When you have a runaway hit like 2006’s Magic Bullet paid commercial advertisement, a sequel becomes as inevitable as Mick sprinkling curry powder on everything. You can’t sell a million units in under a year’s time and not hear the cash register clanging in your sleep. Yeah, marveling the world by glamorizing the idea of single-serving snacks for one had a little to do with it, but we all know the true culprit: a saccharine, uber-cornball ‘mercial featuring a kitchen full of major-league bizarros playing with a blender. Thus, Mick Hastie and his lovable cast of famished lunkheads return to dazzle us once more. Sadly though, like most sequels, this falls drastically short and is painfully inferior to its originator.
It truly is amazing how many “bad Part 2” movie cliches become a part of this ad. We notice that only certain members of the original cast return, the new additions are basically clones of who didn’t come back, and the entire thing is a redundant carbon copy of what happened in the first edition. The unintentionally goofy humor that made the first a success, is completely forced this go ’round. The only change is that this installment is set in the woods.
Things kick off at an inauthentic campsite that largely resembles a residential park (longtime Los Angeles urbanites will recognize it as Griffith Park). At a picnic table we see a group of early risers sitting on their hungry butts. Up stroll our dynamic two-some, Mick and Mimi, fresh off a brisk morning hike. “We went up that mountain there,” Mick points out to everybody. Mimi, transparently trying to impress, sticks her finger toward another direction: “And that one, too!” They offer their mates some smoothies, and in the first of many moments of imbecility, Mick removes a bullet…from Mimi’s backpack. She’s hiking around with a Bullet stowed in her backpack because? Stay tuned, there’s plenty more.
The male guests begin poking around under the table for how Mick is going to power this thing. “But Mick, but Mick, but Mick,” endlessly being cut off with what ingredients are being used. Finally the big reveal…it’s cordless! Woah, innovation overload. The writers of this milarkey, much as they did in the first Bullet adventure, reminds one of Al Gore’s “I invented the internet” in the way coffee is demonstrated being ground up. Like they patented the damn thing, or something. “Fresh ground coffee in the woods. Now that’s pretty cool,” remarks one impressed gentleman. I’m guessing he never saw City Slickers, where Billy Crystal spooks a herd of cattle when Krups-ing his way to fresh coffee in the countryside.
Ok, first annoyances: you can’t help but start off with the new casting directions, right down to the names. Beginning with Barney, a lost-childish man who spends most of the ‘mercial kevetching about his wife (who is now The Girl With No Name), a stock blonde who only speaks with her eyebrows in the air. Sitting next to her is Dino, a refugee from Overacting 101. Now, overacting can be somewhat engaging at times, as it has its time and place (especially in something like this). This particular dink-on-wheels winds up grating on us, though, because he’s the only one implementing that style. When the other actors are just corny it’s a littler more tolerable; to have just one of them force-feeding us hammy deliveries, it doesn’t work.
On the returning favorites side, I hate to inform that that brings little joy as well. Mick and Mimi — an underlying marital discord most likely prompting this trip — pretty much go through the motions of presenting stuff we’ve already seen. From the aforementioned smoothies and coffee, to salsa and omelettes, this is basically an excuse to demo the Bullet as portable. M&M; just don’t have that same zeal they gave us in the first ad. Perhaps one too many uses of the Bullet has soured them on its novelty. Things have grown stale, and it’s evident. It happens in every marriage, I suppose.
This leads us to our balding, blottoed scene-stealer of Magic Bullet 1, the Berman-ator. Everybody’s favorite “party animal” freakazoid has been dragged to the wilderness to join in the follow-up fun. But again(!), we are met with total dissatisfaction from what was once reliable. Berman, hiding most of the time under a fisherman’s cap and no longer chiming in like a disgruntled 12-year-old, acts as if he doesn’t want to be there. On the one hand, he’s far too coherent here not to have finally dragged himself to AA. So one can only surmize that kicking the bottle has propelled him into a state of moody withdrawals. I envision a Magic Bullet intervention having taken place off-screen in between the two ads. But the show-stopper is yet to come.
On a rare happy note, The Girl With No Name from the first MB tale is finally given one. Mimi’s faux-twin is announced as Tina, which immediately gives one pause to reflect: her husband’s name in the original was Ike. Ike and Tina. Ho, man. Hey, don’t forget about Fred and Wilma in Magic Bullet 1, and now Dino and Barney here in part II. We got us some real piece-of-work writers workin’ in a coal mine to make this stuff perfect. And lo and behold, appearing from a tent nearly seven minutes in, is that trainwreck of a she-wolf, Hazel! It’s the perfect time to segway into the more disturbing aspects of MB II that cannot be avoided in this article.
Those of us that really let our minds go and immersed ourselves in the Magic Bullet universe two years earlier can’t help but become distracted by various changes in tone here. Take Tina, for instance. In MB 1, she was paired up with Ike, and even indicated that they were married (she talked about the Bullet making their clunky wedding gifts look third-rate). Things seem to have run aground for them as he is not present here, and that’s nothing earth-shattering, all of us knowing that quickie divorces happen all the time. What didn’t sit well with me, was that her new squeeze, Dino, was not not only a super-dunce, but bore one striking similarity to her ex: his love of omelettes. Considering Dino’s affinity for omelettes may suggest that he is Ike’s wayward brother, with an even bigger appetite for Tina.
The one sure to make every viewer barf in their Magic Bullet cups comes with Hazel’s emergence from her tent. Mick and Mimi appear baffled by her appearance, and in trying to determine which tent she popped out from, are interrupted by Hazel handing an unidentified item to Berman and grumbling, “Thanks for the socks, big boy.” See what I mean about forced symmetry? They’ve abandoned the selling of the product for the sake of a gross joke insinuating that Berman and Hazel engaged in a sweaty tryst. This infomercial is intended to whet palates, not repulse them. Kept waiting for Jason to show up and put the Bullet to use on these people’s skulls.
A much more startling aspect involves the portrayal of the men in this narrative. You’d think some feminist nazi penned these adolescent, whipped man-children as some sort of revenge for a break-up. Barney has the look of a kid who just lost his Cabbage Patch Doll to a firing squad, his wife scowling whenever he speaks up. The flappable Dino forever perpetually perplexed, bugging his eyes and grabbing at Tina’s body as if he’s been shaken from his emotional foundation. This usually followed by a Tina eye-roll or mortified facial expression (though I can’t blame her on his “mousse in the woods” comment). And, yes, the sad state of Berman, reduced to nothing but a shameless boy-toy for Hazel. The constant pushing of the rechargable battery angle is probably nothing foreign to these ladies, taking into account their indignant reactions to their emasculated husbands.
Anyway, back on the food side of things, there’s more inanity. You may remember in part 1 that Mick and Mimi appeared to have an endless supply of Bullets littering their countertop. Implausible and dumb, but excusable. What can’t be excused in MBII is the Home Depot amount of appliances that we are to believe have been easily trucked out to the woods for camp use. Count with me: tables, tents, cutting boards, coolers, a small barbecue pit, a large barbecue(!), a FULL-SIZE stove(!!), not to mention the Bullets! Mick casually strolls up to the stove and dumps a bunch of ground beef — which has been sitting out and no doubt collecting flies — into a saucepan, along with onions, three kinds of beans, and chili powder. Chili in the woods for eight people sharing one outhouse?? Are you nuts?
The whole point of a camp-out is to take hikes, experience nature, tell scary stories, maybe get lucky in a tent, that kinda stuff. You prepare food beforehand for the trip so you don’t have to muck around with Magic Bullets, utensils and non-paper plates. Who has time for all that with cutting wood and fending off of bark beetles that crawl into your sleeping bag? And where are we supposed to wash all these Bullets and dishes, down at the stream? My tirade has been long enough for you, so I won’t even get into the beach moments when the gang moves the excitement to the sand and surf. A blender on a beach? Mick luckily has a portable mini-bar counter to mix everything, plus stools and his endless ice, then Dino calls guacamole “that green stuff”, and then Mick takes their act to the parking lot, and then…enough.
This whole concept is so misguided and inappropriate that you end up screaming at your tv more than in the first one. Part 1 at least has some charmingly cheesy elements to it. Here we’re left with nothing but pointless, repeated sales rhetoric and a stream of unsavory characters. Right down to the ridiculous notion from part 1 that every meal begins with chopping garlic! Not to mention that Mimi still can’t properly pronounce halepeno!
You know Mick’s not himself when he doesn’t even use the curry powder once.
