SPOILERS: The original Road House is one of those movies that I know is clichéd and unoriginal, yet it's done so well, I'm embarrassed to admit I really like it. Turns out many of my friends, whose movie opinions I respect, think the same way. So when they attempt to make a sequel to it and it's as if it was written by some high school kids who were given the rights to do a sequel, it's just bad; really, really bad.

Oddly, Johnathon Schaech is listed as one of the writers and I can only hope his WGA membership is revoked. The writing was just bad and all the writers of this film should retire for complete lack of originality and some of the worst dialog in this millennium. Schaech already appearing to be the king of the straight-to-DVD sequel (8mm 2, Poison Ivy 2) and now after seeing this and 8mm 2, I'm thinking his acting ability is non-existent. He was awful, just awful.

And it's not the terrible fighting scenes that make this movie terrible, but take it from me, they're bad. Every fight scene is a slowly delivered punch (yet still making the "wiff" sound in the air) that is then blocked by the opponent, who returns a punch that sends the first guy to the ground. This is repeated throughout the film, worse than any bad 1970s cop show. Or the fact that many of the people involved in the fights seem to have a mouth full of cherry kool-aid for some reason. And we're supposed to believe Will Patton is a fighting machine; his fight scenes look so amazingly fake I was honestly embarrassed watching. 

It's the complete lapses of logic in this ridiculous movie that make it terrible. For instance: Johnathon Schaech's character is in town for a day and already tells some girl he barely knows who he has no idea what side she's on, "I'm with the Feds, but don't tell anyone." The female villain, who fights the good girl in one fight scene with acrobatics that rival any super hero, yet is easily held down by the Will Patton, "old guy," in another scene by simply holding both her hands while he utters some ridiculous line ("stab me once, shame on you, stab me twice, ain't gonna happen" whew, that's bad) and then head-butts her. Jake Busey's villain shoots at the feds while caught in the middle of a drug deal, yet no DEA agents or anyone simply go to his place and pick him up after, in fact, he's simply let go because "this is the sheriff's territory." Busey wants the bar because it's "in a great location" for drug deals, yet his own house appears to be just as good apparently offering all the perks the bar is supposed to have. Johnathon Schaech's character is supposed to be the son of Patrick Swayze's character in the original, yet Swayze's character's last name is Dalton and Schaech's isn't (nor is the supposed brother of Swayze's character). And Johnathon Schaech looks about 50 in this movie. I looked it up, he's 17 years younger than Swayze, but he looks awful.

But my favorite absolutely stupid scene in this movie was the most stock fight scene ending in movies: the villain is knocked through a window on a second floor and as they pan down I'm thinking "please don't tell me he's impaled on something..." and sure enough, my worst fears were realized.

Actually, I could go on for another half hour about the things I hated about this movie. Suffice to say, let's put an end to these ridiculous straight-to-DVD sequels to theatrical movies, at least the ones with Johnathon Schaech.

Sentiment: negative