Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses

1994 sequel

Rating: 13/20

Plot: It's five years after the Cowboys do America, and the titular worst band in the world have fallen on hard times in Mexico. Tequila has taken the lives of some of the bandmates and gotten the rest of them in trouble. A savior arrives, Vladimir the manager returning after abandoning them at the end of the last movie and "never being heard from again." He's renamed himself Moses and promises to help get the Cowboys back to their native land. Promised land, I guess. Before they depart for Europe, Vladimir steals the Statue of Liberty's nose for reasons that are never explained very well.

What better way to finish off a year of movies than with an Aki Kaurismaki movie? This isn't as solid as the first Leningrad Cowboy movie unfortunately, but it does have my favorite actor Matti Pellonpaa in it and a scattering of funny bits. The musical numbers are all pretty good, my favorite being the one sung by "Elijah," the guy who's chasing them around for most of the movie trying to steal back the nose. That song ("Kili Watch") is just pure bliss. There's a lot of Biblical satire here, some which doesn't work at all. Pellonpaa's quoting of the Bible ("You shall not eat any disgusting thing. Also, you should not cook a kid in his mother's milk." [Wheezy laugh]) is great. The burning bush or water-from-the-rock scenes are a little too silly and random. This is filled with enough absurd comedy to make it worthwhile for fans of the first movie or for Aki Kaurismaki in general, but it's not exactly a great movie.