As far as seasons go, winters are fairly predictable: they present characters basking in the pleasantness of Halloween or Thanksgiving, plunge them into a wretched tempest of overcast and polar vortexes, and then neatly wrap everything up with the coming of spring and the rebirth it embodies. Credits roll and people are content, if even a bit unsatisfied with how the New Year’s Eve scene played out, until the calendar rolls back around.
The sequel to ‘Winter 2020’ seems to hope that its sudden, jarring premiere among warmer, more family-friendly titles will win over crowds, but it reeks of gimmick. There’s no redeeming tropes regarding Christmas and not even a scene where mom drinks too much red wine and reveals somebody in the family was adopted.
Which begs the question, why? Who thought audiences were going to resonate with this quirky, out-of-character production when they’ve had barely a month to work through annual releases including flowers, grilling, and dousing oneself in the face with spray sunscreen to the point of near poisoning?
Worse yet, the direction is, well, directionless. The whole thing comes off like the season has no idea what it’s even supposed. One minute, you’re blasting your furnace and wearing wool socks, the next you’re suffocating in party sunny mugginess that you don’t usually see out for a couple more months.
Apparent production issues only hamper the effort further. There are no bits about playoff hockey or baseball to make the season appear more appropriately hybrid. Moreover, the characters engage in the same tiresome dialogue in nearly every scene, each of which is staged either in their home, at the grocery store, or in the car waiting for a Starbucks coffee. The one scene shot anywhere else — a massive party of 50 people sharing drinks and fraternizing — redeems nothing unfortunately, as the characters it features are so dimwitted and poorly written that you start to wonder if they’re even supposed to be human.
Perhaps the greatest sin of all is that it just lasts too damn long: a brisk 48 hours would be enough to make this travesty bearable, but the production just keeps going, adding seemingly random plot points and synthetic suspense when the whole thing seems to (thankfully) be over.
We can’t possibly overstate our down vote on this cheap, gimmicky attempt to recapture something whose window has already passed and had a box fan placed in it. This dreadful sequel to ‘Winter 2020’ is only good if you need an excuse to sleep or kill the bottle of whiskey.
