During my viewing of this direct-to-DVD sequel the chorus to Aerosmith's song "Same Old Song & Dance" was running through my head. The makers of Road House 2 haven't strayed very far from the formula the original established seventeen years prior to their flick and even though they don't benefit from the star power of Patrick Swayze or over-the-top villainy of Ben Gazzara there's enough attractive girls in various states of undress on display and well-staged action sequences for this to be a moderately entertaining follow-up with a couple of call-backs to the 1989 original to loosely tie everything together.

After a quick montage during the opening credits with crack dealers doing their thing we're introduced to Shane (Johnathon Schaech) an undercover DEA agent who gets caught up in a bust at a strip club before getting a quick lap dance from one of his female co-workers. Word comes down that his Uncle has been severely beaten and hospitalized after refusing to sell his bar, the Black Pelican, to small-time dealer Wild Bill (Jake Busey) and his thugs.

So it's off to the Louisiana swamp area as Shane goes to take charge of the bar while his Uncle recovers only to find his fighting skills put to the test when Bill tries to persuade him to sell. He also hooks up with local girl Beau (Ellen Hollman) and has to call in his DEA pals when Bill's big boss Victor (Richard Norton) arrives in town to try and finish off what Bill couldn't do - this leads to a finale with lots of hand-to-hand, a few shootouts, and Beau holding her own (and getting into a cool cat fight in the bar's kitchen) when it turns out she was once in the Army(?!).

Taken for what it is Road House 2 is a watchable time. The script's attempts to tie the two together are pretty half-assed by trying to tell us that Shane is the son of Swayze's Dalton from the first (and, yes, there is a wink towards the "I thought you'd be bigger" running joke from the original), so you're probably better off trying to ignore that, but director Scott Ziehl handles the fight scenes decently and it's an okay way to kill 83 minutes. Schaech, who also co-wrote the script, is probably the weakest thing here and it doesn't have a lot to do with his fighting skill as that's pretty adequate but more to do with the fact he can't possibly fill Swayze's shoes with his somewhat wimpy sounding line delivery and weak personality. It has to say something when his turn as the baddie in 2008's Prom Night remake was more memorable. As the tandem of drug dealing scum, Busey and Norton mostly fit the bill though I would've enjoyed a lot more of Jake channeling the nuttiness of dad Gary and found myself disappointed in how they used low-budget martial arts veteran Norton (Rage and Honor, Equalizer 2000) giving him a forgettable fight against Schaech where he doesn't give him nearly as much of a challenge as he should have. I enjoyed Will Patton's turn as Shane's bad-ass Uncle Nate and he gets a decent fight scene in the hospital and Hollman is a treat for the eyes even if most of her kitchen brawl is obviously a stunt woman.

As always, I can't truly advocate the existence of all these cash-in DTV sequels simply because it's an obvious ploy by the studios to make some extra cash on name recognition and nostalgia while incurring minor cost. Besides that point, most of them pretty much suck. But I'm going to make a slight exception with Road House 2 (which is subtitled "Last Call" on the box but not in the actual titles) because it's a silly follow-up to an already silly original that manages to keep a good portion of the spirit of that flick alive while offering up some brainless action for fans of this sort of stuff to chew on. (Chris Hartley, 3/6/11)

Directed By: Scott Ziehl.
Written By: Miles Chapman, Johnathon Schaech, Richard Chizmar.

Starring: Johnathon Schaech, Ellen Hollman, Richard Norton, Jake Busey.