Entertainment Weekly's 25 worst sequels of all time

The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly features an article entitled, "Entertainment Weekly's 25 worst sequels of all time". These lists are always dumb, I mean Matrix Reloaded? There are many better examples of bad sequels than those listed below. Where's Ring Two?

25. the Matrix Reloaded 2003

Revolutions is actually worse. But the second Matrix feels more egregious because of the sheer nosedive from the original. Sci-fi droolers had four whole years of pent-up expectations and time wasted dissecting the first chapter's metaphysical riddles. And after all that waiting, what did they get? A laughable techno rave in Zion with a lot of slo-mo sweat and revelers in hemp clothing. It's like a Lenny Kravitz video directed by Bob Guccione.


24. The Next Karate Kid 1994

Think of it as a turd with an inspirational silver lining. After all, its 20-year-old star, Hilary Swank, later went on to win two Oscars. But what does it say when even Macchio doesn't want in? Swank plays bratty tomboy ''Julie-san,'' who learns to harness her rage thanks to the fortune-cookie wisdom of Mr. Miyagi. Comic relief is provided by a trio of roly-poly Buddhist monks who can bowl with their eyes closed. Seriously.


23. Porky's II: The Next day 1983

Was there ever a better time to be a horny teenager than 1983? That year, such teen T&A sex romps as Private School, Losin' It, and My Tutor rolled off the assembly line like shiny new Buicks. And all of them owe their being to Porky's. But by the time this quick-turnaround money grab (which is surprisingly lite on the boobies) was released, the cash cow had been milked dry. I mean, where do you go after Pee-wee loses his virginity? The circle's frickin' complete.


22. Teen Wolf Too 1987

You could consider the first Teen Wolf a complex metaphor for the scariness of puberty, what with the sprouting fur and confusing changes. But the awkwardness of adolescence is nothing compared with what Jason Bateman runs up against as a lupine college freshman. Bateman — in what would become the long winter between Silver Spoons and Arrested Development — sleepwalks through the too-clueless-to-be-metaphorical sequel.


21. Legally Blonde 2: red, white & blonde 2003

You had to be made of stone not to be smitten with Elle Woods the first time around. But when Ms. Witherspoon turns Capitol Hill into her own Barbie Dream House while trying to find her Chihuahua Bruiser's birth mother, she goes from cute to cloying. Plus, making things pink is not a substitute for jokes. Saddest of all is when poor Bob Newhart is forced to deliver the line ''Fo' shizzle, my ezzle.'' Jesus wept.

20. The Godfather part III 1990

Francis Ford Coppola mortgaged the Corleone legacy in this ridiculous postscript about La Cosa Nostra getting into bed with the Vatican, death by poison cannoli, and hotheaded nephew Andy Garcia rolling gnocchi with Sofia Coppola as they interlace fingers (it's like a mobster version of the Ghost pottery-wheel scene). Critics dogpiled on 19-year-old Sofia. And she is terrible. But she's the least offensive thing in this act of cinematic grave-defiling.


19. Revenge of the Nerds II: nerds in paradise 1987

The Tri-Lambs go to Fort Lauderdale. Lamar still wears leopard-print banana hammock undies, Booger's still a pig in a ''Who Farted?'' T-shirt, and as for Lewis and Gilbert, well, you couldn't keep Robert Carradine away with a stick. Anthony Edwards phones it in, though, calling the nerds from back on campus, where he's nursing a broken leg. Highlight: The nerds rap, with Wormser on the wheels of steel!


18. Battle for the Planet of the Apes 1973

BFPOA features plenty of ape-on-ape action, but little else. In a prologue, John Huston (hiding behind ape makeup and, no doubt, laughing all the way to the bank) lends his baritone to catch us up on some of the four previous Apes flicks. Then gorilla general Aldo tries to overthrow the benevolent Caesar (Roddy McDowall) while a posse of radioactive human mutants (their most obvious symptom is an allergy to acting) plan a race war.


17. Star Trek V: the final frontier 1989

My favorite Trek joke goes ''What do they call Star Trek in Japan?'' Answer: Sulu, Master Navigator. My least favorite? The Final Frontier. Who else but William Shatner would show, in a film he's directing, a scene of himself manfully climbing Yosemite's El Capitan? Trek V is an oil slick of spiritual hooey in which Kirk meets God face-to-face, then sasses and back-talks him. In an irony probably lost on the hubristic, hairpieced auteur, God looks like atheist Karl Marx.


16. Ocean's Twelve 2004

Clooney and Co. forget what made Ocean's Eleven a gas, drowning their sequel in smug inside jokes (Julia Roberts' character impersonates Julia Roberts!) and painful additions (Catherine Zeta-Jones as a leather-clad world-class sleuth? Villain Vincent Cassel eluding infrared alarms by break dancing?). This is a bunch of zillionaires dishing out more of the same and expecting you to lap it up, say thank you, and tip the waiter.

15. Dumb and Dumberer: when harry met lloyd 2003

Okay, I'll admit that the kid who plays the young Lloyd in this prequel does a pretty spot-on Jim Carrey. But it's saying something when the height of cleverness in this grab bag of short-bus retard jokes and doody gags is right there in the title. The moronic Mutt and Jeff's nemesis is played by Eugene Levy, who needs an intervention on how to say ''no'' before they approach him for The Man 2.


14. Conan the Destroyer 1984

Wilt Chamberlain claimed to have had sex with 20,000 women and he's the only pro basketball player ever to score 100 points in a game. But when it came to acting, he was shakier than Shaq at the foul line. Add Arnold Schwarzenegger and Grace Jones, and the cast of Conan 2 is like an all-star team of bad acting. The biggest irony is that Wilt's character is on board to protect the virginity of the princess on their quest. Talk about the fox in the henhouse.


13. The Sting II 1983

Paul Newman and Robert Redford's 1973 original won a Best Picture Oscar and featured a deliciously Byzantine con. Here we get a scam you can see driving down Fifth Avenue and the unholy pairing of mustachioed manatee Jackie Gleason and Mac Davis. Mac Davis! Not to be mean, but he's no Paul Newman. Heck, he's not even Laraine Newman. He's like one of those phenomena that are recognized but unexplained by science.


12. Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace 1999

Is there any doubt that Jake (Yippeeee!) Lloyd will be remembered as the intergalactic Jonathan Lipnicki? The dread kicks in during the opening scroll with its eye-glazing backstory about Trade Federations and taxation routes. We didn't wait 20 years for a lecture on supply-side economics! Right off the bat, Liam Neeson saves the life of Gungan minstrel Jar Jar Binks and it all goes to hell from there.


11. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights 2004

This really has nothing to do with Dirty Dancing other than its Swayze cameo. A WASPy daddy's girl moves to Cuba on the eve of la revolución and gets swept up in politics, mambo, and hormones as she falls for dancefloor diablo Diego Luna. Most memorable Swayze quote: ''If you can't move through your fear and connect it to yourself, there's absolutely no way you're going to connect with your partner.'' God bless him.

10. Jaws: The Revenge 1987

After a Great White eats his plane, Michael Caine gets out of the water in a wet shirt. In the next shot, it's bone-dry. This is the kind of attention to detail that makes the fourth Jaws flick riper than a bucket of chum. The man-eater follows Mrs. Brody to the Bahamas, where Mario Van Peebles plays a Rastaman marine biologist. The video box boasts that it's ''the most incredible Jaws adventure of them all.'' Which is technically true.


9. Speed 2: Cruise Control 1997

It's amazing that people joke about Keanu Reeves being dumb, when he had the smarts to stay away from this. Sandra Bullock, however, is back as flibbertigibbet Annie, who's now dating Jason Patric's dreamy SWAT dude. We know he's sensitive because when he and Annie go on a cruise he talks to a girl in sign language. And we know fellow passenger Willem Dafoe's evil because he attaches leeches to himself after planting bombs on board. Frankly, the Norwalk virus would have made a more convincing villain.


8. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan 1989

None of the Camp Crystal Lake killathons are what you'd call good, but this one's unwatchable. Even the ways Jason dispatches his victims aren't very creative, unless you consider a speargun creative...and I think they used that in Part III. A group of teens sail to the Big Apple with stowaway Jason. As the boat starts to sink, the survivors row ashore with Jason swimming after them. (Wait, didn't he die in Part I because he couldn't swim?!) We don't get to Manhattan until the second hour. And when we do, it looks an awful lot like Vancouver.


7. the fly II 1989

You may recall that at the end of the 1986 original, Geena Davis is knocked up with Jeff Goldblum's part-fly spawn. Here, Mom dies after delivering the gooey larva that grows up to become...Eric Stoltz. Stoltz plays a brainiac kept in a lab where he beds Daphne Zuniga before mutating. When he reveals his secret to her, she's incredibly understanding for a woman who just had sex with a fly. Which pretty much makes her the real hero of the film.


6. Weekend At Bernie's II 1993

Notice how they tried to class this one up by using the Roman numerals instead of calling it Weekend at Bernie's 2? That's where the sophistication begins and ends in this low-rent comedy about two schmucks (Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy) in the Virgin Islands with their dead boss. GE doesn't make bulbs as dim as these guys. At one point, Silverman stops to consider the morality of what they're doing: ''We're going to hell.'' If only.

Batman & Robin 1997

We don't want to bust Clooney's chops when he's riding high, but this makes his work in Return of the Killer Tomatoes look like Olivier. Yes, the nipples on the Batsuit are unfortunate, but the real sin is the screenplay, which hands the cast such hardee-har bons mots as Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze line ''The iceman cometh!'' There's too much of everything here. It's the movie equivalent of Nero playing a fiddle.


4. Blues Brothers 2000 1998

Where to begin? How about the fact that it's called Blues Brothers 2000 and it came out in 1998? How about that Dan Aykroyd's ex-con Elwood is joined in the band by a sweaty, blues-belting John Goodman and an orphan named Buster? How about a performance by Blues Traveler? Or the fact that a voodoo queen turns Aykroyd and Goodman into zombies? At least they spared us Jim Belushi. That's something.


3. Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha' Hood 2003

I personally tuned out after Leprechaun 1, which featured outstanding work by Jennifer Aniston. But who'da thunk it would take them so long to come up with the idea of mixing Irish stereotypes and African-American ones? Equal parts funky fresh and severed flesh, this sixth chapter has America's favorite troll smoking weed and hunting the homeboys who stole his pot o' gold. If a movie could spark a race riot, this is it.


2. CaddyShack II 1988

Again with the classy Roman numerals! This is one of the most brilliant marketing ploys ever. I don't know anyone who'd want to see Caddyshack 2, but Caddyshack II? Let me put on my ascot and monocle and I'm there! Unfortunately, Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, and the late great Ted Knight are not there. And Chevy Chase barely makes a cameo. Instead, how about a heapin' helpin' of Jackie Mason doing Catskills jokes that weren't funny the first time around?


1. Staying Alive 1983

It was impossible not to be moved by the '90s soap opera comeback of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. But what went little noted in that narrative of redemption was what caused his career to derail in the first place. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Staying Alive — a disaster of such epic proportions they should've handed out HazMat suits and Cipro when you entered the theater. Picking up several years after Saturday Night Fever, Travolta's Brooklyn disco Casanova Tony Manero is now a struggling Broadway dancer. Rejection has hardened his charm into a cocky, misogynistic swagger. After a one-night stand with a snooty dance star (General Hospital's Finola Hughes), he lands a part in Satan's Alley — a show so cheesy it looks like Bob Mackie throwing up on the Starlight Express. The bitchy director describes the musical as ''a journey through hell that ends with an ascent to heaven.'' We get the ''journey through hell'' part; where's the ascent? Tarted up in a Tarzan loincloth, Travolta shakes his moneymaker to Frank Stallone music. (The film's directed by his brother, Sylvester Stallone, finally answering the question, How much Stallone is too much Stallone?) Staying Alive is a sequel that ignores everything that made the original great, which of course may be the biggest insult of all.