Holiday Season 2022: The Binge 2: It’s a Wonderful Binge Review

The Binge 2: It’s a Wonderful Binge is a Christmas-themed sequel to the 2020 Hulu comedy The Binge which was more or less a parody of the popular Purge franchise. Both films are set in the near future when all alcohol and drugs have been made illegal except for one day a year called Binge Day where anyone can participate in the fun. Unlike the past, this year’s Binge Day happens to miraculously lands on Christmas Eve and follows characters both new and old throughout the day as they get into all sorts of misadventures.

The Binge was released in the summer of 2020 to mostly negative reviews from both critics and audiences alike, garnering not very much in the way of buzz or talk, which makes this sequel’s existence a bit surprising and confusing to say the least. Confounding things even further is that this sequel lost 3 of its original cast members (and its biggest stars) along the way in Skyler Gisondo, Vince Vaughn, and Grace Van Dien. Those three were easily the best parts of the first film and provided its biggest laughs especially Vaughn. Suffice it to say that this sequel had everything going against it and while it thankfully isn’t a complete trainwreck and certainly has its moments, it’s about as lazy and unnecessary as a comedy sequel can get and unfortunately fails to surpass the low bar set by its predecessor.

While The Binge 2: It’s a Wonderful Binge doesn’t have much going for it, it does manage to work a bit better than one would expect it to. It’s never a good sign when the lead from the first film doesn’t come back for the sequel let alone multiple cast members, but the cast here does a fairly good job at holding it all together amidst there absence. Darden and Franco as Hags and Andrew are the main leads this time around and both have greatly improved as actors since the first film and still have strong chemistry together. This film also brings in a lot of talented comedians in supporting roles such as Tim Meadows and Nick Swardson who provide its biggest and most consistent laughs. Even though the jokes miss way more than they hit, this sequel might be the slightly funnier film out of the two mainly due to the latter’s supporting cast and their style of humor.

Though at this point there’s really no getting around it, this is not a good film at all nor the most well made. For every joke that lands, there’s about 7 or 8 that fall on their face or go on for way too long. It’s very clear this cast was allowed to improvise a lot of the dialogue and it really shows because some of the humor makes no sense and couldn’t have been more unfunny if they tried. There are a few clever and mildly-amusing jokes but for the most part, they’re all low-brow and just lazy beyond belief. The film just feels like a collection of subplots stitched together to create a feature length film rather than having a central narrative like the first which lends more towards a Christmas-themed film. Most of the subplots are straight up ridiculous and as a whole this feature far too many characters who serve hardly any purpose. Meanwhile, the film is also shot like a sitcom and simply feels very cheaply put together.

In the end, the Christmas setting does give the film a bit of heart and some Christmas spirit but other than that, it is just as unfunny, lame, and as underwhelming as the first film. This sequel might have worked as an hour-long Christmas special but at 98-minutes, it runs out of gas fast and doesn’t have nearly enough substance or laughs to accommodate its running time. Those who enjoyed the first film will probably like this one but those who were disappointed by the first film will be just as let down this time around. Though it may be far from the worst film of the year, it is arguably the most unnecessary. Like seriously, who asked for this?

*still courtesy of Hulu*

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Connor Carey

www.connorsmoviereviews.com/