A big improvement over the first movie. With a bigger scope, and a darker sense of humour, it provides more entertaining set pieces (the smiling dancers), without completely falling into the trauma well that the first one succumbed to (it does dip its toes into that well a few times, and those scenes are the film's biggest weakness)
I was depressed after watching the first movie, but Smile 2 is more thrilling, and has a more satirical bent. It makes…
A disappointing, disjointed mess.
When I heard they were turning the Moana TV show into the actual sequel, I expected them to make changes so it would at least resemble a real movie. Instead it's hastily slapped together with little rhyme or reason. The pacing simultaneously feels rushed and padded out with an endless opening that seems to be setting up six episodes worth of material, only to zip through it all so quickly in the next 38 minutes, before…
The first 2/3 feel mostly like a remake of the previous movie. But thankfully Denzel Washington is there to shake things up, and he makes the last third worth watching.
For a made for TV sequel, this was pretty entertaining. It sticks very closely to the formula of the original movie, and honestly, that formula works well enough. It's not great, but it's a fun little film.
