AllMovie

The long-awaited sequel to Slap Shot, regarded as one of the best sports movies ever, took a quarter of a century to reach the screen. An avid cult following held its breath in anticipation all those years to see the further adventures of their heroes, the bespectacled Hanson brothers (Jeff Carlson, Steve Carlson, and David Hanson), but, with the exception of a few extravagant game highlights, it was hardly worth the wait. Slap Shot 2: Breaking the Ice skates great but comes to a screeching halt whenever the action is off the ice. The plot is ingenious, but most of the secondary characters seem to be imitations of the people in the first movie, which erases any authenticity. Even their crudeness smacks of phoniness. In fact, the entire movie feels like a pale remake instead of something original. Director Steve Boyum is no George Roy Hill (Oscar winner for The Sting), writer Broderick Miller is no Nancy Dowd (Oscar winner for the screenplay Coming Home), and Stephen Baldwin, likeable as he is, is no Paul Newman (Oscar winner for The Color of Money). Luckily, the invigoratingly goofy Hanson brothers are the same, but Broderick's script dispatches them offscreen for the better part of the last third of the movie, a boneheaded, misguided turn in the plot that would no doubt have "Old School Hockey" Gordie Howe up in arms.