Porky's II: The Next Day (1983)

Wonderful Movie

Great Film overall

Best movie ever!

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Our gang of "teenagers"(using teenagers loosely) at Angel Beach High School are now butting heads with a fundamental minister with a flock of locals supporting him, the city commission, and the klu klux klan. It's all over, believe it or not, a Shakespearean festival considered "obscene." The Klan have a problem with a Native American tribe in the area with one of their own, a student, in the Shakespeare play taking place in the school auditorium. Sufficed to say, the teens get their revenge when the festival is temporarily halted by the power of the city commission who fear for their political careers thanks in part to the reverend's clout with the community at large. Filthy language and sex-on-the-brain dialogue as in the first film, but less nudity. Worth seeing if just for Meat in drag and Pee Wee dressed as a green fairy. Porky's absence kind of takes away from this sequel, but Balbricker as a devoted "member of the flock" is kind of funny. Probably the most laugh-out-loud moment for me is when the boys play a trick on poor Pee Wee in the graveyard which results in him streaking down a country road afraid he had killed a woman via heart attack! Balbricker's snake incident in a bathroom thanks to the boys in an act of revenge because of her participation against their Shakespeare festival is another highlight.

This is probably just a very personal interpretation, but I feel as if Bob Clark couldn't have chosen a more painfully apt title for this sequel even if he wanted to. "The Next Day …" To me, that fully sounds like that dreadful hangover syndrome. You partied hard, drank way too much and did a whole lot of things that seemed like a good idea at the time but now are bound to regret … In short, you spent an awesome time but then, inevitably, the next day brings a terrible headache. You feel empty, lazy, uninspired and plain simply you want to be left alone. "Porky's 2" alarmingly lives up to this unpleasant sentiment. The original is a tremendous guilty pleasure, because it genuinely makes you feel as if you are a sordid and derailed partying teenager again! The vulgar pranks are plentiful and impossible not to laugh with, the gratuitous sleaze is too welcome and the continuous politically incorrect ambiance is simply irresistible. The sequel, however, tastes like a sour after-party in your stomach. Gone is all the harmless entertainment; replaced only by embarrassment and redundant that makes you wonder why you even bothered in the first place. I honestly don't know what happened here … All of a sudden the infantile jokes make room for boring morality speeches and the act of juvenile delinquency are being replaced with charity initiatives! In the original, our 50's gang of hormone-overloaded adolescent losers already fought against various types of authority (law enforcers, teachers, night club owners…), but at least they exclusively did so for their own benefit… To see naked chicks and get laid as quickly as possible. Here, they battle against even tougher types of authority (like politicians and the local church community), but for a greater – and utterly implausible – purpose, namely to prevent a high school stage play about the oeuvre of Shakespeare from getting canceled. I'm sorry, what?!? The characters we were introduced to in "Porky's" wouldn't care less about anything school relate, let alone an art class project! Suddenly the biggest schoolyard perverts have become teacher pets, the school bimbo transformed into the sensitive and understanding type and laughing stock Pee-Wee has turned into the archetype of manliness. Only the one sequence in the graveyard, when Pee Wee hires a prostitute to pull a prank on his friends that evidently backfires, vaguely reminds us that we are – in fact – watching an installment in the "Porky's" franchise. The amount of T&A decreased with approximately 400%, there isn't a single ROTF moment and the morality lessons ("don't be a hypocrite") are pitiable. Once more I'm reminded of the classic song by the Dire Straits "Heavy Fuel", with its lyrics "Last time I was sober, I felt bad. Worst hangover I ever had". That's the next day for ya!

As often happens, this sequel to PORKY'S (1982) is inferior to the original - but, then, neither is it as bad as Leonard Maltin claims in his esteemed Film Guide! It does cheat by forsaking the titular establishment entirely, though the formula is pretty much the same as before - except that here some of the characters from the original disappear and are replaced by new ones, while the girl who was involved with the protagonist in the first film gets a bigger part this time around. Again, the film pits a certain minority - in this case, American Indians - against a bigoted community.While the film's major asset has to be the over-the-top characterization of the hypocritical Reverend, there are almost as many belly laughs here as in the original. Scenes that particularly stand out are the 'Shakespeare v. Bible' quoting duel (even if it's kind of silly and out-of-character to have the boys involved in putting on a show of the Bard's work in the first place) and the individual come-uppance of the gang's various antagonists - the KKK (in the school gymnasium), the duplicitous board member (humiliated in a restaurant prior to re-election) and the aforementioned evangelist and his flock (at their own rally).P.S. Interestingly, co-writer Alan Ormsby had previously collaborated with Clark on his first two horror outings - CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS (1972; which I've never watched) and DEATHDREAM (1972)!

Old actors posing as teenagers, impossible scenarios of youngsters fighting by themselves racism and local town officials, is there any other movie less appropriate for fun? Plain disappointment, avoid it as possible. The plot is zero, they weren't prepared for any success with the first Porky, so they did not gather too many ideas for the second. It should have been a famous comedy, instead it turned out as being a strange cocktail of a propaganda movie (how fun is it to be a young American high-schooler), impossible situations (reverends fighting against Shakespeare plays), tasteless and unconvincing nakedness scenes (abuse of male bare behinds especially). It must have been quite a shock at the time the film came out, now it's completely stupid.