“If anyone can go undercover in that sleaze pit, it’s these two!”

Drake’s rating: If at first you don’t succeed… Just keep on churning out Vice Academy flicks

Drake’s review: Honestly, I’m not sure why I do this to myself. Maybe it was the fact that I was wide awake at 5 am (Pacific Time) after sleeping a grand total of two hours. Or it could be that our Great Mutant Overlord was thrilled by the fact that my review of the first Vice Academy was so well received that my readership climbed into, as I was told, “the high single digits!”

Or maybe I just can’t quit Rick Sloane.

Which is honestly as good an explanation as any as to why I decided that it was somehow a good idea to sit back and take in the first sequel in the Vice Academy series, and watch the further adventures of Didi (Linnea Quigley, Robot Ninja) and Holly (Ginger Lynn, The Devil’s Rejects). Now academy graduates, thus rendering the series title obsolete even though we’re only two movies in, Holly is out busting sex workers on the street while Didi works undercover at a massage parlor where she arrests a guy and then gives him her phone number.*

Circumstances conspire to force the two rivals into working together this time around, however, as a would-be supervillain by the name of Spanish Fly has escaped the waste basket of the Batman writers room and has her eyes set on drugging the water supply of the entire United States. Which might be just a bit over-the-top for a woman wearing a vinyl bustier and riding around in a pink and purple hot rod.

Still, our intrepid duo will try to go undercover at Spanish Fly’s strip club, fail, do some other stuff, then come back again and strip anyway, because this is a Rick Sloane movie and there WILL be stripping!

There’s also a large robot woman named BimboCop (Teagan Clive, Alienator) running around, since Sloane had evidently seen RoboCop and thought to himself, “How can I do that, only with a budget that would almost get me a Big Mac and a small Coke?”

So, yes, Vice Academy Part 2 is bad. I mean, of course it is! But the question on the mind of any inquisitive Mutant should be, is it worse than the first movie? And I have to say the answer here is no. Not a resounding no, of course. More like a tepid no with a question mark at the end denoting a certain amount of waffling and indecision. So… no?

Very simply, Vice Academy Part 2 works just a tad better than the first flick because Sloane wisely pared down the characters,** and Quigley and Lynn have developed a slight rapport that makes their pairing operate on at least a superficial level. Cutting down the extraneous characters also gives us more Linnea Quigley, and that’s a decision I am always 100% in favor of.

Vice Academy Part 2 also has one more thing working in its favor, and that’s the fact that we get to see Didi driving around in her car, which instantly vaults this movie to the top of the Vice Academy series since she has a late ‘80s Toyota MR2. Having owned a 1987 Toyota MR2 for 20 years, I can only applaud her choice in automotive excellence and silently wish that this had turned into a road trip flick so that we could have seen more of the MR2, and less of everything else.

But, MR2 aside, none of this is even the slightest recommendation that you watch Vice Academy Part 2. Unless you’re a completist and looking to fill out your Rick Sloane bingo card, a road I seem to be inadvertently traveling down, this one is well worth skipping.

Which is what I plan on doing with the remaining Vice Academy flicks, unless ten of you decide to check out this review. Because once I hit double-digits, Justin just ain’t going to take no for an answer.

Not even a tepid no with a question mark at the end.

*It’s not New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, by the way. Didi has better taste than that.

**Willingly or not. I have no idea if he tried to contact the other actors to appear in the sequel and, traumatized as they were by the first movie, they just didn’t answer the phone.

Intermission!

• We also get a bad side sketch about a police telephone operator this time around, which is as unfunny as anything in the first movie.
• I think that water delivery guy might be up to no good. The leather jacket and ponytail gives him away.
• Petrolini is so vain that he has pictures of himself hung up around his apartment. That’s the extent of his character.
• That strip club looks familiar. Is that the same set that was in Hobgoblins?
• “I’m going to the hospital to have a severe conniption fit.” You and me both, Didi.
• “Twenty million bucks is a lot of money!” Well, sure, in the ‘80s.