In Hollywood, when a film does well, studios rush to produce another one in order to take advantage of the buzz from the first one. Lots of times they just throw something together and figure that you liked the first one enough that you will go see the second. The results are often bad flicks. Weekend at Bernie’s II is a good example of a terrible sequel. Dumb and Dumberer comes to mind too (though you could argue that it wasn’t much of a drop-off). The sequels to Blair Witch Project, Rocky, Police Academy and The Matrix all left something to be desired.
Not every sequel is bad, though, and sometimes they turn out to be as good or better than the originals. The Godfather II, Superman 2, Shrek 2 and The Dark Knight all were improvements on their predecessors.
The question I had was, if Ristretto’s William Cafe was a movie, what would the sequel be like? Would it be like The Empire Strikes Back (good) or would it be like Grease 2 (awful)?. To find out, I visited Ristretto Beaumont the other day, dressed as Darth Vader (just kidding!).
To be technically accurate, the Beaumont store, located at the corner of Northeast 42nd and Fremont, is the original Ristretto location. However, I had already gone to the Ristretto on North Williams Avenue, so the trip to Beaumont played the role of a sequel.