My Review of "Major League II"

Major League II came out in 1994. That was 5 years after the release of its predecessor. I really liked the first movie. Though problematic by today's standards, I was still able to enjoy the movie quite a bit when I reviewed it recently. That got me thinking of how well the sequel would be. Surprisingly, it didn't disappoint.

The movie starts off the season right after the Cinderella story of the first movie. Now Cleveland is predicted to be the favorite to win the series all over again because the majority of the core group are back. I was happy to see that most of the actors playing those parts were back, with the exception of Wesley Snipes who played Willie Mays Hayes. They got an up and coming Omar Epps to play this character.

Everyone may be back for spring training but they've all changed during the off season. Rick has now become corporate, Willie is the same Willie but now he's doing movies and Pedro is now Zen with Buddhism.

With the first movie we had our primary focus on Jake. In that movie he was the aging athlete trying to win one last time. Here Jake is a background character as his story arc was completed with the first movie. They've asked him to become a coach. This could have been an interesting turn for the movie but they decided not to go this route.

Instead they decided to focus on Rick. He was the breakout pitching star in the last movie. During the off season he cleaned up his act and started thinking of the longevity of his career. This movie does an about face to all of today's motivational guru suggestions.

Most of the characters actually did things in the off season to make themselves better. Today everyone wants to continue to better themselves but in this movie they're encouraging people to go back to become who they were before. It was kind of refreshing to see a different take like this when we see the entire different message being spewed out on social media today.

As they all worked on themselves, they have to learn to become a team again and work together to win games again. This kind of follows a similar movie template as the first movie. They even had the former owner come in later on to try to make the club lose more games. That felt really unnecessary and kind of funny at the same time.

All of the charm of the first movie is still there. It kind of felt like the Mighty Ducks franchise but with baseball. There's really nothing new but they've added new characters for a little facelift. For fans of the first movie that's quite alright. If it isn't broke, you don't really need to fix it.

Still the push to have Rick as the centerpiece of this movie was a bit of a risk. They did an adequate job in doing this but I think this movie would have had more legs if they continued on with Jake as the coach. He could build on each of the characters this way and the whole team would have been centered around him. Then again this would have an even more Mighty Ducks vibe to it if they did that. What do I know, right?

Overall, I still enjoyed this movie. The jokes were still fun and the characters were very amusing. I am one of those people that liked the first movie so I liked the formula that they used and because I saw the first movie I got all of the in jokes that were thrown at us. It doesn't quite hit the same heights as the first movie but I'll give it a 6.5 out of 10.