Hardbodies 2 (1986)

Just over a year ago, I covered a 1980s sex comedy called Hardbodies. It involved three older men hiring a younger man to help them pick up women at the beach. All the women were physically fit, hence the name Hardbodies. Muscles and toned bodies and all that stuff. It wasn’t a great movie. No sex comedies are. They’re inherently sexist at their core, for the most part. But it was charming in a way. It had some positives to counter-balance the negatives. They didn’t outweigh the negatives. They simply balanced them out a little bit.

Soon after I saw that movie for Sunday “Bad” Movies, I discovered that there was a sequel. There had been a follow-up made a couple years later. If it was more of the same, I was in. The first movie had a killer soundtrack and jokes that somewhat worked. It had performances that hammed it up in the right ways. Most of all, it had actual characters and an actual story. It was an entertaining enough movie that I was happy to revisit in sequel form.

Sadly, the sequel didn’t live up to the potential set by the first film. Hardbodies 2 followed a film crew as they were making their own sex comedy. It was kind of a sex comedy within a sex comedy. Scotty Palmer (Brad Zutaut) was the star of a sex comedy directed by Zacharly (Alba Francesca) and produced by Logan (James Karen). The problem was that they didn’t have a romantic lead. Luckily, Scotty found one in the Greek town where they were filming. Cleo (Fabiana Udenio) took on the role of his romantic lead and they built a relationship both on and off screen.

The story might sound a little better than that of the first film. Instead of a guy teaching older men to pick up women, you had a guy falling in love with his co-star on a film being shot in Greece. It was supposed to be the same guy, but they were essentially different characters, so I’ll be treating them as such. The romance should provide a better central story than sleazy men being sleazy. Yet, it didn’t work out that way. There was something about how the story was handled in the first film compared to how it was handled in the sequel that flipped the expectations and made the sequel dramatically worse. Or, at the very least, an extremely disappointing follow-up. To be truthful, it wasn’t just one something. There were a bunch of somethings.

First off, there was a difference in tonal consistency between the two films. Hardbodies was able to ride the line between glorified sleaze and comedy, creating something that stood out. Was it the pinnacle of quality film? Not in the least. The people behind the movie did, however, know exactly what kind of movie they were making. They had a vision and they followed through on it. The sequel didn’t have that sense of stability.

Hardbodies 2 had a bunch of competing tones that never fit together in a satisfying way. There was the excessive nudity of the movie-within-the-movie that went further than I remember the first film going. It seemed like no woman in that movie, aside from the lead, ever wore a top. Then there was the romance between Scotty and Cleo, which played like a romantic comedy instead of a sex comedy. There was meta humour as the movie-within-a-movie mirrored what was happening to the actors at certain points. Finally, there was the slapstick comedy happening with the cast and crew of the movie as they were making it. There were too many styles of comedy that never really meshed. The sequel could never choose a lane.

The second thing worth bringing up is the writing of the characters. Now, this isn’t a knock against any of the performances in either Hardbodies or Hardbodies 2. The performances for nearly every character in each film fit the roles they were given. Everyone did the best they could to embody the characters. The problem was the severe drop-off between the quality of the characters in Hardbodies and the characters in Hardbodies 2.

Let’s start with the main characters of each movie. By that, I mean the one main character from each movie. Hardbodies had Scotty. He was a charismatic guy who spent his time picking up women around the beach. He had a sort of girlfriend, but not quite. He was also a slob who didn’t pay his rent. His landlord evicted him, and he was sleeping on the beach. To earn some money, Scotty took a job as a consultant for three older men, helping them learn how to pick up women at the beach. Eventually, he realized that what they were doing was wrong and got revenge on them. Well, he specifically got revenge on the apparent leader of the three men, who had become a massive dick through the movie. Once that was over, he made up with his almost girlfriend and, if I remember correctly, turned her into an actual girlfriend.

Follow that up with Hardbodies 2, where the main character was a new version of Scotty. He was the star of a sex comedy who became romantically involved with the co-star he discovered in Greece. He pursued her, even though he had a fiancé. Cleo found out he had a fiancé and cut off their blossoming relationship. It didn’t matter, though, because his fiancé was cheating on him with co-star Sean Kingley (Curt Wilmot). Scotty and Cleo got to be together and went off, happily, into the sky on a plane as the movie wrapped.

As you can see, the Scotty in Hardbodies seemed to have a full personality, while the Scotty of Hardbodies 2 seemed like his whole personality was simply that he was an actor. Hardbodies gave the main character an arc where he learned something and grew. He learned that manipulating women at the beach to sleep with you made you an asshole, and he didn’t want to be that asshole. Hardbodies 2 made the main character’s arc about his romance. He wanted the romance so much he cheated on his fiancé. She cheated on him, so it was okay, and he got the romance. He didn’t learn anything or grow. He just wanted something and got it. The full arc in Hardbodies was more compelling than the half-assed one in Hardbodies 2.

The third, and most obvious, difference between the two films was the music. A large part of the success of Hardbodies was the use of rock music on the soundtrack. My opinion of this could be partially clouded by my preference of rock over other genres, and I’m admitting that right now, but I still feel the need to bring up the music in Hardbodies. There’s something about how the music was integrated into that movie that elevated what could have been just another standard sex comedy.

There’s a lot to love about the music in Hardbodies. There was the montage that I love where it’s the various characters standing through the sunroof of a limousine, which I think is one of the best straight montages ever put to film. It’s one of my favourites, at least. But that’s not all. Throughout the entirety of the film, the band Vixen was featured as Diaper Rash. This was pre their big 80s hair metal fame. They were somewhere in between the style of The Runaways and the style that they would become. Utilizing the band as characters in the movie made the music an integral part of the storytelling. Having the music be an integral part of the storytelling helped define a tone. That tone was consistent with the characters, performances, and story. It brought everything together.

Hardbodies 2 didn’t have that glue. There wasn’t a consistent musical style. There wasn’t any real memorable music at all. There were no bangers, though the characters were bangers of a different kind. Perhaps it is just my expectations based on seeing the first film that make it feel this way, but there was a hole in the center of the movie by not having a memorable soundtrack. It felt like going from theatrical American Pie movies to American Pie Presents: Beta House. Sure, there’s a story there and some characters, but where’s the music? There should have been something. There wasn’t.

I completely understand if you think that most of my points are me complaining simply because I didn’t enjoy Hardbodies 2 as much as Hardbodies. To an extent, they are. But I think it’s also important to look at factors that could explain why it was a step down. There were certain things that didn’t quite match up, which affected the overall quality of the movie. The lack of a consistent tone made the sequel feel messier. It was less refined in its crass humour because it didn’t know what kind of jokes it wanted to tell. It threw everything at the wall hoping something would stick instead of crafting jokes that fit the story being told. The omission of character growth for the main character made the story that much less compelling. He didn’t become a better or worse person. He was the exact same person at the beginning as the end, which wasn’t as fun to watch. And the music wasn’t there, either. This isn’t my way of saying that Hardbodies was a great film. It’s my way of saying the sequel was worse.

Sex comedies were all the rage in the 1980s. Thanks to movies like Porky’s and Revenge of the Nerds, the sex comedy genre saw massive success. With that success came a lot of derivative entries. Hardbodies did something to try and stand out. Hardbodies 2 became one of the derivative ones, made for a quick paycheck. It didn’t even capitalize on the Hardbodies name. I don’t know what else to say. It was a major disappointment.

Hopefully these notes will be less disappointing:

• Hardbodies (week 392) and Hardbodies 2 were directed by Mark Griffiths.
• The most recognizable actor in Hardbodies 2 was James Karen. He was previously seen in Hercules in New York (week 68).
• Robert Rhine popped up in both Aliens vs. Titanic (week 283) Hardbodies 2.
• Mark Kubr returned from Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster (week 390) to appear in Hardbodies 2.
• Finally, there were three people who appeared in Hardbodies (week 392) and Hardbodies 2. They were Louise Baker, Roberta Collins, and Sorrells Pickard.
• Have you seen Hardbodies 2? Have you even seen the first one? What were your thoughts about the movies? Which one was better and why? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.
• If you have any movies you want to suggest for me to watch in future Sunday “Bad” Movies installments, let me know. You can message me on Twitter or drop the suggestion in the comments. I’m open to pretty much anything.
• Be sure to check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram for more fun things about the movies I watch for this blog.
• Now for a look forward to what I’ll be checking out next week. It’ll be another sequel, but not a sequel to anything that has been covered. That’s because the first film in the franchise was actually a really good movie. It’s the sequel that doesn’t hold up and I’ll maybe be getting into why. Independence Day: Resurgence will be the subject of the next post and I hope you join me on my journey through that movie. See you next week.

Tyler Perry's A Fall From Grace (2020)

Tyler Perry hit the scene in 1998 with the play I Know I’ve Been Changed. For many years, he toiled away in theatre, creating play after play after play. He would write them. He would direct them. He would produce them, and frequently star in them. A year later, he would produce the first of many plays featuring what would become his most famous character, Madea. He had played her brother Joe in his first play, but the introduction of Madea in I Can Do Bad All by Myself would change entertainment forever.

Seven years and seven plays later, Tyler Perry transitioned into film. He wrote, produced, and starred in Diary of a Mad Black Woman. It was based on the second Madea play. He would direct the sequel, which would be the beginning of a famous directorial career. Most of his plays would eventually be adapted into films, including the strikingly different Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor. Other movies would come along that weren’t based on his plays, as well, such as this week’s movie.

A Fall from Grace was Tyler Perry’s first foray into Netflix filmmaking. Public defender Jasmine Bryant (Bresha Webb) was tasked with getting a client, Grace Waters (Crystal Fox), to sign a guilty plea for murdering her husband, Shannon DeLong (Mehcad Brooks). As Jasmine investigated the case, she realized there was more to it than a clean-cut murder. She convinced Grace to forgo the plea and try for a trial.

I’ve only seen three Tyler Perry movies. They were all part of Sunday “Bad” Movies. There was A Fall from Grace, obviously. That’s this week’s movie. I watched The Single Moms Club a few years ago. A Fall from Grace reminded me of the first Tyler Perry movie I saw, though. It had many similarities to Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor. The stories were different. The characters were different. But there were similar beats between the two movies that showed how similar they were. Tyler Perry was telling different stories in a familiar way.

The main idea behind each movie was to tell the story of a romance gone bad through a flashback from one of the characters involved. Think back to Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor. The movie began with a couple going into counselling. The counselor decided to relate a story she knew to the struggle they were going through. The story turned out to be her younger years, when she made a mistake in her marriage, and it cost her the marriage and her health. The movie then returned to the present day and followed a little bit of her life before the credits rolled.

A Fall from Grace didn’t bookend the story in quite the same way. The whole movie wasn’t a flashback to the whirlwind romance and eventual unfortunate turn. Instead, that story came some time into the movie when Jasmine finally sat down with Grace to get her account of the events. Grace told her about meeting Shannon, their quickly blossoming romance, and how he changed after they were married. She told Jasmine about how her life began to fall apart and how Shannon was behind everything. Then she recounted the murder.

Though the two movies took different approaches to get to the flashbacks, the flashbacks to the romances were still a major part of the story. The entire story, minus the bookends, of Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor was told through flashback. The important background of Jasmine’s client, and the reason behind the crime in A Fall from Grace was told through flashback. The overall story just happened to be about Jasmine fighting for Grace’s freedom from both prison and the abusive relationship, thus allowing for more time spent outside the flashback.

Another similarity between the two stories was a montage that built out the romance of the character with the flashback. A montage is an easy way to allow time to pass, which was probably why it was utilized in each film. It can get characters from their meet cute to being in love without having to show every step along the way. That might hurt the audience’s connection with that relationship, which might not be the best choice. But in these two movies, the story wasn’t about the romance. It was, instead, about how the relationship negatively affected people later on down the road.

Going back to Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, the montage followed the main character as she took a trip to New Orleans with one of her firm’s investors. It quickly summarized their time in The Big Easy, as they became closer with one another. Sure, she had been interested in him prior to that trip. And, yeah, he had been into her. But she was married, and he was an investor to her matchmaking firm. It wouldn’t be right. The montage got them past that point and into their affair.

The montage in A Fall from Grace covered the same sort of ground, except it wasn’t an affair. Grace and Shannon had met. They had gone out. The montage got them from their first date through sex through getting married. It was glossing over all those points to get to where things needed to be. The story wasn’t about them becoming romantically involved. It was about how Shannon changed following their marriage and how that led to his murder. He put out a second mortgage on Grace’s house and accessed her work account to steal money from her job. He bragged about doing that stuff. She beat him with a baseball bat. Those were the important points, not planning a wedding.

Both montages covered the basic dating and getting to know each other stuff that wasn’t important to the story. It was important to know that stuff happened so it would be believable when the characters were in the later part of their relationships, but it wasn’t anything that needed to be fleshed out because it wasn’t the story. I see now that I might have just described any montage. The story of Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor was the affair, not the bonding before that. The story of A Fall from Grace was the bad marriage and eventual murder, not the romance before. Tyler Perry utilized similar montages between the two movies to get to where the story was.

The final thing I want to hit on with the similarities is something that gets into spoiler territory. It gets into heavy spoiler territory. This is not the territory of Grace murdering Shannon, which was an essential part of  A Fall from Grace. This isn’t the idea of the affair in Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor, which was the entire story. Those aren’t what I would consider spoilers for those movies. What I want to discuss now are the ways in which those two Tyler Perry movies utilized twist endings to shock the audience.

Before I get into those twists, however, I want to mention that they were twists to me. Upon the first viewings of each movie, I didn’t expect what was coming. Maybe I was a little clueless. Maybe I still am. Either way, the movies tried, and somewhat succeeded, at throwing curveballs into the final acts. Things got so twisted that I was left with my jaw on the floor. Tyler Perry went wild with his endings.

Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor was my first Tyler Perry movie, and I didn’t know what to expect. When I got to the twists at the end, I was downright shocked. There’s a thing that Tyler Perry does with his twists. At least, it’s something he does in these two movies. He throws one twist at the audience. It changes the way things are viewed and puts people in a strange sense of ease. The twist is over with. Only, Tyler Perry has one more twist up his sleeve and this one is huge.

The first twist was the tame one. Well, it wasn’t that tame, but it feels tame when the second twist is factored into everything. After spending a good portion of the movie in the affair, the main character turned her back on her husband and decided that she would stay with the new man. The romance was that good. Only, when she chose him over her husband, the new guy turned into an abusive jerk. He threw her mother on the ground and beat the main character. That was only the beginning, though.

You see, Tyler Perry had one more big twist up his sleeve. The new boyfriend turning into an abusive jerk wasn’t enough for the drama of the movie. There needed to be something more. That came in the form of a side character. The counselor’s husband had a co-worker who revealed her ex-boyfriend gave her HIV. That ex-boyfriend was none other than the counselor’s new lover. The first twist was that he ended up being an abuser. The second twist was that he had HIV, didn’t tell the main character, and had sex with her. So he gave her HIV. The double twist.

That same sort of double twist was utilized in A Fall from Grace. The flashbacks to the romance were only about half of the runtime of the movie. What followed was the trial and the twists. The trial ended with Grace’s best friend Sarah (Phylicia Rashad) taking the witness stand. She was asked a bunch of questions that ended with her admitting that Grace had told her about the murder. It was the final nail in the coffin of the trial, leading to a unanimous guilty verdict from the jury.

The first twist came while Grace was in prison. She thought back to Sarah sitting in the witness stand. She remembered a necklace that Sarah had worn. It was the same necklace that Shannon wore. Things flashed back to the relationship flashbacks, shining new light on what Sarah had said or done. There was a connection between Sarah and Shannon, which turned out to be that they were mother and son. The reason that Shannon’s body had never been found (which would make it difficult to charge someone for murder, no?) was that Sarah had gotten him out of the house after Grace beat him over the head with a baseball bat.

That was already a pretty big twist. Grace’s best friend had been in cahoots with Grace’s husband to cheat her out of a bunch of money. Tyler Perry wasn’t done there. Jasmine went to visit Sarah following the trial. On her way there, she encountered a woman she had seen in Sarah’s house during an earlier interview. She took the woman back to Sarah’s house. As they sat in the kitchen, Jasmine heard some noise from downstairs. She went to see what the noise was and discovered a bunch of older women chained up in the basement. Sarah and Shannon had done this many times and were holding their previous victims hostage. They weren’t just stealing money. They were kidnapping people and chaining them up in the basement. That was a huge reveal that I never saw coming.

Tyler Perry has a few tricks in his bag that he likes to deploy through his movies. Well, through the two movies I’ve been looking at in this post, at least. Both movies could be categorized as romantic thrillers. Perhaps it’s only movies that fit into that classification where he uses these methods in his storytelling. Maybe I need to see more Tyler Perry movies to know. I at least know that Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor and A Fall from Grace share some DNA. That makes sense since they come from the same filmmaker.

In 2005, Tyler Perry joined the film world and things haven’t been the same since. He brought his own brand to audiences. Many people have eaten it up. He wouldn’t be as popular as he is without that audience. It has allowed him to keep making Madea movies, to branch out into these other movies, to create television shows, and to establish a media empire. Tyler Perry is a major force in film and that doesn’t seem like it’s going to change anytime soon. And it all started with one play in 1998.

Let’s end this post with a few notes:

• Tyler Perry directed Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor (week 44), The Single Moms Club (week 179), and A Fall from Grace. He was also featured in The Single Moms Club (week 179), Alex Cross (week 12), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (week 310), and A Fall from Grace.
• Nathan Anderson was in A Fall from Grace. He was also in Godzilla (week 282) and The $cheme (week 333).
• Cicely Tyson has been featured in Alex Cross (week 12) and A Fall from Grace.
• A Fall from Grace saw the return of Michelle Davidson to Sunday “Bad” Movies, after appearing in Last Ounce of Courage (week 369).
• Finally, Adrian Pasdar was in A Fall from Grace and Solarbabies (week 416).
• Have you seen A Fall from Grace? What did you think of it? Was the comparison to Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor fair? Tell me all about it in the comments or on Twitter.
• If there’s a movie that you think I should check out for a future Sunday “Bad” Movies post, let me know in the comments or find me on Twitter. I’m always open to suggestions.
• Sunday “Bad” Movies is still having fun over on Instagram. Come join me.
• Now for a look at next week. I’m going to be revisiting a franchise that I’ve seen a movie from before. No, it’s not a franchise week. That’s still a few weeks away. It’s just one sequel that I’ll be watching. This one comes from 1986. Hardbodies 2 will be the subject of next week’s post and I hope to see you here, reading what I write about it. See you then!