Brief Story Line
Erwin (Ernest Prakasa - Susah Sinyal, Teka Teki Tika etc) and Natalie (Laura Basuki - The Returning, Susi Susanti: Love All etc) who had been in relationship for 2 years, decided to bring it to the next level. Unfortunately, Natalie's mom Agnes (Maya Hasan - Dear Nathan: Thank You Salma etc) who was very protective of her and very authoritative, was against Erwin's plan to work in Singapore. The vast wealth and social gap between Natalie and his own family certainly did not help Erwin with his confidence.
Meanwhile Ko Afuk (Chew Kin Wah - My Stupid Boss etc) was pressurising Yohan (Dion Wiyoko - Winter in Tokyo, The Gift etc) and Ayu (Adinia Wirasti - Critical Eleven, Kapan Kawin? etc) to give him grandchildren. This put a bit of strain in their relationship as Ayu was adamant that she did not want to have a child. Ko Afuk even went to the stage of cornering them to take care of a young girl named Amanda (Widuri Puteri - Keluarga Cemara etc) with the hope of them changing their minds.
Faced with so many challenges really put Erwin under intense stress and everything seemed to be going against him. So what would happen to this family? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I said above that my wife and I really liked the first movie with all the story and the engaging characters plus obviously the fun comedy. And we really looked forward to see all of them again in here with the hope to enjoy the story and craziness of the various characters. The first few minutes of the movie was pretty nice and I thought was quite a brilliant move by Ernest. I was earlier having a bit of doubt with the recasting of Natalie's character, but I thought Laura Basuki did good enough to convince us that she was Erwin's girlfriend from the start.
After the events of the original, there was actually web series for 2 seasons available streaming where the story developed a bit. Since I never watched it, I was not aware there was such change in Ko Afuk's life (I only knew because my wife shared it with me). Anyway, the various characters that made the story so fun last time did not all appear here. With them being in different places, the bantering did not feel as frequent and funny as before. I still enjoyed the ones involving Ayu's assistants or Yohan's best friends, though not so much with the others. My wife's particular favorites were Naryo (Yusril Fahriza) and Erwin's boss Sonya (Asri Welas) where I think she laughed the hardest during one of her scenes.
The story in this sequel still focused on the relationship between the father and his children, but it also grew larger with the bigger portion on the husband and wife relationship, plus the marriage between people from different class. The conflicts in this movie felt a lot heavier but somehow still relatable and realistic as they were quite common in everyday life. In general the main cast of Chew Kin Wah, Ernest, Dion and Adinia did amazing job of portraying their characters which made their chemistry felt so real among them.
Now despite some of the humor that was quite apparent, I felt the movie now became really heavy. There were a lot of moments that were quite dramatic and emotional that truly affected me and my wife. Compared to the first one where the drama felt perfectly balanced with the comedy, this time I felt we were constantly overwhelmed with emotions and the comedy was not really sufficient to balance it out. I guess Ernest who co-wrote this with his wife Meira Anastasia wanted to focus on the drama. Btw, there were one or two things that my wife spotted might not be too realistic in the relationship between Yohan and Ayu, but not up to the level of unbelievable.
Overall, we still enjoyed this sequel, though if we have to be honest, we loved the first one more. For almost 2 hours, we will be entertained by Ko Afuk's family dynamics and the goofing around of some of the funny characters. The songs were also very nice and well placed in certain scenes. There was a bonus of gag reels during the closing credit which would give us additional fun moments. After this second movie, it would not be a surprise if in few years time, there would be another sequel to complete the trilogy. So if you like Cek Toko Sebelah, then likely you would enjoy this one as well.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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