Metacritic reviews

But no, Lethal Weapon 2 is no artless, autopiloted waste of precious movie-theater air conditioning. It's fun stuff -- crackling, playfully escapist summer fare that doesn't make you feel taken advantage of later.

Lethal Weapon 2 is that rarity - a sequel with most of the same qualities as the original. I walked into the movie with a certain dread. But this is a film with the same off-center invention and wild energy as the original.

Before it skids out of control in the final sequence, the film is so careful to preserve its successful comic-action formula that it follows the most basic law of sequels. If you liked ''Lethal Weapon,'' you'll like Lethal Weapon 2; it's almost as simple as that.

Loaded with the usual elements, Lethal Weapon 2 benefits from a consistency of tone that was lacking in the first film. This time, screenwriter Jeffrey Boam and director Richard Donner have wisely trained their sights on humor and the considerable charm of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover's onscreen rapport.

The movie overall may be routine, but Donner gives it some spark and polish.

Sitting through Lethal Weapon 2 is like dating a jackhammer. It's a slick, cynical, high-speed assembly line of car chases, jokes, sex, explosions and blood. [41 Jul 1989, p.41]

Lethal Weapon 2 has the brain-rattling pace of a terminal speed freak going the wrong way down an expressway. [7 Jul 1989, p.1]

Lethal Weapon 2 is bang-bang and brain-dead in roughly equal measure. If there's an advantage this time out, it's that the film seems to play the action (and its lead character's psychoses) more for laughs. [7 Jul 1989, p.1D]

Yet another disappointing summer sequel, Lethal Weapon 2, with Danny Glover and Mel Gibson reprising their cop-buddy roles in pursuit of South African drug lords. [7 Jul 1989, p.A]

That first movie raised the craft of torture to a low art. Expect no less in LW2, directed by Richard Donner and written by Jeffrey Boam. This installment features a surfboard decapitation, death by carpenter's nail gun, a bomb wired to a very sensitive seat ( and reduction of the Afrikaaner diaspora by about one-half. (24July 1989, p.53)