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9 Comedy Sequels Worthy of the Originals That Spawned Them

(l-r) Billy Bob Thornton stars as Willie Soke and Kathy Bates as Sunny Soke in BAD SANTA 2, a Broad Green Pictures and MIRAMAX release. Credit: Jan Thijs | Broad Green Pictures / Miramax
Billy Bob Thornton and Kathy Bates in ‘Bad Santa 2’, (Photo: Jan Thijs | Broad Green Pictures / Miramax)

Many moviegoers will ring in the holiday season this Thanksgiving weekend with the family-friendly vibes of Moana; others will prefer to follow their turkey dinners with a chaser of raunchy nastiness, courtesy of Bad Santa 2. The long-time-coming follow-up to 2003’s hit about a degenerate thief (Billy Bob Thornton) who takes work as a department-store Santa — to rob shopping malls from the inside — reunites Thornton with his diminutive partner/foil Tony Cox, and introduces Kathy Bates as his equally dissolute mom. While director Mark Waters’ take isn’t the equal of its Terry Zwigoff-directed predecessor, it’s nonetheless a rare beast: a comedy sequel that isn’t outright awful.

As such, it joins a select club of big-screen follow-ups that manage to take an original’s conceit and characters, and then squeeze more laughs from them. In honor of Thornton’s still-funny (and filthy) Kris Kringle, we salute a rare batch of comedy sequels that aren’t completely terrible.

A Shot in the Dark (1964)
Peter Sellers’ buffoonish French Inspector Clouseau was merely a supporting player in 1963’s The Pink Panther. However, for the quickly produced sequel — released just a few months later — the character was elevated to lead status, where he became the clownish face of this superb franchise. It’s not only funnier than the first film; it also established the template (and introduced many of the characters) that would define the series going forward. (Available on Amazon Video and iTunes)

A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)
John Cho’s Harold and Kal Penn’s Kumar amused audiences with their epically stoned 2004 search for White Castle burgers, but the follow-up — 2008’s Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay — was a disappointing dud. Imagine the surprise, then, when their third adventure turned out to be a consistently hilarious delight, surpassing both of its predecessors in terms of dim-bulb gags (many of which target the film’s own 3D effects) and heart. (Available on Amazon Video and iTunes)

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013)
Yes, we agree it’s not as funny as the original. But taken on its own terms, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s resurrection of Ron Burgundy and his moronic news team still has enough inspired insanity and absurd non-sequiturs to be a reasonably solid follow-up. (Available on Amazon Video and iTunes)


National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
(1989)
Not only the best threequel in comedy history, but also the last great Chevy Chase movie, Christmas Vacation finds the Griswold clan hosting the holidays at their home, where squirrels run amok in the Christmas tree, the house’s decorative outdoor lights don’t quite work, and their snobby neighbors are a constant thorn in their side. Oh, and then Randy Quaid’s Cousin Eddie and his hick clan show up. Suffice it to say, it’s great. (Available on Amazon Video, and iTunes)

The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear (1991)
There’s nothing funny about O.J. Simpson anymore — a fact that weighs on the Naked Gun series for today’s viewers. Still, this sophomore big-screen outing for Leslie Nielsen’s Police Squad Lt. Frank Drebin is, in most respects, a worthy second go-round. (Available on Amazon Video and iTunes)

A Very Brady Sequel (1996)
The Bradys, led by parents Mike (Gary Cole) and Carol (Shelley Long), are still a ’70s family stuck in a ’90s world in this sturdy meta-comedy, which finds the clan heading off to Hawaii to save their matriarch from the clutches of Tim Matheson’s evil con man. It’s an example of wink-wink humor done right. (Available on Amazon Video and iTunes)


22 Jump Street
(2014)
Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill return as idiotic undercover cops — this time tasked with investigating a drug ring at college — in this immensely self-referential buddy-cop spoof from directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. (Available on Amazon Video and iTunes)


Addams Family Values
(1993)
Director Barry Sonnenfeld reassembles the entire cast of the first movie (Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci, Carol Kane), and then enlists Joan Cusack to play the murderous new bride of Uncle Fester. Like A Very Brady Sequel, this darkly funny continuation of the based-on-TV franchise straddles the fine line between loving homage and tongue-in-cheek send-up. (Available on Amazon Video and iTunes)

Jackass Number 2 (2006)
Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Chris Pontius, Steve-O, and the rest of the Jackass crew continue to injure themselves for our amusement in this second cinematic prankfest. The results are just as gross, cringe-worthy, and surreally hilarious as before — a pinnacle of puerile performance art. (Available on Netflix, Amazon Video, and iTunes)