simply sucked.It is about a young negro going to collage but his friend loses his scholarship cheque so he has two weeks to come up with a lot of money or be kicked out of collage. After trying a lot of other things (including making a deal with a negro who has "sold out" to the white man) they decide to have a huge party to raise the funds.It really is nothing but a trashy movie that tries, and fails, to sympathise with the negro position in America. Rather it seems to more try to attract pity in a rather pathetic way. I guess there was a reason why it was on television at 2:00 in the morning, and unlike Pump Up the Volume, it wasn't dealing with some explicit topics.

To begin, House Party 2 is no House Party. In fact, those that would like to compare the two are completely off their hypothetical film "rocker". These are two completely separate films. Do you know why? What originally began as a film about some soulful and youthful teens trying to get to the ultimate dance party has now transformed into this cliché morality tale that demonstrates the power of friendship and the strength of humility. WHAT! Is that why I wanted to watch this film? I apologize, but one of the few reasons that I liked House Party was because they followed the K.I.S.S. method (for those unfamiliar it is the Keep It Simple Stupid method) of film-making. In the original, becoming a lyricist, a ladies man, and having the best party in town was the root of the film. While there was a romantic side to the story, it fell second nature to the growing hip-hop scene. It was a dance film first, developed character story second. Honestly, that is what I enjoyed about the film. While I didn't think House Party was the greatest release of the century, it did have this genuine feel about it. In fact, after watching this poorly crafted sequel, I have a bit more respect for the original. Where was the dancing? Where was the creativity? Where was the same Kid & Play that I remembered from the first House Party? They were nowhere to be found in this trashy sequel.Robin Harris. We all remember him as "Pop" from the original film, but what we do not realize about this humorous comedian is that he subsequently changed the image of the House Party series. In the original, he was this father trying to steer his son into a path of academia instead of rap and parties, in the sequel, he plays a spirit who annoyingly hounds Kid throughout the film with flashbacks from the original. Due to his death, he brings nothing new to the table, yet this entire sequel seems to be focused around those few short words that he used in the first film. I don't mean to be rude, but I never felt that the father was such a big element in the original. I thought that Kid trying to challenge authority to attempt to find himself was the underlying meaning of the original, while in this one it is Kid repressing his true self in hopes to make his dead father happy. Where did the lightness of the original go? I watched House Party 2 thinking that there is a limit that the writers could go without making Kid seem totally whipped by his father's words, but we never hit that limit. Where, anywhere in this film, was Kid trying to find his rap roots? I needed to see a young man still interested in becoming the lyricist that he once desired to be? Why did he have to grow up so fast? In fact, the rap side-story to this film seems to be the negative element. We have gone from loving the genre to completely disrespecting it in one film. Ah, the power of the sequel.Martin Lawrence was again completely annoying to the point in which I completely tuned him out whenever he spoke. He brought nothing to the story and nothing to the main characters. Lawrence was nothing more than a familiar face for the audience to relate to. In fact, it is that dedication to familiar faces from the original that hurt this sequel. When the ultimate PAJAMA JAM finally does occur (one hour into this short film), we are hit with an barrage of repetitive scenes of aged rappers and comedians from the original who do nothing but repeat their lines, actions, and emotions from the first. While many may enjoy these familiar faces, I felt as if it were a cheap trick used to make me feel more comfortable about the film. If these minor characters had done more than just repeat their lines, than maybe I would have bought into the trick, but instead all I saw were cheap repetitive motions used by writers to fill time. I used the word "repetitive" several times in this paragraph because it demonstrated the annoying repetitive nature of this film and completed my point about using that element as a cheap trick. I hope it worked.In most television series, especially the cheapened kind, we sometimes hear a laugh track or a sound machine used to create some "zany" or "wacky" sound that lightens the mood and creates the viable laugh point. In House Party 2, I do believe that the sound guy was extremely drunk or possibly working his first day in the booth. There were more sound effects in this film than in a Bobby McFerrin music video. Was this a child's movie or another urban comedy? Neither Kid nor Play could do anything in this film without a "zip zim" or a "whoosh" or a "ding dong" noise happening somewhere in the background. This was a fresh element to the sequel which direly needed to be taken away. There is a chase scene near the end of the film which felt like Pee-Wee Herman choreographed it with all the unsettling sounds that were happening. After the first twenty minutes of this, it because increasingly annoying to the point of insanity.Overall, this sequel soils the original. The themes were sporadic (i.e. in one instance we are talking about the oppression of the African American, while in the other the directors seem to be building age-old stereotypes), the characters continued towards their bland downward spiral, those annoying, randomly placed racist police officers were back, and the dominating "father" element seemed too serious for the overall theme of this film. I hope this film wasn't an indication of the path of colleges in the future? House Party 3, don't fail me now!Grade: ** out of *****

After the success of HOUSE PARTY, I would expect NEW LINE to make a sequel. And I was a little scared, because the first one was amazingly great and this seemed rushed. But what I got from writer Rusty Cundieff(TALES FROM THE HOOD & SPRUNG) and director Doung McHenry and George Jackson made a good, but more silly sequel to a classic.Kid'N'Play are going to college, well just mainly Kid, to leave the world and it's problems. While there Kid learns the lesson of responsibility....the hard way. Play gives the Kid's college money to a beautiful, yet crooked music promoter(Iman). And with Sidney(Tisha Campbell) wanting to see new people, Kid comes to Play with help and come up with a PAJAMA JAM PARTY.Now this one's music is way better than the first one and is a little more funnier than one, but it just dosen't come close as being as great as the first. The hurt comes from two things. 1.)No Robin Harris to give us some more hilarious lines, because of he's death. 2.)Is the cartoon-like sound effects that make the movie just plain silly. Sometimes it works and a lot of times it don't.