Problem with Hollywood high concept comedies is that most of them exhaust creativity from the start and, consequently, don’t work when the concept is employed on screen. And when they, by some chance, work, they can lead to sequels that are even less likely to work. That is what happened with Look Who’s Talking, Amy Heckerling’s surprise 1989 hit. Only a year later she directed a predictably underwhelming sequel named Look Who’s Talking Too.
Like the first film, the second is based on the idea of having toddler as protagonist and using popular actors to voice their thoughts while they try to adapt to the strange new world of adults. Again, protagonist is Mikey Ubriacco (played by Lorne Sussman and voiced by Bruce Willis), young son of taxi driver James Ubriacco (played by John Travolta) and accountant Mollie (played by Kristie Alley). They are having new baby, a daughter named Julie (voiced by Roseanne Barr). Young Mikey tries to makes sense of new sibling while meeting the challenges of toilet training himself. In the meantime, James and Mollie have their relationship strained when James, trying to support family, pursues long-time dream of being a pilot and spends a lot of time outside home. During his absence Mollie brings her cash-strapped brother Stuart (played by Elias Koteas) to home.
A joke that is told too many times stops being funny. Look Who’s Talking Too simply repeats the joke – a child interpreting world of adults in potentially humorous ways. In the previous film, director and co-writer Amy Heckerling tried to evade repetitiveness with quick pace and was helped in her efforts with inspired performances by John Travolta and Kristie Alley. There wasn’t such luck with sequel. Rushed into production in order to exploit success of first time and avoid problems arising from toddler protagonist growing up, Look Who’s Talking Too is depressing example of creative bankruptcy. Most of the gags of the first films are rehashed or use toilet humour that make the whole film terribly unfunny. Plenty of relatively crude sexual allusions also makes the film strangely inappropriate for younger audience. Talents of comedians like Roseanne Barr and Damon Wayans (who gives voice to Mikey’s toddler friend Eddie) are wasted due to poor dialogue. The only addition that had some promise was character of Stuart, portrayed as right-winger and gun nut, but it is underwritten and burdened with predictable romantic subplot involving Mollie’s friend (played by Twink Caplan). Heckerling was apparently aware of the issues and tried to compensate lack of proper humour and plot with montages and musical numbers. Those efforts, however, weren’t sufficient and Look Who’s Talking Too looks utterly slow and boring despite very short running time of hour and twenty minutes. The film had decent results at box office and led to another part of the series, 1993 film Look Who’s Talking Now, replacing toddler protagonists with family dogs. That film didn’t avoid commercial failure and the franchise quickly sank into oblivion. Based on this film, many would conclude that such fate was deserved.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
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