Major League II Review

Five years on from the amiable original about a struggling baseball team who overcome adversity and crap players to — hey! — win the league comes a sequel so crass, so unfunny and so utterly devoid of anything resembling a plot that one can wonder how — fiscal reasons aside — it ever got the green light. Indeed, so negligible are Messrs Berenger’s and Bernsen’s roles herein, that it must be assumed they’re simply onboard to fulfil contractual obligations. Slightly more upfront is Sheen’s Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughan who has abandoned his punk-like haircut and attitude in favour of yuppie suits, garish ties and a girlfriend in Alison Doody’s plastic press agent. She’s out to improve his image by sending him on chat-shows and putting him in personal-hygiene commercials — the results of which we’re no doubt meant to cream ourselves laughing at his tragic incompetence. Back at the ball game, however, only one season has passed, but already the Cleveland Indians, with Bernsen as their new owner are back to their old bungling ways. In comes Omar Epps, as Wesley Snipes replacement, and Eric Bruskotter as a Woody Harrelson clone, coming up with doltish homilies such as “Women — can’t live with them, and they can’t pee standing up.” The “humour” is of the most puerile variety, the “drama” consists of Sheen’s choosing the right woman between his schoolteacher ex and the increasingly bitchy Doody. Otherwise, it’s an endless baseball game that proves a moronic waste of anyone’s time.