I would've never considered this film if it didn't have Gary Busey and Stephen Baldwin in it. I wouldn't have given it a second look. I wouldn't've condescended to look at it funny. But it had them, so I needed to watch it. Ouch!
Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice was a poor sack of asscrack trading on the good name of the original Slap Shot. Stephen Baldwin is the player-coach of the Chiefs, and for some reason they've been sold to Gary Busey so he can have them be the Washington Generals to his Harlem Globetrotters hockey team. (Baldwin's character calls them the Washington Nationals, and I'd think it might be the writers making a joke about the state of DC's baseball club, except they were playing in Montreal when this was made, so the script writers were just dumb, and no one called them on it.) Baldwin gets them to play ball for a bit, then is given money by Busey to bounce because he's become a problem, then he can't stay away, so he brings the Hanson brothers with him to play Busey's team in a period of "real" hockey.
My soul still hurts. It hurt from the moment the Hanson brothers rolled out onto the ice in an early scene, and Stephen Baldwin was like "you guys!" What hilarity! I could hardly contain myself! It just amazes me that the people who made this film want us to believe they even tried to do anything but use up 1 hour and 44 minutes of film and send it out with the Slap Shot name on it to move some units. It was that bad.
This is Gary Busey's eighth post on the DTVC, which is big considering not so long ago he only had five, and he was way behind non-hall of famers like Daniel Bernhardt and Ice-T. We can't have that, especially with someone as awesome as Gary Busey is. In this movie he plays a guy who's made billions off a family values movement he created. He's supposed to be the bad guy, but really, because he's Busey, he was the only one worth rooting for. When his assistant slugs him at the film's denouement, it's given to us as an applause moment, but no one's really applauding that. On the Abusive scale, I'd give it a 4.5.
We like Stephen Baldwin here at the DTVC. Of course, in Cutaway, the other film of his we've reviewed, we saw his potential as a great actor in one scene where he sports a fake beard. Unfortunately, in that film, he never wears it again, and in this film he never wears it at all. The weak hockey cut mullet is supposed to be enough, but it so isn't. As far as his role went, he was supposed to be from Boston, but he was sporting a bad Canadian accent, so none of it worked. A huge disappointment.
Many Canadian's love Don Cherry, and I don't exactly blame them, but here in The States, we have a cat named Barry Melrose who holds it down for us hockey fans. His intermission reports back when ESPN did hockey were sometimes better viewing than the games they were covering, and that's saying a lot because I'm a huge hockey guy. He has a cameo in this where he comments that Busey's Harlem Globetrotters type hockey is an abomination. It was cool for a second, but then I realized that that meant he was in on this asinine movie. Why Barry, why?
I'm also a huge basketball guy, which lends the question: why would this show be a travesty for hockey, but all right in basketball? Should I, as a basketball fan, be offended by the Globetrotters or the And-1 Mix-tape Tour? I don't really think so. And I'm not sure I'd be that offended if there really was a Harlem Globetrotters-type deal for hockey. I don't think I would watch it either, like the people in this movie were. It just wouldn't matter, like the Globetrotters don't matter. This movie was just stupid.
Don't go near this. Stay far, far away. I am not fucking with you. I am dead serious. You like hockey? Watch Mighty Ducks 3. You like Gary Busey? Watch Point Break. You like Stephen Baldwin? Watch Point Break. Just don't watch this, whatever you do. I had to sit with a cute little bunny rabbit and vent while petting him to erase the black mark this pain ride put on my soul.
For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0282171/
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