Bob Odenkirk Rivals Clark Griswold for a Family Vacation Gone Wrong
DIRECTOR: TIMO TJAHJANTO /2025
When we first met Hutch Mansell, he made a convincing nobody. In 2021, his suburban monotony hid a lethal skill set he hoped to abandon. By the end of Nobody, he had resurrected his violent past to protect his family from the Russian mob, and in Nobody 2, he’s still paying for those actions. In an arrangement not far from indentured servitude, the government uses him as a clean up man for off-the-books assignments. But Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) demands a break when he realizes missing dinner every night affects his wife and kids. It’s time for a family vacation!
Nobody 2 is made for the Venn diagram of people who like watching movies with explosions and who like wearing socks with sandals. While the plot of the original—a devoted family man is summoned back to the underworld—owes a lot to Taken and John Wick, the sequel owes more to National Lampoon’s Vacation. The tone hasn’t have pivoted to the silliness of a broad John Hughes comedy, but Hutch’s dream of a nostalgic family trip is the same as Clark Griswold’s. Like that troubled voyage to Wally World in the ’80s, the Mansells’ stay in the kitschy tourist town of Plummerville goes wrong every way possible. The closed water park is just the beginning—Hutch just happens to pick a destination controlled by teen bullies, a corrupt sheriff (Colin Hanks), and a crime syndicate (led by John Ortiz).
It’s too strong to call the 2021 original a cult favorite, but its fans are loyal, which means the recycled plot structure is a feature, not a bug. Yes, the writing is lazier, retconning his wife (Connie Nielsen) into a sharpshooter, reducing his brother (RZA) to a deus ex machina, and relying on clichés. (Let’s put a genre moratorium on using head phones to prevent bystanders from noticing violence!) But the new setting provides the jolt of energy the formula needs, and between Hutch’s lack of self-control, his son’s (Gage Munroe) burgeoning rage problems, and his father’s (Christopher Lloyd) trigger-happy tendencies, the sequel is as much a funhouse of pain as the original. For 89 minutes, Odenkirk’s derring-do draws as much blood (and as many laughs) as possible, and he is matched in energy only by Sharon Stone, whose too-brief time on screen alternates between manic ebullition and eccentric dancing. That may not leave room for thoughtful character development, but Nobody 2 knows that’s not what its audience wants: a carnival of shenanigans that includes bashing someone’s head with a Whac-A-Mole mallet and planting land mines in a ball pit.