Love the first one, hated the second one.

I feel exactly the same. The second one just felt like it was trying too hard to be funny. I found a lot of it cringeworthy actually, mostly the scenes with Brick screaming and shouting.
The first film meanwhile is a classic. I will cry with laughter at it every time I see it.

By the beard of Zeus!

I agree with both posts. The second one was more or less recycling jokes from the first movie, exaggerating the newer jokes and just basically trying to cash in on the first film's successful following. It tried way too hard and it was terrible.

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I give the second one a thumbs up overall, but the stuff with the kid really fell flat, and having a counterpart scene to the trident-fight scene and a counterpart scene to the bad-smelling-cologne scene, that sort of thing, goes against the whole idea of being _surprised_ by e.g. Jack Black kicking a dog off a bridge.

They tried too hard with the second. Most of the scenes from the first one were improvised so made it so much funnier. Then in the second one they made bricks overly retarded that it was no longer funny and Megan good was completely miscast.