Undercover Brother 2

TL:DR- You know when you're with your friends and want to watch a horrible movie just to make fun of it? This movie is for you.

When I saw the title on Netflix a few hours ago, I thought I was seeing things. The first Undercover Brother was a huge part of my teen years. While it was low budget and campy, it was at least genuinely funny. I don't know if it's the lack of A-listers or poorly written social commentary, but this film just misses. Honestly I only finished it to write this review.

Undercover Brother has returned to the hood from years of fighting The Man. He meets up with his younger brother, who he feels has become a punk in his absence, and proceeds to do a training montage with him to make him better. He and his younger brother are frozen for 16 years in an avalanche in Austria while trying to track down The Man. Undercover Brother's younger brother wakes up first and convinces the new Chief of the Brotherhood to let him join to get revenge on The Man for causing the avalanche to kill them, and to stop The Man's most recent evil plans. Without giving any spoilers, what ensues is a crazy show of poorly done commentary on our current social climate with spattered callbacks to the original Undercover Brother.

Not to say that there aren't interesting concepts and funny moments. Terrible as I thought it was, I laughed at a few parts and even thought the twist wasn't too bad if it had been a better executed movie. But make no mistake, any true fans of the original UB who actually make it through this whole film will find it to be cringeworthy, random, and honestly kind of boring.

The film is also low budget and campy, but this story is poorly written and poorly but together. It seems like a collection of random scenes that a fanboy/girl of the original might have written down were strung together to make a movie. The original UB was quippy and intelligent in its social commentary, but this film simply mocked current social climates in a few monologues without offering much else for us to think about or laugh at.

Now for perspective I personally am black myself, and I would really rather not rain on anybody's parade. But this is a movie review :/ And I'll say this is one of those films that, for a real fan of the original UB, probably isn't worth watching even once.

When I saw that White was taking Eddie Griffith's place as Undercover Brother I was curious. Undercover Brother 2 was a good idea in this environment. So much has happen in the 16 years since that original. The good, the bad and at the moment the worse. The black community needs undercover brother so badly that I was screaming at the screen "where you been?" They gave it to White cause we need that type of muscle to take on the man(played by Barry Boswick who was the Mayor in sin city). Too bad they did not use that muscle. White was used as a narrative backdrop rather than the main protagonist despite being the main character. Kinda like the most recent Shaft movie they wanted to show how dated certain characteristics are in the "woke era" which is what the plot focus on, but unlike Shaft, undercover brother got more respect when they made him a backdrop character. Despite this movie being a comedy they decided not to demean the character just because he no longer fits in the times we leave (wish they showed that much respect for Shaft). This is why the movie focus on undercover brother's brother, a new character who they can mess with for being out of touch so that the undercover brother can stay cool. Too bad the movie is not as cool as White in the title role. Like I was saying, it has a tight plot that could have done some seriously funny social commentary. It made me laugh and I got the message but the movie is not as powerful as the first. Feels too much like the filmmakers slapping something together too quickly and it really shows. Wish it was better. Wish it was the sequel to Black Dynamite.

A sequel to a movie released in 2002. This is a silly Blaxploitation spy spoof that you cannot take seriously.

A bit more energy and a funnier script could had improved it a lot. It would had then been average.

Michael Jai White is Undercover Brother, but here he is in a coma. The action moves to his more inept brother Lionel (Vince Swann) a failed singer who goes after the Man (Barry Bostwick).

Lionel gets help from the Brotherhood. The Man once led a racist organisation but has now fallen on hard times. His unhinged son plans to release a new drug called woke.

Lot of the targets in this movie have been done before in movies such as I'm Gonna Git You Sucker by the Wayans.

Compared to the original, Undercover Brother 2 is amazingly bad. Yes, there where were some funny moments and some original ideas, but the overall impression I was left with was how there simply weren't any high points or standout moments, sequences, or characters throughout the entire movie

Where the original sparkled, Undercover Brother 2 fell flat on just about every level. Maybe there was just no sequel to be made here.

So this movie is pretty much bad on every level, don't watch it. Besides a few laughs, I got nothing from it. It could've been saved somewhat if they didn't completely exclude MJW from a majority of the movie (50% of the reason people decided to give this a chance in the first place) and if the main character/actor they chose to go with was more likable, talented, and known. Plus MJW was basically just playing Black Dynamite so this is just horrible.