One of the few distinct pleasures of the original "Stakeout" was the finite comic timing and chemistry between Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez as cops. There were a lot of big laughs in the first film and some seriously violent business as well. "Another Stakeout" doesn't have enough fun with its premise of a stakeout, the Dreyfuss and Estevez chemistry is not fully exploited and the serious violent business of a a Mob witness on the run has been done to death.
Just watching the opening sequence involving an explosion filmed from a gazillion different angles (something directors Tony Scott or Michael Bay might have concocted) is enough to make one switch to another movie theater. Rosie O'Donnell always seemed miscast as a district attorney who is on a stakeout assignment with the two chatty Seattle cops, the white-haired Chris and the mustachioed Bill, at a lake house outside Seattle. It is breathtakingly beautiful scenery to be sure where everyone's homes have no curtains or shades (this should make for an easy stakeout). The house next door is where the Mob witness (thanklessly played by Cathy Moriarty) is hiding out. Meanwhile, we get unnecessary scenes of a cat chased by a dog (featuring an impossible point-of-view from the cat's anus!) and Miguel Ferrer as the most one-dimensional, generic hitman ever - why not just get any other actor to play the part instead of wasting Ferrer's time.
The dinner sequence involving Moriarty's friends, a handsome couple played by Marcia Strassman and Dennis Farina, is one for the books in terms of hilarious situations built out of bickering and bantering between O'Donnell and Dreyfuss. O'Donnell makes nauseating-looking hors d'oeuvres with penguin-shapes and an armadillo-shaped meatloaf with cereal flakes! Chris is supposed to pose as O'Donnell's husband and Bill is supposed to be their son. This whole sequence could've been built into a fiery comic engine with pratfalls and innuendoes galore. It doesn't last long until we are back to the old-hat, predictable to the core plot. There is also a scene involving Chris and Bill showing their badges to other police firing at them that is right out of "Beverly Hills Cop" and maybe even old episodes of "Car 54, Where Are You?"
Less than 2/3 of "Another Stakeout" is enjoyable and sharply funny and the rest is mediocre claptrap. For devotees of the original "Stakeout," it is worth perusing. For others, been there one million times, done that two million more.
