Lethal Weapon 2

Kissing, Dogs, Fish, Fishing, Steak Sandwiches, Tuna Sandwhiches, and good god let me just bitch about this right now:

There's this really terrible joke in the movie that Murtagh's daughter is gonna be on TV and it turns out she's in a skimpy swimsuit to sell condoms, this naturally triggers too-old-for-this-****-Murtagh go on off on a conservative dad tangent, but it's comedically undercut by his youngest daughter shrugging it off since she's apparently been pretty much thoroughly desensitized to the taboo subject through her "Human Development" class at school which Murtagh scoffs at.

The joke here is that Murtagh is once again behind the times dood, and lagging behind is more progressive and socially conscious wife and children.

That's a joke.

It's a FINE joke, except it arrives hot on the heels of a "DAD! We've agree to boycott tuna because of the dolphins that get caught in the nets!"


And so, like a collapsing star, all of the humor in that scene is violently sucked out of existence, funnelled through the point of a needle to twist through space and spill out all over someone's face like a bad bean burrito come back for revenge.

Do I really need to explain why this completely destroys your progressiveness joke? Two words: demonstrable stupidity.


"Why not, honey?"


"So you're worried about the dolphins?"


"But we eat tuna, why aren't you worried about the tuna?"


"Well?"


*whips out gun, shoots child* "WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT USING FALLACIES UNDER THIS ROOF!? DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!? I WILL NOT BE SPOKEN TO THAT WAY!"

Foolish daddy, doesn't understand that it's normal to learn about sex, now let's tell him that Big Sister's a lesbian and her boyfriend is actually a girl trapped in a boy's body.

Anyway, Lethal Weapon 2 follows the original largely well in tone, but I'm afraid it loses in two relatively substantial departments:

The first being Riggs' instability is no longer a unpredictable focal point of the story, the character development is already come and gone, so scenes like the one in Murtagh's bathroom seem only cute, if even homoerotic, than actual moments of character development. Both characters feel well worn into their own skin, and that's great, I really got a sense for the sort of person Murtagh was, but sadly, again, I was much more distant from Riggs.

And this is due in no small part due to his Overnight Romance with Eva Braun. I say Eva Braun because there's literally nothing in the movie to convince anyone that she isn't secretly working with the racist bad guys or that she isn't racist herself. I mean, just imagine that pillow talk: