Best F(r)iends Volume Two

2018 neo-noir sequel

Rating: 10/20 (Josh: 2/20)

Plot: Following the events of Volume One, best f(r)iend Greg Sestero and his girlfriend hoist Tommy Wiseau's ATM/safe into their mini van and head to Colorado. They run into some problems along the way.

This one might be technically a better and at least more coherent film than Volume One, but it's a complete disappointment anyway. It's a very different movie than Volume One, and that doesn't really make a lot of sense. The first was an absurdist buddy movie with surrealistic touches and lots of intentional comedy. This one is desert noir, and although it has some humor, there's more of a darkness to the weirdness. It's hard to imagine that taking the entire reconstructive mortician and selling of gold teeth out of the storyline would make something more dark though. The sheen is gone, probably because this one largely takes place in one setting, a stark desert ranch. I usually enjoy movies that take place in deserts, and this movie does take advantage of some of the scenery with some nice landscape shots and some fancy drone footage. Most spectacular are shots of these mounds of round rocks that look like the type of place that can only really exist in somebody's imagination. Other than some sloppy-looking, overly-saturated shots, this is a good looking movie.

The problem is the amount of Tommy Wiseau in this. Sestero says, in an interview with TMZ that was shown before the main feature and might actually have been more entertaining than the movie itself, that his primary reason for writing this screenplay was to give his friend Wiseau a part that was perfect for him. In Volume One, Wiseau is pretty much just playing himself, the only character I think he can actually play. But as always, he's magnetic, and it's impossible to keep your eyes off him when he's on the screen. The plot of Volume Two centers on Sestero's character and his girlfriend as they try to get an ATM/safe open, and Wiseau is on the flash-forward fringes until a ludicrous action-oriented climax. At least I think it's a flash-forward. It's really hard to tell because the scenes where he's talking to a handcuffed Sestero while playing a warped/off-center 45 of "Lemon Tree" are hard to place in the chronology of the narrative. Those scenes, as well as almost all of Wiseau's scenes, have him in this knight helmet that makes him look even more ridiculous than he normally looks and sound even more unintelligible.

Sestero certainly didn't give his character much to do. He's got the range of a cardboard cut-out of Greg Sestero in this, and his character is mostly tasked with responding to others or being bossed around. He's almost more prop than character. The other performers are a little more interesting. The girlfriend is played by Kristen StephensonPino, and she might actually have some acting chops. It's hard to tell with a script like this that doesn't do her many favors. The proprietor of a bed and breakfast, an actor whose name I can't actually find, looks like he hopped over from the Twin Peaks set or something during some downtime. He's not exactly a Norman Bates, but he seems like the type who would hang in the same circles. Uncle Rick, played by Rick Edwards, brings just the right amount of quirk and creepiness to his character. He also seems to be given every opportunity he can to show off his muscles. Edwards easily has the best-worst lines in this thing, and he speaks so differently from the other characters that you wonder if somebody other than Greg wrote a lot of his stuff. I really liked this guy who played a locksmith named Doc Seagar. He's played by George Killingsworth who I'm surprised hasn't had a more prolific career as a background creepster.

The tonal shift from the first movie makes this an odd sequel, especially since it's come out just a couple months after the first one. It does have a little to say about friendship, betrayal, and I guess forgiveness, though the latter is so abrupt that it doesn't really work. Likely personal connections and film-school symbolism abound. Josh and I discussed the meanings of lemons, relevant in a flashback and in the use of that "Lemon Tree" song, and I think I've settled on them representing a new start or something equally trite. It's like the kind of symbolism I would have included in stories that I wrote in middle school. There's also character who inexplicably shows up at the very end, potentially setting up a sequel. He's probably the least-interesting character in the entire film, something that doesn't make a third installment of Best F(r)iends--a title I'm frankly tired of saying to people, by the way--promising. But I'm pretty sure he's actually only there as a symbol, too, a reminder of what these f(r)iends have been through together. Maybe. I might be giving Sestero and company way too much credit.

And no, that clown family from Volume One is never mentioned again. That might be the biggest disappointment of all.