Hardbodies 2 (2 Stars)

I think I understand the problem. After making the wildly successful film "Hardbodies" in 1984 they felt the need to make a sequel. But they were scared that if they made the same kind of film all over again people would complain. So they did something new.

Bong! Failure!

The old saying is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". The first Hardbodies film worked well. It did everything it set out to do. A sunny beach, pretty girls and light-hearted humour. If they'd done the same again in the sequel, sure, the critics would have slammed it. But who cares what the critics say? The public would have loved it.

The new film features Scotty once more. It's only two years later, but somehow he's now become a well known actor. That's highly unlikely, unless of course he was already an actor in the first film and we were watching him star in a film. No, I shouldn't try to make sense out of it, it's just crazy film logic again. The film opens with Scotty flying to Greece with a film crew to make a romantic comedy about a young holidaymaker falling in love with the daughter of a rich Greek tycoon. Then Scotty falls in love with the leading lady, much to the distress of the actress's father, a poor Greek peasant.

In itself that sounds like a good plot. It could have worked if it had been made better. But it didn't. The story bored me, and I sat wishing that they'd stuck to the same simple formula as the first film. At the moment the two films are only available together as a Hardbodies collection. If you buy the first film, which I recommend, you'll get the second film for free. That's good, because it isn't worth spending money on.