Fishing in the Discount Bin - Wayne's World 2

Here we go again with Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly blog ramble about a movie I own.  I finished what I started last week with Wayne's World 2.  This shows up in my notes at February 7, 2015.

Well, when I grabbed Wayne's World out of the discount bin for $10, I saw Wayne's World 2 next to it, also for $10, and figured, "Let's get the whole franchise!"

As previously stated, after Wayne's World I became obsessed with the world of Wayne and Garth.  So when #2 hit theatres in the winter of 1993, I was so there.  In fact, I think it marks a very important chapter in my movie-going history.  I'm pretty sure it's the first film where I stayed in the theatre right to the end of the end credits.  I went into the city with my brother and a couple of his friends to see it during Christmas vacation.  (Not having very many friends in high school, I frequently tagged along with my brother and his friends.)  When the movie ended, and the end credits started to roll, everyone started getting up to leave, but I said, "Hey, wait a minute, guys.  Don't you remember the first movie?  And how it had stuff during the end credits?  Maybe this one has stuff during the end credits, too!  Can we stay to see if there's stuff during the end credits?"

I talked them into it, and a tradition was born.  And we got to see the mid-credits riff on the classic crying Indian PSA.

We catch up with Wayne and Garth a year after the first movie.  Wayne has finally moved out of his parents' house, and he and Garth now have a trendy loft in an abandoned doll factory.  Living on his own isn't enough, though, and Wayne tells us at the outset how he's getting hassled by his friends and family to do something with his life, but he's resigned himself to a life in minimum wage hell.  But then, a weird naked Indian comes to Wayne in a dream, and takes Wayne through a desert to see Jim Morrison, and Jim Morrison tells Wayne that he's to put on a massive rock concert.  Wayne comes up with the name "WayneStock," and as for bands, Morrison simply tells Wayne, "Book them, and they will come."

This is almost like one of those times where you've heard a Weird Al song so many times, that you don't know it's a parody and are stunned when you hear the original.  What I'm getting it at is, all the stuff with the desert and Jim Morrison and the weird naked Indian is a slam at the 1991 movie The Doors.  There's a lot of that in this film, actually.  When I first saw it, I had little knowledge of the 1968 classic The Graduate, and thus hardly realized that the entire third act is a spoof of that film.

Rob Lowe didn't come for the sequel, so it's time for a new villain.  Wayne's girlfriend Cassandra is cutting her first album, so in comes sleazy record producer Bobby Khan, played by Christopher Walken.  I think at this point in pop culture history, Walken was just starting to become a known name, but he was still a year or two away from becoming one of the most impersonated men on the planet.  Bobby is a bit of a weak villain here.  We really don't get to know him or his motivations...he seems to want to seduce Cassandra because she's hopelessly devoted to Wayne and Bobby thinks such devotion is interfering with her album.  He's just...meh.

Garth gets a good subplot.  With the first film having been such a hit, it wasn't hard to line up big time celebrities for cameos in this sequel, best demonstrated in Kim Basinger as Honey Horny.  (Pronounced hor-NAY...it's French.)  She's so wonderfully over-the-top as she seduces Garth.

Honey:  Take me, Garth.
Garth:  Where?  I'm low on gas, and you need a jacket.

God, I forgot how funny that scene was until I saw this again tonight.  Of course, the best celebrity cameo is when Wayne asks for a better actor for a bit part, and we get the legendary Charlton Heston. 







We do get some fun new characters, though.  Del Preston, the slightly loopy, yet legendary roadie that Wayne and Garth enlist to help them put on WayneStock.  Fun trivia fact:  Preston was based on a real-life music manager named Shep Gordon.  Mike Myers met Gordon because he was Alice Cooper's manager when Cooper made his cameo in the first film.  Myers and Gordon became good friends, and Myers actually made a documentary about Gordon and his career back in 2013.

There's still lots to love and lots of good bits in Wayne's World 2.  I didn't find myself laughing out loud at as many long forgotten bits, like I was doing with the first film, but I still had a lot of fun going back down memory lane.