Franchises: The Sandlot. The Sandlot 2 (2005)

Whenever you learn that a sequel has been made to something like The Sandlot, which doesn't call for one at all, you stop and ask, "Why?" Of course, you know the answer already (to cash in), but you still have to ask it: what purpose is there in making a sequel to an awesome, coming-of-age story that was perfectly contained within itself and accomplished what it set out to do? I don't think it would be absolutely impossible to make a good movie out of it, but it would be a very tall order, and you run the risk of doing little more than repeating yourself. And that's exactly what happened with The Sandlot 2, which I watched for the first time on Disney Plus at the beginning of 2023. (I'd actually planned to do all three of these movies around the Fourth of July that year, but it became too much of a hassle, so I decided to do one each year around the Fourth. So, yeah, heads up: we'll talk about the third film next year.) Both this and the third film, The Sandlot: Heading Home, are prime examples of movies I would've never watched if I didn't have this blog and was obligated to do so along with the first. I'd seen either a DVD or Blu-Ray set with all three of them at Wal-Mart at one time, but I never paid attention to it, and only bought the first one by itself on Blu-Ray when I got the opportunity. I couldn't imagine that two low-budget, direct-to-video sequels to such an awesome, timeless classic would ever be good. And in the end, while I wouldn't say they're bad, per se, and I actually find Heading Home to be the better of the two, they're hardly a patch on the original. 

That's especially true of The Sandlot 2, which is little more than a virtual remake disguised as a sequel. It takes place in the same town, centers around a group of kids who've made the Sandlot their own personal baseball field, involves a seemingly monstrous dog living behind a fence at one end, and hits a lot of the same story beats, like a game with a pompous Little League team, a scene at the local carnival, a moment where one of the kids pulls a very sleazy trick to get a kiss from a girl, the kids deciding to beat the heat one day by hitting the pool, and a third act that revolves around them trying to retrieve something valuable from behind the fence, culminating in the dog chasing one of them around town. There's even narration from the youngest member of the team and various timely songs on the soundtrack. The only differences are in the details: the time period is the early 70's, some girls are part of the team, and the youngest kid who joins up with the older ones is the one who knows of the supposed monster dog, as the older kids are the newcomers, rather than the other way around like before. Thus, it often feels like a hollow xerox copy, with actors and characters who aren't nearly as endearing, instances of humor that I don't care for at all, and a major feeling of cheapness, despite the original having hardly been a big budget movie in and itself. Some may find the movie enjoyable, especially if they saw it before the first, and I'll admit that it does have its strong points and is watchable, but for the most part, it's just a retread of a story that was already told near perfectly.

It's the summer of 1972, ten years after Benny Rodriguez earned his nickname "the Jet" by retrieving a baseball signed by Babe Ruth from the clutches of "the Beast." Now, Johnnie Smalls, the younger brother of Scotty Smalls, lives in the neighborhood. Obsessed with rockets, he prepares to fire one off at the Sandlot, when David Durango and his friends, who've only lived in the neighborhood for a couple of years, show up. Thinking he's working for Singleton, the captain of a Little League team intent on taking the Sandlot from them, David and his friends rush him. In the chaos, the rocket is fired at the dugout, and Johnnie is chased over the fence and into the backyard of Hayley Goodfairer, also a newcomer to the neighborhood. She refuses to let them hurt Johnnie, and they then have bigger things to worry about when they find the dugout is burning. In exchange for helping him, Hayley has Johnnie rake up the Sandlot the next day, and when David and his friends show up, they're incensed to not only find him there, but also Hayley playing softball with two of her friends. Refusing to leave, Hayley suggests they play to see who gets to have the Sandlot, and proves to be an amazing pitcher. When David goes up to bat, they reach an hours-long stalemate, as he hits one foul ball after another, and they ultimately have to stop for the day. The next day, the boys, again, want the girls to leave, and the girls, again, refuse. Johnnie, after making David understand that he doesn't work for or even know Singleton, is forced to be the go-between, but things go nowhere. In the end, he suggests they simply play with the girls and share the Sandlot. Though David doesn't like it, everyone else is open to it, especially since they're several players short of a full team. And even though things start out kind of rough, everybody grows together as friends over the summer, despite David's awkwardness around Hayley, culminating in him having to conquer an old fear in order to help her out when Johnnie unintentionally gets them in a major pickle.

What's most shocking about The Sandlot 2 is the that it's the same writer/director as the first: David Mickey Evans, who also, as he did there, serves as the narrator. After scoring a pretty popular success with the first film as his directorial debut, Evans' theatrical directing career slowly petered out as the 90's went on, as his follow-up, 1996's First Kid with Sinbad, didn't do that well, and neither did Ed, a film starring Matt LeBlanc and a baseball-pitching chimpanzee, which Evans wrote. He also directed the third and fourth Beethoven movies, which sent that series into direct-to-video hell, and National Lampoon's Barely Legal, aka After School Special, which didn't go over too well, either. He did, however, co-write Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, which I've always thought was a nice little animated flick. Following The Sandlot 2 (which I've read he now regrets making, and is likely why he didn't do the third one), Evans did yet another movie revolving around baseball, 2007's The Final Season, with Sean Astin, Rachel Leigh Cook, Tom Arnold, and Powers Boothe, and 2012's Smitty, with Mira Sorvino, Peter Fonda, and Louis Gossett Jr. He also directed Ace Ventura Jr.: Pet Detective, yet another less than beloved direct-to-video sequel (if nothing else, The Sandlot 2 is definitely better than that).

Like his brother Scotty in the first film, Johnnie Smalls (James Wilson) is the awkward, nerdy outsider who ultimately joins the main group but only after some major duress, namely him accidentally setting their dugout on fire and having to run for his life to avoid getting pounded. Fortunately for him, Hayley Goodfairer is good enough to keep them from beating him up in her backyard, but he's then forced to clean up the Sandlot and act as a go-between for the boys and the girls during their initial bickering. Once he's able to convince David Durango and the other boys that he wasn't hired to sabotage the Sandlot, and is only interested in rockets, he's also able to arrange a truce, suggesting that they all share the place and play on the same team. While it's awkward and tense at first, this does bring everyone together and they become good friends, with Johnnie especially noticing the growing relationship between David and Hayley, as well as a bite mark on the back of David's leg that he makes sure to keep secret. In a subversion of the dynamic in the first film, Johnnie, being Scotty's younger brother (where he is during all of this is never explained; odds are he's probably off at college), knows not only of the Beast and how Benny got back the Babe Ruth signed baseball but also of how the Beast, Hercules, sired several puppies, including the one known as "the Great Fear." Like Squints in the first film, he tells the others the story of the Great Fear, about how he's a monstrous dog and possibly killed a kid the one time he got out of his yard. Thus, like the others did with Scotty, he dissuades them from going behind the fence and getting a ball that gets knocked back there, and also tells them it wouldn't be a good idea to ask Mr. Mertle to get the rocket back, either. Speaking of which, like Scotty hitting his stepfather's Babe Ruth autographed baseball over the fence, Johnnie accidentally causes a model space shuttle built by Hayley's father, who's a NASA engineer, to fall into the Great Fear's domain. This leads to them trying to get it back, with both Johnnie and Hayley terrified of what will happen if they don't. Also, Johnnie lets Hayley know that David does like her, and goes to tell David that they need him to use his speed to get the rocket back, which he agrees to and succeeds at.

When I first watched this movie, I was so confused by David Mickey Evans' narration, as it initially made me think that Scotty was the one telling us this story again. Moreover, Johnnie doesn't reveal that he's Scotty's brother until he tells the others about the Great Fear, and even though his last name is Smalls, given how uncreative this movie often is, and that we never see the parents this time, I initially figured this may just be another kid who happens to have that last name. Regardless, like in the first movie, we learn what became of the kids at the end of the movie, and Johnnie, unsurprisingly, says he went to work for a jet-propulsion laboratory, adding, "Rockets are still my life."

Unlike Benny "the Jet" Rodriguez, David Durango (Max Lloyd-Jones), the leader of the Sandlot kids, is hardly cool, calm, and collected. When he first meets Hayley at school, accidentally knocking her books out of her arms, he's so dumbstruck by the sight of her that he can't even talk, and doesn't think to help her until she prompts him to. Naturally, he tries to act like he's not interested in her, instead focusing on stopping Singleton from taking the Sandlot. He's so fixated on it that, when he and the others arrive at the Sandlot to find Johnnie there with his rocket, David thinks he's been hired by Singleton to blow the place up! Things get worse when Johnnie accidentally shoots the rocket into the dugout and it catches on fire, as David and the others chase him into Hayley's backyard, only for her to threaten to call the cops on them for trespassing. Still dumbstruck by the sight of her, her defending Johnnie makes him rather aggravated with her, as it does when she and her friends show up at the Sandlot the next day, refusing to leave and saying they have as much right to be there as anyone else. When Hayley proves herself to be quite a good ballplayer, especially in pitching, David takes it upon himself to go up to bat and try to beat her, only for him to hit one foul ball after another until that evening, when they have to go home. The problem doesn't go away the next day, and while the others prove amicable to letting the girls stay and join their team, David isn't happy about it all. His attitude begins to change when, during their game with the Little League, Singleton hurts Hayley out of spite. He punches him out for this and then runs him and his team out of the Sandlot permanently, earning Hayley's respect. However, David also clearly has some sort of secret he's keeping from the others, as he gets spooked at the sight of a dog on the street and at a Bigfoot exhibit at the carnival; also, Johnnie sees a bite mark on the back of his leg that he keeps covered up. Said bite even stops him from joining the others in swimming in Hayley's pool. Moreover, when the rocket that Hayley's dad made ends up in the Great Fear's yard, David immediately bows out of even trying to get it, much to the others' disappointment, especially Hayley.

But, after being coaxed by Johnnie, David, like Benny before him, opts to go over the fence, face the Great Fear, and get the model back. Trading in his regular shoes for a pair of Nikes, as well as tying his first pair together and tossing them over a nearby power line, David reveals that he was the kid in Johnnie's story about the Great Fear, who was cornered and bitten by the dog after he got out. With that, he hops over, confronts the dog, using his Rapid Rocket cape as a means of temporarily blinding him, and hooks a  

chain onto the shuttle so the others can pull it out. But, after he gets out as well, the Great Fear, having broken his chain, climbs over the junk wall in front of the fence and chases David all throughout town. Heading back to the Sandlot, David climbs and jumps the junk wall, back into the backyard, and ends up falling through a tunnel that Mac dug earlier while trying to get the model. This time, the dog helps him, digging and pulling him out, keeping him from suffocating, and earning his friendship. Afterward,

David and Hayley become a couple, and Johnnie reveals in his narration that they lasted all the way through high school, went their separate ways... then met again as adults and ended up getting married. And just like Benny, his defeating the Great Fear earned him a nickname: David "Rocket" Durango.

One character I really like is Hayley (Samantha Burton), whom David meets at the beginning of the movie, when he bumps into her and causes her to drop her things. And when David is so dumbstruck by her natural beauty that he just stares at her, she says, "You're supposed to say, 'I'm sorry.'" He doesn't react at all, and she goes, "Earth to boy," waving her hands in the air. That snaps him out of his daze and he quickly gives her everything she dropped. She compliments him on his speed and, when he still doesn't respond when she says, "You're supposed to say, 'You're welcome,'" she just heads on over to her Mom's car. Despite this slightly flirtatious start, their relationship becomes rocky for a while after David and the others chase Johnnie into her yard and she threatens to call the police on them for trespassing. It gets worse when she and her friends are playing softball in the Sandlot when the boys show up and they refuse to leave, saying they have as much right to be there as they do. The fact that they fixed up the dugout to look brighter and more colorful doesn't help either. With neither side willing to budge an inch, Hayley decides to wager that she can strike Mac out with three pitches, saying she and the girls will leave if she can't. Despite Mac's confidence, Hayley proves to be a phenomenal pitcher, which is not surprising, given how she and her friends turn out to be professional softball players. When David goes up to bat to give his side more of a chance, they both end up being so good that they get into a stalemate that lasts until the end of the day. And the next day, as much as David doesn't like it, the others allow for the girls to join their team. They then challenge Singleton and his Little League team to a game to decide who gets the Sandlot, with Hayley intent upon winning after Singleton proves to be the type of chauvinist she hates. During said game, when Hayley is about to score a home run, Singleton resorts to deliberately hurting her and making her cry, prompting David to deck him and throw him and his team out. This earns Hayley's respect.

Although quite tough and more than capable of standing up for herself and others, like when she defends Johnnie from the others, Hayley is also quite a nice girl, with a charming slight Southern accent from where she lived before her family moved to the San Fernando Valley. But though she clearly develops a crush on David, she's too shy to come out and tell him, and is disappointed when he seemingly doesn't reciprocate, like when he opts not to join them at her pool. Then, when Johnnie accidentally launches her

NASA engineer father's model space shuttle and it lands in the Great Fear's yard, her horror over this is compounded when David just walks away and does nothing to help. She's completely distraught when all of their attempts to get it back fail, and she pours her heart out to Johnnie about how she's disappointed that David isn't helping. Johnnie tells her that David does like her, but also mentions how she didn't say anything to him, either. Hayley then mentions that she figured, with David's speed, he'd be able to get the

rocket, prompting Johnnie to convince him to do it. Once it's all over, the rocket has been retrieved, and the Great Fear has become their friend, she thanks David for his help. When he says, "You're welcome," after barely saying a word to her the whole movie, she retorts, "Oh, so you can talk," and the two of them kiss, beginning a relationship that, according to Johnnie, lasted all the way through high school. In the epilogue, you learn she became both a supermodel and a pitcher for the United States Olympic Softball Team, winning two gold medals. Also according to

Johnnie, she and David met up again ten years after college and, "At that meeting, just like the first time he had ever had a chance to talk to her in grade school, David was so nervous he couldn't speak, so she spoke for him, and she said, 'You're supposed to say,' "'Will you marry me?'" And he did." (I've heard this is exactly how David Mickey Evans married his own wife, which is pretty cool.)

Hayley's two friends, Jenny (McKenzie Freemantle) and Penny (Jessica King), don't do much significant, although Jenny is the one who notices that there's a connection between Hayley and David right off the bat, even when they seemingly hate each other. She tells Mac as much, and admonishes him for not seeing at all. And while they're trying to retrieve the shuttle, they come up with a plan involving Hayley's cat that doesn't turn out quite as they'd planned. During the epilogue, Johnnie tells us, "Penny and Jenny never did anything more remarkable than the most difficult thing on Earth: they both raised three kids and lived happily ever after with their families." 

The other Sandlot kids have virtually the same dynamics as those of the first film, with one of the most memorable being Mac (Brett Kelly), the chubby kid with freckles. Rather than his weight being his most defining feature (it is brought up, but not quite as much as it was with Ham in the first one), it's instead his obsession with the military. In a similar vein, when trying to retrieve the shuttle, he takes inspiration from the movie, The Great Escape, a strategy that almost works. Like Ham, he's one of the more temperamental members of the team, getting really flustered when Hayley says a softball is the same thing as a baseball, and when she tosses a pitch so fast that he doesn't even see it, he tries to say it was illegal, as was her pitching underhanded, neither of which hold up. He's also especially chauvinistic, telling the girls they're not allowed on the field and to go home and play with Barbies before they get hurt. And in this film's constant rehashing of the first one, he hits a lot of the same story moments as Ham: getting into a heated argument with Singleton that devolves into them hurling juvenile insults at each other, hitting a baseball over the fence and into the Great Fear's yard, and being the one to really let David know that it's too hot to play on that particular day. Finally, at the end of the movie, Johnnie tells us that, after high school, Mac went into the Army, received a Purple Heart after getting wounded in the Gulf War, and joined the Peace Corps.

There are also two brothers on the team: Saul (Cole Evan Weiss) and Sammy, aka "Fingers" (Sean Berdy). While there's nothing that significant about Saul, Fingers is memorable for two things: being deaf and communicating through sign language, which Saul translates, and for being a little horndog. At the beginning, he knows everything there is to know about Hayley, with Saul saying, "It's his purpose in life to know all the facts about the ladies," and, when they're at the carnival, despite Saul's warning, he heads over to the kissing booth. He goes as far as to steal a pair of cowboy boots in order to meet the height requirement, and when the girl asks him if he's too young for this, he shakes his head while sporting a rather perverted smile on his face. He has the same expression when he nods after the guy at the booth asks if his mom said it was okay, and when she leans in, telling him to kiss her on the cheek, he grabs her head and plants a big, long, wet one right on her lips (he even takes her bubblegum right out of her mouth), with the guy having to literally pull him off. When Saul sees this, he tells the other kids to get their bikes, and Fingers joins them, riding in the passenger car attached to Saul's bike with a satisfied expression on his face, blowing the gum! At the end of the movie, Johnnie informs us, "Fingers and his brother Saul started a record label for a new kind of music called hiphop. They named their company 'Def Jam Records...' With the fortune he made in the music business, Fingers started the most successful gum company on Earth. You know it as 'Kissing Booth Bubblegum.'"

Finally, there's the black kid, Tarquell (Neilen Benvegnu). Although he doesn't do much, he's a bit more memorable than Kenny in the first one, mainly because he's the most overtly 70's character in the film, with the way he dresses and speaks. When David and the others first see Hayley at the beginning, Tarquell tells them what her name is, then adds, "Solid," while putting his fist up. He also mentions that she's liberated, which turns out to be a bigger factor than you may think initially. And his ultimate fate, according to Johnnie, is the weirdest: "Tarquell was abducted by aliens on March 21st, 1986, and no one ever saw him again." It's akin to how, in the first movie, Bertram was the one who disappeared completely after they went their separate ways, except with him, it was suggested he may have gotten really bad on drugs and OD'd.

At the beginning of the movie, after the boys first head for the Sandlot, the camera lingers on this blonde kid (Griffin Reilly Evans) in a brown leather jacket with tassels on the back, wearing sunglasses and cowboy boots, who watches them. He pops up a few more times here and there, always observing from a distance. Then, after several failed attempts to get the shuttle back, the kid shows up, exuding a lot of confidence that he can do it. Identifying himself only as "the Retriever," he explains that, when he was a kid, he went to retrieve his Frisbee, only to find that a dog had chewed it up. In retaliation, he took the dog's name-tag and it developed into a hobby he's been doing ever since. Seeing the Great Fear as "the ultimate challenge," he offers to get the shuttle back, along with the dog's tag. Since he's so confident, they decide to go along with him, and he crawls through a loose board in the fence. The Great Fear promptly sends him flying over the fence, into Hayley's pool, and after he gets out and shakes himself off, the Retriever declares that the Great Fear is no dog, that he's retiring, and they will never get the shuttle back. Yeah, all that build-up around this kid and it amounts to absolutely nothing. At the end of the movie, after the junk wall has come down and Mr. Mertle has decided to keep it down, the Retriever puts the chain with all of the name-tags he accumulated over the years around the Great Fear, or Goliath's, neck. And in a really cringe-inducing attempt at humor, Johnnie tells us, "His family moved to Australia, and he grew up to be the host of a popular Animal Planet television show."

While there was a character similar to Singleton (Reece Thompson) in the first film, he's much more of an antagonist. The snobbish captain of a local Little League team, Singleton is intent on taking the Sandlot from David and his friends, and when they show up at their field to challenge them, we see just how much of a douche he is. Not only does he immediately start insulting the others, especially Mac, whom he trades barbs with, but he also insults the girls by asking if they're keeping the field neat and tidy, as well as saying Mac plays like a girl. That especially enrages Hayley, who challenges him to a game that Friday, and he responds by calling her a tomboy. Like David and his gang, Singleton severely underestimates Hayley's abilities, and like Mac, tries to say that her method of pitching underhanded is illegal. Enraged when she strikes him out, Singleton proves to be a really poor sport when she's next about to score a home-run. Rather than just tagging her with the ball after he catches it, he hits her hard enough to reduce her to tears after she collapses. When the others, especially Mac, call him out on this, he coldly retorts, "She wanted to play with the big boys, that's what she gets!" That's when David decks him right in the face and throws him and his team out, declaring that the Sandlot is theirs. During the climactic chase between David and the Great Fear, Singleton gets caught up in it when they run through his field while he's in the middle of a game, repeatedly splashing him with muddy water when they run through a puddle.

While there were few significant adult characters in the first movie, consisting of just Scotty Smalls' parents and Mr. Mertle, there was some focus on the former, with Scotty trying to form a relationship with his stepfather and his mom encouraging him to make some friends; here, the adults are almost non-entities. The only parents we see are Hayley's, and her mother's (Teryl Rothery) one defining feature is that she's heavy into women's lib. In their first scene, she admonishes her husband for referring to Hayley as

"sweetheart" because, "Referring to Hayley with frilly nicknames is sexist. It negatively impacts her developing self-esteem." Hayley rolls her eyes at this, and when she's upset about David's seeming lack of interest in joining her and the others at the pool, her mother offers little comfort, telling her, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." There's a bit more to her father, Roger (Greg Germann), a NASA engineer who has a secret project in his garage, keeping it locked at all times. When Johnnie sneaks a peek and sees the model space shuttle he's built, he's awestruck. Moreover, Roger invites him to take the shuttle for a test flight, but on the morning when they agreed to meet up, he has to go out of town on business, unbeknownst to Johnnie. Thinking they'd meet up later to do it, Johnnie takes the shuttle out onto the Sandlot and, while waiting for Roger, accidentally hits the button, leading to the major conflict in the third act. Though Johnnie and Hayley were terrified that they'd all but destroyed NASA's future, it turns out that the blueprints were important, rather than the model itself. And unlike Scotty's stepfather, Roger never learns about the ordeal his model went through.

At the end of the movie, when Johnnie and David bring the Great Fear, or Goliath, up to Mr. Mertle's front door following the chase, James Earl Jones reprises the role, the only actor from the original film to do so (aside from David Mickey Evans as the narrator). When Johnnie tells him what happened, Mr. Mertle tells him and David about how the kids in the first movie went through the same thing and how they could've just asked him to get it for them. He goes on to mention how they were too scared to ask because of the bad rumors floating around about him, asking, "You believe that nonsense?" When Johnnie tells him that what he lost back there was, "The future of the United States space program," he responds, "Whew! That's somethin'," and when Johnnie is hesitant to answer him when he asks why he didn't just ask him to get it, he figures that bad reputation hasn't completely gone away. (Even if it hadn't, Johnnie should at least know better, being Scotty's brother who made friends with Mr. Mertle.) Though he initially comes off as angry about his junk wall, which he said took him three years to make, getting knocked over, he instead asks them to come over and walk Goliath twice a week, as he's not able to do it anymore. He also asks them to play baseball all summer so he can listen to the games, as he misses the original Sandlot kids. Finally, he intends to leave the fence and wall down, in order to dispel all the bad rumors. He's last seen sitting outside with Goliath, and when the Retriever comes around and gives the dog all of his tags, Mr. Mertle asks, "You wouldn't know anything about a kid in this neighborhood who goes around stealing dog tags, would ya?" The Retriever denies it, then runs off, saying his mother is calling for him, much to Mr. Mertle's amusement.

Like the first film, even though it's set in the San Fernando Valley, The Sandlot 2 was shot elsewhere; in this case, it was entirely in British Columbia, something that I never would've guessed (save for maybe some occasional instances of Canadian accents breaking through), as they did a good job of making the movie look hot and brightly sunny enough to be in California. Speaking of which, the movie does visually resemble the first one quite a bit, and doesn't come off as having been overly color-corrected in order to create that feeling, which I also appreciate.

Direction-wise, David Mickey Evans also doesn't get too fancy or stylized again, save for some instances of dramatic slow-mo, like when David watches Singleton hurt Hayley and during the epilogue; some old-fashioned kind of transitions, like side-swipes and irises and the like; dramatic close-ups here and there; and POV shots from the Great Fear. Speaking of which, like in the first movie, the one exception to the style rule is when Johnnie tells them the story of the Great Fear, with the picture turning black-and-white

as the camera zooms in on him when he begins telling it, and the entire "flashback" for the story is made up to look like an old, scratchy newsreel. Also like before, everything is exaggerated, from the melodramatic way in which it's shot and edited, with close-ups of the dog barking superimposed over a shot of the battleship anchor he was chained to (which is meant to look severely oversized), to the sound, meant to make the dog come off as monstrous, and moments of sped-up motion for the kid who liked to dress up as the Rapid Rocket. And in a funny nod to the girl in the red coat in Schindler's List, the boy's costume is the only bit of color during this section.

Save for some sidewalk shots, a big hill that David rides over while being chased by the Great Fear, and the boys being introduced right outside of their school, the filmmakers don't show much of the actual town this time, instead confining the action primarily to the Sandlot itself, Hayley's backyard, and Mr. Mertle's front yard, likely because anything else might've given away where it was filmed. That said, the location they found to stand in for the original Sandlot is good enough to where I can buy that it's the same place, and the junk wall makes for an interesting

substitute for the ordinary fence that was there before. Mr. Mertle's yard is, again, a pretty dusty area, with the house coming off as a tad imposing, although it doesn't feel quite as sinister as it was before and we don't get to see inside the house this time. Interior-wise, one of the few we do get is Hayley's house, which, along with the very nice backyard, with the swimming pool and such, shows that they are family of some means. The interior of the garage, which houses Roger's model space shuttle, is definitely

among the more interesting interiors, even though we don't see that much of it. The other noteworthy interior is this Bigfoot exhibit at the local carnival, which is full of stuff like supposed Bigfoot fecal remains, plaster casts of footprints, a projection of what seems to be a still from the Patterson film on a wall in the back, fake skeletons, drawings, and some stuffed figures of a bear and Bigfoot. Speaking of the carnival, while we do see plenty of rides, like the Ferris wheel and the Trabant, the only other part of it we see is the kissing booth where Fingers gets in huge trouble. And finally, during the chase with the Great Fear, they run through a construction yard, although it's not used to its potential, as we'll get into later.

Another thing the sequel has in common with the first one is that, while it's a period piece, it doesn't try to draw attention to it. Other than some occasional examples of clothing, jewelry, and hairstyles, especially with Tarquell, some vehicles here and there, beanbag chairs and the old-fashioned TV set in the scene in Hayley's living room, as well as the overall look of that room, and possibly the kissing booth at the carnival, it feels pretty timeless. In fact, the most overtly 70's aspects of the film are in regards to what was going on in the culture at the time, with

interest in the progress of NASA, given how this was just three years after the moon landing, and the influence of the Women's Liberation Movement, with Hayley's mother being very overzealous about it and Hayley herself, despite being a bit embarrassed by her mother's attitude, still wanting to be treated as an equal by the guys and having to fight against their chauvinistic attitudes.

And I'd also be lying if I said the movie didn't bring back fond childhood summertime memories like the first one does. I can't help but smile when I see the kids hanging out with each other day after day, playing baseball, going to the carnival, and having a pool party in Hayley's backyard, as it does make me think of what my cousins and I did during the summer. We may have never played baseball, as none of us had any interest in it, but we definitely spent a fair amount of time at public pools and cookouts, and Mikey did sometimes spend the night with me the day

before the Fourth of July. Speaking of which, what I can relate to the most is Johnnie's obsession with getting the biggest, most colorful fireworks possible to shoot off on the Fourth. I wasn't obsessed with it to the point where I would save up a lot of money just to buy enormous amounts of fireworks (my parents would buy them for me), but when the Fourth came around, I did want to get as many as I possibly could, from rockets to smoke-bombs and sparklers, especially if Mikey was with me.

But, that's about all the good things I can say (save for the soundtrack, which I'll get into later), as the movie is, in general, an uninspired retread of the first. It starts out okay, with the notion of the Sandlot gang having to deal with and accept girls onto their private baseball field and as part of their team, and David and Hayley's budding relationship, but it doesn't take long for it to get bogged down in copying so much from the first one. I don't know what possessed David Mickey Evans to, one, agree to make this movie to begin with (other than a paycheck, he probably

decided, since they were likely going to make it with or without him, that he might as well be there for it), and two, redo so many of the character archetypes, plot-points and scenes, and virtually the entire third act. He even recreates exact shots from the first movie, like a close-up of the kids' feet on the ground when they arrive and see the girls on their field, POV shots from the Great Fear when he's in his yard or chasing David, and even genuinely recycled close-ups of the Beast's drooling maw to stand in for that of the Great Fear. Most of the details Evans came up with to

try to differentiate the story are similarly uninspired, like an important model space shuttle being the thing they need to get back from Mr. Mertle's yard, the Retriever showing up, only to prove to be no help whatsoever, and the different methods they use to try to get the model. I do kind of like the revelation that David was actually the kid featured in the Great Fear's backstory, with the dog later chasing him through the same spots he did in Johnnie's recounting of it, as it gives some real world context to this urban

legend that we never got with the Beast. Also, since I thought Benny being inspired to face the Beast from a visit by the spirit of Babe Ruth in a dream was a bit much, I much prefer that Johnnie convinces David to do it in order to help him and Hayley (it would've been nice to actually see that onscreen, though). But it's not nearly enough to keep this from feeling so very hollow and insincere, and the idea of David having to face his greatest fear doesn't really amount to much. And finally, the fact that Evans tries to

virtually recreate the epilogue talking about how the kids all eventually went their separate ways, complete with the same visual of each of them disappearing in the middle of a slow motion ballgame, as Johnnie tells us of their ultimate fates, really makes me shake my head, as it feels so artificial and insincere.

I'm also not big on some of the humor they employ this time around. Some of it's okay, like when Johnnie runs like hell during the opening, as the others try to beat him up when they think he's a saboteur; the initial conflict between the boys and the girls about how girls shouldn't play baseball, Hayley throwing their childish insults back at them, Mac getting really frustrated and showing them the difference between a softball and a baseball, Johnnie running back and forth between the two groups as mediator until he's completely exhausted, and David's frustration when

the other boys are enjoying lemonade and cookies with the girls in the prettied up dugout; and the comedy that comes about from their general personalities, as shallow as some of them might be. Like with Ham and Phillips, Mac and Singleton throw throw raunchy, juvenile barbs at each other, with Singleton making jabs at Mac's weight, calling him "doughboy" and "porky," as well as "Gomer Pyle" and telling him, "Your mama wears combat boots," while Mac comes back with, "Your mama's so ugly, when you were born, they slapped her!", and,

"You're a fart-sniffing, road-apple-chewing, scab-licking female dog!... You're ugly, your mama dresses you funny, you stink like toe fungus and you ride the short school bus!" Like in the first movie, those are the kind of insults you'd expect to hear kids that age hurl at each other, so it's passable. But then, there are moments like when, after Mac nearly gets eaten alive by the Great Fear while trying to get the model via the tunnel he dug beneath the fence, he ends up crapping himself, with the others commenting on the smell and

him walking away with a big stain in the back of his pants, farting slightly. And before that, when they lower Hayley's cat down onto the shuttle using a pulley system, she goes from the fluffy cat she is to a hairless one after her encounter with the Great Fear, during which you can see a burst of cat hair behind the fence. Way too cartoonish on that last one, as it is when the Retriever is tossed over the fence and into Hayley's pool. Finally, like Squints faking drowning in order to get a kiss from Wendy Peffercorn, Fingers

clamping his lips onto the kissing booth girl's face to the point where the guy has to literally pull him off is played off as funny, but it's more uncomfortable than anything else. In fact, I'd say it's worse, because this does most definitely qualify as sexual assault, especially since he went in so deep that he got her gum. It's even more unsettling in how, aside from his deafness, Fingers' one memorable characteristic is that he is such a horny little guy, with it being mentioned that he's pulled this before. And while this didn't lead to him getting together with that girl later in life, it did inspire him to create a successful bubblegum company based on it.

Going back to the Great Fear, everything involving him is a true testament to how creatively bankrupt this film is. The idea that, in the ten years since the first one, there's now another big, scary dog behind the Sandlot, complete with his own local urban legend about being mean and chained up back there after supposedly killing a kid (or, according to Johnnie, possibly infecting him through his bite to where he now barks and howls like a dog) is already lazy screenwriting, as is the similar dramatization of Johnnie's telling of the story (which James Wilson

doesn't narrate nearly as well as Chauncey Leopardi), but so is the similar situation of something valuable ending up back there and the kids trying to get it back, only to be thwarted every time. The same also goes for Mr. Mertle still having the reputation of being a mean, antisocial old man, with the kids being too afraid to ask him to get the shuttle for them, which, as I mentioned earlier, shouldn't be the case, given how Johnnie's brother, Benny, and the original Sandlot gang became friendly with him. They also don't succeed at making the Great Fear come off as

intimidating to the kids as the Beast was to the original gang. Instead of the oversized, monstrous-looking puppets used for the Beast up until the real dog was first seen, they instead use the actual dog almost the entire time (the only similar element in the flashback is the ship anchor the dog was supposedly chained to) and attempt to make him come off as a monster through menacing POV shots, the appearance of dripping "monster drool," lots of bones around his

doghouse, and some awkward instances of matting to make him look bigger than he really is. After Johnnie tells the story, he uses lantern to reveal the image of a skull on the junk wall, and they even copy the giant footfall/rippling water effect from Jurassic Park with Hayley's swimming pool when the Great Fear is closing in on Mac during the tunnel sequence. Not only is the dog's reveal during the climax less of a revelation we already know what he really looks like but he's also not as big and intimidating as the Beast was, making it hard to believe he was capable of doing everything he did to the kids.

To the movie's credit, they don't totally rehash the methods the kids use in trying to get back the shuttle. Most of them center around trying to attach a hook that they threw over the fence to the shuttle, first by using a contraption made out of bizarre toys that the Great Fear grabs and yanks out of their hands, before sending it flying over the fence and into Hayley's pool; second with her cat, hoping she'll grab onto the shuttle with her claws, but the dog thwarts that as well; third with the Retriever, who also gets tossed over the fence and into the pool (they also pull the old

joke of him telling them not to open the board in the fence, no matter what he says, only for him to almost immediately begin yelling for them to do so); and finally, Mac's plan of digging a tunnel underneath the fence, crawling through and reaching up through the ground, and attaching the hook. The latter is probably the funniest, as when Mac sticks his hand through and tries to grab the hook, the Great Fear pins his hand down with his foot, causing him to panic, and he uses his other hand to shove his aluminum baseball bat up

through the hole, only for it to get bent, much to his horror. He yells at them over the walkie-talkie to get him out and they pull frantically on the rope tied around him. Moreover, the Great Fear chases him back through the tunnel, and after he frantically crawls out, they cover the hole with a table and hold it there when the dog tries to break through until he gives up and goes away. And while I don't like the potty humor at the end, it is funny how Mac, covered in dirt, is so traumatized by what just happened that he talks to the others in a high-pitched, utterly broken tone.

Then, there's Johnnie's confrontation with the Great Fear and the ensuing chase, which is probably the lowest point in terms of creativity. You have it all: David putting on a brand of shoes supposedly meant to make him run faster, him climbing over the fence and facing off with the dog (he shuts his eyes and shakes his head like Benny did), the dog barks at him, knowing he wants the shuttle, and David goes for it. There is a bit of change in that he uses his Rapid Rocket cape and cowl as a bullfighter's cape, as well as to temporarily blind the Great Fear when he

charges at him, then he runs, hooks the chain to the shuttle, and as it's being pulled back through the tunnel, he has to dodge the Great Fear again and get back over the fence. This confrontation is done almost entirely in slow-motion and cutting, and it comes off as very poorly choreographed. And then, the dog breaks his chain, climbs over the wall, and chases after David, who takes off on his bicycle, with the others following on their own bikes. This chase is nowhere near as fast-paced, thrilling, or fun as the one in the original, as the action is done either in moments

of dramatic slow-motion or sped up action, or comes off as shockingly casual. None of the bystanders are all that fazed by it either, save for some people in line at the movie theater who get knocked down by the force of the chase, and it doesn't even get that exciting or cool when they run through the construction site, save for an okay Evel Knievel-like stunt that David has to perform on his bike to escape. After that, he abandons the bike altogether and runs back to the Sandlot on foot, throwing various objects in the 

Great Fear's path that do nothing to slow the dog down. Like the first movie, it ends with both of them jumping back over the fence, which then comes down, but the only difference is that the dog drags David out of the tunnel when he fell through it. The whole sequence is set to Randy Bachman's Takin' Care of Business, which may be a good song, but it doesn't inspire excitement at all.

I hinted at it with some of the shots of the Great Fear, but there are truly awful visual effects here, in a movie where you wouldn't expect to see any. They mainly revolve around the rockets, specifically the big one that Johnnie shoots up into the sky during the Fourth of July celebration, exploding into a pattern that looks like the American flag, and when he accidentally launches Roger's model space shuttle. They involve really bad CGI smoke and fire, and horrendous compositing with the live-action elements, none more egregious than the shot of

Johnnie watching the shuttle lift off (amazingly, though, the shot of it in orbit afterward doesn't look that bad, as you can see). They had the good sense to use an actual prop for when it comes back down and lands behind the fence, but shots like that are what remind you that, as similar to the first as The Sandlot 2 may be, it's still an unnecessary, low-rent, direct-to-video sequel that shouldn't have been made.

Yet another similarity between the first film and the sequel is that the soundtrack is more memorable than the actual soundtrack. Unlike the first film, though, there's little about the sequel's score, composed by Laura Karpman, that stands out, save for this electric guitar motif for the Sandlot boys, a more sly, wily theme for Hayley and the girls, and a big, triumphant piece for when David first confronts the Great Fear. There are also some attempts at emotion and childhood whimsy in the score, as well as an attempt at a menacing motif for the Great Fear, but none of it is as memorable as it should be. As for the soundtrack, you have Dizzy by Tommy Roe when David first meets Hayley; Sugar, Sugar by Ron Dante, which plays when Fingers forces a kiss on the girl at the kissing booth, making that scene all the more uncomfortable; Hornets Nest by Los Straightjackets, when the Great Fear chases the kid during the flashback; Summer by WAR, which plays when Johnnie buys his fireworks and during Hayley's pool party; California Baby, during the fireworks scene that night; Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum, both when Johnnie accidentally launches the shuttle and when it lands in the Great Fear's yard; and finally, as mentioned, Takin' Care of Business during the chase.

While not a complete travesty by any means, The Sandlot 2's biggest crime is that it simply doesn't need to exist. It has decent young actors in the main roles (for the most part), an appealing visual style, good locations and interiors, a nice soundtrack, some funny moments, and does manage to give off some of the same nostalgic vibes as the original film, but on the whole, it's little more than an uninspired retread of much of the first's story, plot-points, scenes, and even some shots, none of them done as well and some even coming off as horrendously bad, and it also has some instances of humor that don't work, bad visual effects, a really subpar music score, and an overall, hollow feeling. Though ultimately harmless and watchable, if nothing else, unless you're completely curious, I'd suggest just sticking with the first film.