I guess I have defeated the purpose of keeping that little secret by letting the cat out of the bag, here. Oh, well.
Anyway, my love for the teen-movie started with 16 Candles. It's one of my all-time favorites. I remember seeing it the first time with my dad when it came on tv. I asked him to change the channel, but he said, "But this is a classic!" and we watched it, anyway.
Instant love. I went to Media Play (yes, this was so long ago, Media Play still existed) and bought it for myself. And watched it about 3 times a day for a year. I had the entire thing memorized--actually, I probably still do--and was half in love with Jake Ryan, myself.
The love for the teenage fairy tale movie continued when 10 Things I Hate About You came out. Again, lots of watching, even more memorizing, and...
Anyway, so, I'm watching Julie Stiles in The Prince & Me (which I really do like...I can't believe I just admitted that). It's all happy and sweet and awesome. It ends and they start the sequel.
Now, I'm pretty sure the sequel went straight from the cutting table to DVD. It's... not good. But, that's not enough to keep me from watching it. And, in the event that you haven't seen this particular "gem," I'm going to let you in on a little secret:
You can tell that a sequel is going to be less than stellar when the headlining actor/actress is replaced for the sequel.
That's right. Move over, Julie Stiles, we've got Kam Heskin! (Who?!)
So, I thought about compiling a list of signs of a truly bad sequel.
- Replacing the stars (obviously).
- Straight to video... I mean. Really?
- A sequel following a movie that had a decisive ending. (Think Transformers. That shit was over. Yet, somehow they managed to resurrect the dead dudes? What?!)
- It's a Disney Cartoon sequel. The Beast, who is no longer a beast, is suddenly a beast again? I'm confused...
- The first movie was bad. *cough*Twilight*cough* (although, to be fair, I have seen all of them...oops).
- I don't know how to say this other than: allowing George Lucas to get ahold of CGI... Star Wars I-III... what a disaster.
(Photo from Imdb.com)
Julia Stiles is awesome. :)
ReplyDeleteYour list seems fairly complete to me. ;)
I love her!
Delete... But where'd she go?
Land Before Time. There are like 15 million sequels. Ok, it's really like 13. But still. The first one came out when I was in 5th grade. And I'm 30. Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteI think the one exception is the Fast and Furious sequels. They should have skipped 2 and three and gone to Four. And Fast Five was fantastic, and I can't WAIT for the 6th. Stick to the original characters, a good story, and a sequel isn't so bad. But a good sequel is very, VERY rare!
This is true. But there are some good ones. The original Star Wars were fantastic. And so was Harry Potter. I think I gave myself a concussion climbing out of my dad's car, so I can't think of any others, but I am pretty frigging sure they exist.
DeleteAnd yes. LBT was cute when it first came out (and I was in what? Pre-K? ;-) But they made it to the end. Game Over!
As soon as you mentioned Prince & I, I KNEW you were going to talk about the sequel. It was TERRIBLE! I watched it one night while I was scribbling something for my drawing class a couple years ago. Wish I could have gotten those hours of my life back!
ReplyDeleteI have also seen all the Twilights and I have to admit, I liked the last one...I think it's because she's dead and doesn't talk through part of the movie. Really can't stand her.