Description

Spud 2: The Madness Continues 2013
1h 31min | Comedy | 6 June 2013 (USA)

Storyline:

The year is 1991, and Spud Milton’s long walk to manhood is still creeping along at an unnervingly slow pace. Approaching the ripe old age of fifteen and still no signs of the much anticipated ball-drop, Spud is coming to terms with the fact that he may well be a freak of nature. With a mother hell-bent on emigrating, a father making a killing out of selling homemade moonshine, and a demented grandmother called Wombat, the new year seems to offer little except extreme embarrassment and more mortifying Milton madness. But Spud is returning to a boarding school where he is no longer the youngest or the smallest. His dormitory mates, known as the Crazy Eight, have an unusual new member and his house has a new clutch of first years (the Normal Seven). If Spud thinks his second year will be a breeze, however, he is seriously mistaken. He is soon beset with women trouble, coerced into misguided late-night adventures, and funds his dreams of a famous career on the stage in tatters after landing the part of the Dove of Peace in a disastrous house play production of Noah’s Ark. To top it all off, boarding master Sparerib and his prefects Death breath and Earthworm are concocting an almighty plan to get Spud and the Crazy 8 expelled! Hilarious, bitter-sweet, tragic and real, join Spud as he takes another tentative step forward while all around him the madness continues…

User review:

This sequel to Spud follows the same group of boys at their South African boarding school as the country navigates its way out of apartheid. The searing political backdrop is occasional mentioned but mostly ignored and the film focus is instead on the teenage growing pains of the titular character.

Where the first film explored the complex social relationships at such an establishment this sequel skips straight to escapades and actions. This distances you from the characters, less bought into their situation and potential outcomes and instead watching remotely as a potentially disinterested observer.

The escapades range in scale but are often tinged in nastiness. The bullying is sharper, more malicious in nature and has far greater consequences.

I left the film with less sympathy for Spud and his fellow students than I entered it, and less entertained than the first film had left me hoping. On the whole a misfire, lets hope Spud 3 resolves these challenges.

Director: Donovan Marsh
Writer: Donovan Marsh
Stars: John Cleese, Troye Sivan, Sven Ruygrok