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.