Last year, Disney gave us the Under Wraps remake movie. This year, we get a brand new sequel. Here we go!
Marshall (Malachi Barton), Gilbert (Christian J Simon), and Amy (Sophia Hammons) are best friends. Gilbert and Amy have been spending a lot more time together since Amy works on the school newspaper and Gilbert has a scare-themed column, now that he’s no longer scared of everything. While Marshall still gets to hang out with them, he is feeling a little left out of the group. As the boys help Amy prepare for her father’s Halloween-themed wedding, they find out that a new mummy has gone missing from the museum. It turns out to be Sobek (TJ Storm), the former best friend of their mummy friend Harold (Phil Wright). Sobek is also in love with Harold’s mummy girlfriend, Rose (Rryla McIntosh), and he wants her back.
Under Wraps 2 is a weird movie. It wants to be a whole bunch of different things but it doesn’t want to follow through on any of them. First, we have the triangle between Marshall, Amy, and Gilbert. While I understand why Marshall feels left out, there isn’t any reason he couldn’t put more effort into being a part of the friendship. He steps back and gets jealous whenever Gilbert and Amy have a simple conversation. The writers should have turned this into a romantic triangle, to mirror the Sobek/Rose/Harold triangle. As it is, we have two friends that share a similar interest and the third friend being stupidly distant, even when they are doing something all three enjoy. Even if the writers didn’t want to make that trio romantic, it would have been much more enjoyable if Marshall was shown turning evil, like Sobek.
Second, we have the mummy triangle. It’s really not much of a triangle. We see a ton of Harold and Rose interacting since they are together for the entire movie. Sobek, however, doesn’t even arrive at the same location as them until the almost the end. We’re told that Harold and Sobek were best friends but there are zero indications of that. I’m honestly not sure how historians would have known they even knew each other. The same goes for Rose and Sobek. We should have gotten some sort of memento or something in their coffin/tomb/thing to show their relationships. Otherwise, it looks like Sobek is evil just to be evil.
Then there is this “buddy movie” feel. The writers wanted to make this all of the friendships have this funny light air to them. Instead, they are all just weird. We have Buzzy (Melanie Brook), who is there for no real reason but is somehow shoehorned into almost every scene as if she is the same age as the teenaged leads. Harold and Marshall have a weird sort of friendship in the movie, where Marshall is extremely emotional over what is going on with Harold yet they barely spend any time together on-screen. I understand why they wanted to make Marshall and Harold best friends. The writers need to learn the “show don’t tell” basics of writing.
With all of that said, there are some good parts of the movie that might make it worth watching. We do get another big dance scene but this time it’s both Harold and Rose dancing, not just Harold. I think that may be my favorite scene. Also, all of the scenes between Amy’s dad, Pop (Claude Knowlton), and his groom-to-be, Carl (Antonio Cayonne), are awesome. I’m sure someone somewhere will complain about the gay couple in the Disney movie but screw them. They are much more loving than most straight Disney parents. Those are pretty much the only two reasons to watch Under Wraps 2. You’d probably do better watching something else.