An Exercise In Nonsense

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Hired killer Tony Castellano (Miguel Ferrer) blows up a safe house barely missing mob case witness Lu Delano (Cathy Moriarty). Chris Lecce (Richard Dreyfuss) and Bill Reimers (Emilio Estevez) are assigned to the D.A. office. They stakeout a house with Gina Garrett (Rosie O'Donnell) and her dog. The cover story is that Gina is Chris' 2nd wife and Bill is his son. Maria McGuire (Madeleine Stowe) breaks up with Chris for not getting married. D.A. Thomas Hassrick is actually working for the mobster. The trio is staking out Brian (Dennis Farina) and Pam O'Hara (Marcia Strassman) in the house next door.The original has some fun with this odd buddy cop duo. Adding Rosie drains whatever fun there is in this franchise. I don't see the point of adding a third. She's a wet blanket. It's a lot of bickering between the three and most of it is annoying. This is not much fun.

So you made a film back in the day and it was a success both at the cinema and videoshop. The two stars of the movie are still big and can still pull in an audience, you yourself now have some swing within Hollywood and lets be honest...you need a new project to keep your career on a high-ish. What better way to do that than completely rehashing your successful movie by...errr completely remaking it all over again but in a different location and with a new star (for the time) to the roster.Yep so the plot is virtually the same as the first movie, no shame here folks. The dynamic duo are back again and instructed to go on another stakeout in a nice woody lakeside well to do area. They are watching out for a witness against the mafia (after a botched assassination) who may or may not be coming to this lovely house. But the funny thing is...wait for it...this time they have a female DA officer along with them to play husband and wife with Dreyfuss. That's not all, she's brought her huge rottweiler along too...ey up we're in for some mighty big laughs now! Did I mention the new DA officer is Rosie O'Donnell? well there you go. I ask you...can you think of anything better than this? really...how can this not be funny?Oh wait...its not funny in the slightest. Everything here has been dumbed down and made more family friendly basically, not that the original movie was an adult movie but this is just childish. Most of the plot now revolves around how silly this family unit can be with Estevez as the son, Dreyfuss as the dad and O'Donnell as the mum. Every scene is pretty much an embarrassing bumbling slapstick comedy routine with infantile dialog and clichéd predictable visual gags...some of which naturally revolve around the big dog. Literately nothing happens for the majority of the movie until the final long dinner sequence where there is lots more awful dialog. Heck even the action (if you can even call it that...which you can't) is weak as f*ck, its virtually a children's movie at times.Dreyfuss character seems to have been somewhat neutered this time around and doesn't have the same zest as before. Yes he is obviously an older character but the plot doesn't allow him to do anything. The same goes for Estevez, in the first movie he was pretty much a sidekick, here he has a little more to do admittedly but again its very lame and uninteresting really. Its nice to see Ferrer playing a bad guy again, haven't seen that for awhile, blast from the past. The only problem being like everything else its a very tame watered down role which has absolutely no bite about it. The bad guys in this movie are so uneventful I can hardly bring myself to call them bad guys, they're just a bit naughty and they wear black. As for O'Donnell well this was another time wasn't it, a different ear where O'Donnell was actually kinda big (in both senses...zing!). I guess she adds to the humour at times but her character just comes across like this sequel...not required, horseshoed in, crowbarred in, forced and pointless.I really don't know what Badham was trying to do here, you could have a sequel to this but going down this route was a huge error. Basically remaking it with one extra cop for comedy relief...oh and a big dog...pfft! I mean really, who wants to see Dreyfuss' character have relationship issues (again) with Stowe (from the first movie, must have needed rent money) whilst staking out Dennis Farina who does nothing. Then in the background Estevez is constantly moaning about having to shave his moustache off which appears to be the movies main gag. This literately is like watching an actual stakeout where nothing actually happens, I'm boring myself writing this!2/10

This is another movie from the long list of 90's sequels to great 80's movies. Well , the first one wasn't maybe a great movie,but it was a charming and likable good action comedy. This one tries hard to capture the freshness of the original and like many sequels fails.The story is basically the same as in the first one . The difference is that Madeleine Stowe is reduced to 5 minutes. Instead we have unwanted Rosie O Donell who works this time with Emilio Estevez and Richard Dreyfuss . On the other hand it was nice to see Dennis Farina (TV series "Crime story") , Miguel Ferrer ("Robocop") and Archie the dog is cute.Speaking of Estevez , boy he was trying hard to achieve any kind of success with his franchises ( "The Stakeout" , "Young guns" and "The Mighty ducks") it's kinda sad that he didn't succeeded. Estevez and Dreyfuss have good chemistry as before and really are giving their best in their performances.There is not a lot of what I can say about this movie . The movie definitely tries to be funny , but the jokes fall flat . There are some funny moments . It's not a terrible movie , it's almost watchable , but if you haven't seen it you aren't really missing anything . Stick to the original in my opinion.I give it 3/10.

first off I thought the movie was very funny , Emilio Estevez once again is very good,, Richard Dreyfus was OK,, I liked Miguel Ferrer's part as the hit-man assigned to the case. Rosie o donell on the other hand I just had to tune out, boy she can really get annoying. Dennis Farina on the other hand was very fun to watch , and had some good one liners to boot.. the plot isn't that bad,, state has to make a case,, the main witness is almost blown to pieces and proceeds to hideout somewhere far away,, but not far enough that our bad guys can't find her without some help.. some of the movie has flaws sure,, but I think mainly that it was made for laughs, and not so much plot points or stuff like that,, if there was a diff leading lady other than Rosie I would have rated it higher for sure.