Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster
Reddit is having issues today (Thursday), as it sometimes does. Perhaps it should go spit? Or it needs a good slap from the upgrade department? Or it's getting too old for this shit?
A recent trend in Hollywood, but by no means a
new trend, is the long-delayed IP-retention sequel, many of which (particularly in the police action genre, and in recent legacy sequels and reboots of properties like
Star Wars,
Jurassic Park,
Ghostbusters,
Indiana Jones,
Bad Boys,
Scream,
Beetlejuice, and
Independence Day) include the "original cast are old and nostalgia-pandering while the new characters try too hard to upstage them and be cool" trope.
I don't mind being upstaged by newer, cooler technology because it will just give me more options to promote
Just the Ticket, so please remember to
Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave your unruly animal sidekick down in the comments until they learn to behave, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford to pay off my debts and get a new animal sidekick of my own, and follow me on
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Dooley (
Jim Belushi) and Jerry Lee (various artists) returned ten years later, along with the slap-happy Byers (now a police captain, and still played by
James Handy), for 1999's
K-911. Directed by
Charles T. Kanganis (who previously directed Belushi and
K-9 villain
Kevin Tighe in
Race the Sun), based on a script by
Gary Scott Thompson (who would go on to write the first two
Fast & Furious installments, both
Hollow Man movies, and
K-9: P.I.), and having almost nothing to do with emergency services beyond Dooley spending the beginning of the movie on the bumper of an ambulance and the end of the movie in the hospital,
K-911 is one of the aforementioned, "getting too old for this shit" sequels. It hits all of the familiar beats of the original, like Byers slapping Dooley more often than a police official should, Jerry Lee doing whatever the hell he wants (including biting a suspect's crotch during interrogation and having off-camera sex with a random stranger's poodle), and reversing the "I got shot and now I'm playing dead to get attention" ending. But aside from the "remember this‽" bits, the endearing focus on Dooley's bond with Jerry Lee, and the personal nature of the villain,
K-911 is a trinity of genre boilerplate. Dooley and Tracy (
Mel Harris, who decided not to return, so her character was killed off) got married between films, and since her death (not stated, but I "like" to think the cartel came back to finish what Lyman started and she was caught in the crossfire), Dooley has been targeted by a mysterious gunman (later revealed, through some actual, coherently written police work, to be deranged novelist Devon Lane - played by
Prison Break's
Wade Williams - who became obsessed with Tracy after she wrote him a rejection letter, and now blames Dooley for her death). And because
K-911 is not just a revenge stalker movie, but a rote, "too old for this shit" buddy cop sequel
and a romantic tension mystery, our two male leads are ten years older and too out of shape to catch the novelist who's trying to kill them, so they are paired up with K-9 Sergeant Welles (
Another World's
Christine Tucci, sister of
Stanley), whom Dooley has a chronologically questionable romantic history with, and her military-trained Doberman, Zeus. Predictable, "my dog is better than your dog, new is better than old" bullshit ensues, desperately pretending to be comedy so forced that the only genuine reaction to it is Jerry Lee yawning. And if the messaging wasn't blatant enough, the movie makes a recurring joke out of Dooley's newly restored classic green Ford Mustang getting shot up and blown to scrap, all the while accumulating parking tickets, being mistaken for garbage, and ultimately serving as a charred, twisted hulk for Jerry Lee to sit in and reminisce about the first and only time this series was good.
The man's best friend bromantic chemistry still hits, the crime-solving aspect makes more sense than in the original, and Devon Lane is a decently personal and threatening villain for a direct-to-video action-comedy sequel. I just wish the rest of the movie wasn't so painfully formulaic and anti-nostalgic.
D+
Next week, the final
K-9 entry goes
noir and has a title that makes sense, so
Stay Tuned and please remember to
Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave your unruly animal sidekick down in the comments until they learn to behave, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford to pay off my debts and get a new animal sidekick of my own, and follow me on
Tumblr,
Reddit,
Facebook, and
LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my dog-training content.
Ticketmaster,
Out.
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