"I have an idea" someone said, "lets make a sequel to Meatballs and have it be completely moronic and groan inducing!". After the movie was made and released the person said "dude, I was making a joke". And so Meatballs 2 was made and while it is in fact about a summer camp and more of a sequel to the original than the third one is, I still think this one is the worst of the bunch. Granted a few jokes make me chuckle which is why I nicely gave this movie a three rather than a one or two. The plot? Why bother, it involves some dude who does not want to be a counselor, an alien, and a brawl for it all boxing match between two summer camps, one regular and a military type one. That is the gist of it, and if you are wondering, yes the alien is friendly and probably inserted thanks to the success of E.T. two years prior. Bill Murray is not in this movie and can you blame him, while they made this movie he was making Ghostbusters. Instead they got Richard Mulligan, who I like in some roles, not this one. They also begin easing this series of movies into more of a teen sex series, but only lightly in this one.

It's another summer at Camp Sasquash run by Coach Giddy (Richard Mulligan). Col. Bat Jack Hershey who runs the opposing Camp Patton threatens to buy up Sasquash. Flash Carducci is forced to be counselor-in-training as community service. He's a rebel and doesn't care about camp. Boomer is the idiot counselor. The female counselors aim to show virginal Cheryl a penis. The little campers encounter a space alien left by his parents to attend camp. They hide him calling him Meatball.

The original has Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, and Bill Murray. This one has a space alien. It's so stupid that it's weirdly intriguing. Even with the shocking alien addition, this fades into something bland. The comedy is never there. The actors are not funny although there are a couple of recognizable faces like Paul Reubens. It is not interesting enough to be camp.

Yes, Meatballs Part II may have no Bill Murray, but what it does have is Ken Wiederhorn as the director. Somewhere, somehow, someone saw Eyes of a Stranger and Shock Waves and said, that's the guy to make a teen movie. Actually, I'm being silly, because we all know - we do, right? - that Ken also made King Frat and that alone probably qualified him for this. Or punitive damages.

Richard Mulligan plays Giddy, the owner of Camp Sasquatch. He's battling Colonel Batjack Hershy (Hamilton Camp, who played the robot in Starcrash),who owns Camp Patton and wants the entire lake for himself. They decide that an end of the summer boxing match is a great way to settle matters, so Giddy recruits an inner-city tough kid named Flash (John Mengatti, Tag: The Assassination Game) for that pugilistic task, but the kid just really wants to crash the custard truck with Cheryl (Kim Richards).

Also, of course, the kids at the camp have an alien named Meathead staying with them. He's played by Felix Silla and voiced by Archie Hann, who was one of the Juicy Fruits/Beach Bums/Undead in Phantom of the Paradise.

This movie has some decent actors in it, like Misty Row from Hee Haw, John Larroquette, a pre-Pee-Wee Paul Ruebens, Jason Hervey, Elayne Boosler, Tammy Taylor (Don't Go Near the Park),Blackie Dammit and Donald Gibb. Just seeing a few of those names and I knew that I had to watch this.