Occhio al testimone

Six years after the first "Stakeout" (1987), cameras catch detectives Richard Dreyfuss (as Chris Lecce) and Emilio Estevez (as Bill Reimers) on another mission. It's nowhere near as good as the first. The format is similar. We begin with an action-packed opening. In Las Vegas, mobsters want to kill Cathy Moriarty (as Luella "Lu" Delano) because she's going to testify against them. This leads to the explosion of what appears to be a small town. Police search the rubble, but can't find Ms. Moriarty...

They think the missing woman is going to contact a couple - Dennis Farina and Marcia Strassman (as Brian and Pam O'Hara) - so Mr. Dreyfuss and Mr. Estevez are recruited to pose as neighbors...

Madeline Stowe (as Maria), from the first film, appears only sporadically and her chemistry with Dreyfuss is gone. The crime and criminals being investigated are confusing. To make the ruse more realistic, assistant district attorney Rosie O'Donnell (as Gina Garrett) is added to the mix. Accompanied by her rottweiler "Archie", Ms. O'Donnell pretends to be Dreyfuss' second wife and Estevez' step-mother. It's a funny situation, providing this sequel with a little freshness. Otherwise, the story is stale.

***** Another Stakeout (7/23/93) John Badham ~ Richard Dreyfuss, Emilio Estevez, Rosie O'Donnell, Dennis Farina

When a witness against the Mafia goes missing Chris and Bill are sent to stakeout a place where she may turn up. However this time they're joined by Agent Gina Garrett and her dog. Despite their childish behaviour things will soon turn serious for the cops.

The first film was light, silly, unlikely but quite enjoyable and this one continues in a similar vein – albeit less successfully. The main failing is that the plot is the same as the first one and hence feels less fresh. On top of that we have cliché on top of cliché to add to the stale feel. The film is so desperate to repeat the first one that we even get Stowe roped back in on the side. The jokes are pretty tired and the action is quite tame overall the end result is not terrible but mediocre.

Dreyfuss and Estevez had good fun in the first film but here they look like they're collecting the cheque. They are still OK but you can see they're going through the motions a bit. O'Donnell should be sentenced to daytime TV forever – how can one person be so very brash and annoying? She sucks any lightness out of this film and is really irritating. Farina is good as is Moriarty (but it's a long cry from Raging Bull isn't it?), Ferrer turns in yet another bad guy role and is always value.

Overall this is barely entertaining. It doesn't feel fresh and this cheapens it – the fact that the comedy is weak and that O'Donnell is like a curse from Hell makes it even worse. Stick with the first film – it's not a masterpiece but at least it's got energy.

Having just seen "Another Stakeout" for the first time since 1995, I decided to check out the online info about the locations that were used in the movie and, so far, haven't seen any credit given for the island off the BC coast where most of the filming was done. It was filmed on beautiful Bowen Island, a 15 minute ferry trip from Horseshoe Bay, just to the northwest of Vancouver. The initial scenes involving driving off the ferry were done in Snug Cove (they substituted the name 'Bainbridge Island'), and most of the exterior and interior shots were on the south side of the island in an area called Fairweather where, as you saw or will see in the film, the homes are gorgeous and perfectly suited for the plot (however meager you thought it to be). I've seen a number of comments about the filming having been done on an island in Puget Sound. A lot was shot in Seattle, but the majority was on Bowen Island - I should know - I was living there at the time. Just thought I'd set the record straight. (You can see the homes used for filming clearly on Google Earth, if you're interested.)

Hired killer Tony Castellano (Miguel Ferrer) blows up a safe house barely missing mob case witness Lu Delano (Cathy Moriarty). Chris Lecce (Richard Dreyfuss) and Bill Reimers (Emilio Estevez) are assigned to the D.A. office. They stakeout a house with Gina Garrett (Rosie O'Donnell) and her dog. The cover story is that Gina is Chris' 2nd wife and Bill is his son. Maria McGuire (Madeleine Stowe) breaks up with Chris for not getting married. D.A. Thomas Hassrick is actually working for the mobster. The trio is staking out Brian (Dennis Farina) and Pam O'Hara (Marcia Strassman) in the house next door.

The original has some fun with this odd buddy cop duo. Adding Rosie drains whatever fun there is in this franchise. I don't see the point of adding a third. She's a wet blanket. It's a lot of bickering between the three and most of it is annoying. This is not much fun.

"That's it, nobody calls me Ed McMahon!"

• Emilio Estevez saying the funniest line from a rather dry sequel

"Another Stakeout" was six years in the waiting. After the first film, "Stakeout," made a huge splash at the box office in 1987 (the same year another cop-buddy film came out--can you guess which one?), everyone anticipated an unnecessary--but perhaps funny--sequel that would inevitably result after box office earnings were tallied up by film executives in an office somewhere.

Alas, the six years passed, and we got...this mess?

Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez reprise their roles as stakeout cops who get paired with a new partner in this watered-down sequel. The new partner is played by Rosie O'Donnell, who is so startlingly unfunny in this it almost makes you involuntarily switch off the television as soon as you see her chubby face smiling at you.

The story starts with a bang--literally--as a trial witness being protected by the CIA is unsuccessfully assassinated--and by that I mean: They die, she lives. What a surprise. (This is the type of scene where the villain is able to blow up a house but the witness just happens to be taking a stroll outside as it happens--or something like that--preventing her from dying along with the other agents who were previously protecting her. This type of thing was spoofed greatly in the truly underrated "Last Action Hero." It's not a joke in "Another Stakeout.") Unfortunately for the United States, the trial witness never returns--she runs away and doesn't let anyone know where she is. Afraid she may be in danger, afraid to lose a star witness, and believing that she might try to contact old friends, the gruff chief of police assigns the unlucky trio of Dreyfuss, Estevez and Donnell to watch the her old pals to see if she turns up.

She eventually does, of course, but first we get some painfully unfunny buddy-buddy moments between Dreyfuss and Estevez and O'Donnell. She brings a bunch of clothing and a dog with her. They don't like it. Har-har. This was used a bit better in "Spaceballs," in which Princess Vespa brought along that entire luggage through the desert (remember?). This is just a copy of that scene, minus the punch line.

Estevez also shaves his mustache, which is supposed to be a type of sacred moment and is referenced at least ten times throughout the film (he goes to stroke his mustache, he complains about chopping it off, Dreyfuss complains about it, etc.). But for heaven's sake, he's only been in one film so far--we've only seen the mustache once--so a better thing to do would have been this: make a few more sequels and, when the last entry comes, have him shave it off. By then the audience realizes that his mustache is part of him, and that losing it is like losing part of his soul.

But I'm glad they didn't make any more than one sequel.

One of the things that kept the "Lethal Weapon" franchise going was the fresh ideas, fresh buddies, and fresh scripts. (Great actors never hurt an action comedy, either.) The "Stakeout" franchise--which didn't even last long enough to spawn more than one sequel--tries to copy this formula but isn't sure how. The introduction of Joe Pesci in "Lethal Weapon 2" was great because he thereby became the Third Stooge, whereas O'Donnell's entry into the series is nothing but a humiliating reminder that talk show hosts can't always act in front of a camera and maintain the same type of humor they may (or may not) exhibit on their (awful) TV "talk show." (Which is, by the way, consumed of entirely staged so-called "interviews.")

And whereas Pesci, as Leo Getz, added a type of silly vibe to the "LW" series, O'Donnell just seems like a carbon copy clone of Estevez from the first "Stakeout." Dreyfuss didn't like him at first, and--guess what--they suddenly became best buds. The same thing happens in the sequel, much to the audience's chagrin.

Of course, "Lethal Weapon" and its sequels were never more than a few years apart (the first coming out in 1989, two years after the original). But "Stakeout" had six years to make a respectable sequel, and it fails. It fails the same way that many prolonged sequels do. But, for once, it's not because the audience has forgotten the original film--it's because the audience is fed up with the same routine.

The film was directed by John Badham, which is surprising, since he's a talented director ("Saturday Night Fever," "The Hard Way," "Stakeout"). Here he jumps through all the hoops, turning his own series into a pale retread of the original--only watered down: minus the violence, language, nudity, and humor. I'm not saying a movie has to be R to be funny. But if you've got a sequel to an R-rated movie like "Stakeout" and you decide to turn its sequel into a cutesy-tutesy children's entertainment program, you'd better advise the audience before they sit down expecting something funny and fresh.

What a disappointment.

2/5 stars.

• John Ulmer