My dad, a self-professed disaster-movie hound, wanted to go see Greenland 2: Migration. He had missed the original Greenland, given that it was released during the hot COVID summer of 2020. He asked me, quite sincerely, if he needed to see the first film to understand the second.

In case you had the same question: No. No, you do not.

The only thing you need is a desire to see Gerard Butler uses his meaty hands and Scottish brogue to defy God and propel his wife and child to safety in a postapocalyptic wasteland. And I think we all have that in common, right?

The original Greenland — and I am referring to the 2020 film and not the original name of the country, just in case it has been invaded and renamed in the time it took me to write and post this — was dumb. It was also pretty great.

I inherited my father’s love of disaster — and I am referring to the cinematic kind and not everything going on in America currently. Thus, the fact that both Greenlands are narratively remedial couldn’t bother me less. However, the first film was stupid-good. Migration is stupid-bland.

Five years after a comet named Clark ruined earth, John (Gerard Butler) and his wife, Allison (Morena Baccarin), are raising their son, Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis), in an underground bunker in the titular country. Most of Earth is kaput. The air quality has Chernobyl vibes, and all remaining humans have gotten pretty shooty about dwindling resources. This wouldn’t matter if the survivors could just keep hunkering down, but the bunker falls apart in hunka-hunka burning chunks.

After a narrow escape, the family sets its sites on a truly silly destination that feels so goofy as to render all the pouty seriousness in the film hilarious. It’s basically like somberly watching people die left and right on a journey to the Fuzzy-Wuzzy Care Bear Sanctuary. The daring journey involves far more rickety ladders than you would imagine and requires a cavalcade of walking, talking deus ex machinas. Or whatever the plural of that would be. Dei ex machina? Deus ex machinas? Dii ex machina? If Latin weren’t dead, it would deserve to be.

Speaking of deserving to be dead, what makes Greenland 2: Greenland Harder irritating is that the spectacles are few and far between. No disaster movie can be nonstop relentless displays of cinematic carnage, but the connective tissue usually involves some kind of innovative survival cleverness or meaningful reflections on life. Nope! Everything here is pure luck, and nobody pauses to mourn humanity in any way — and I am referring to the idea that humanity should be mourned, which is increasingly debatable.

The problem is that without those littler moments and modest cleverness, you find yourself getting bothered by plot shenanigans. Like, for example, when the survivors head out on a boat that runs out of gas, they lament that they are entirely at “the mercy of the current” to take them where they were headed. Of course they get there, because every member of John’s family is a walking four-leaf horseshoed rabbit’s foot. But when they get there, the boat gets hung up on a building. So, they take out a set of oars to dislodge themselves. Presumably, those would be useful while adrift at sea in a gasless boat with a boatful of able-bodied people to use them?

No, you shouldn’t be picking apart a script in a movie like this. But what else are we to do when given nothing to stare at but shaky closeups of Gerard Butler’s facial hair? I am willing — nay happy! — to enjoy freewheeling and mindless disaster nonsense. The wheeling is not free. The disaster is minded. No thank you please.

Grade = D

Other Critical Voices to Consider

Ruth Maramis at FlixChatter says “This sequel is packed with cliched dialogue, dull action, familiar apocalyptic scenarios, and visuals so drab that I felt like I needed an oxygen mask just to get through the movie. I’m not looking for vibrant colors and sunshine in a disaster movie, but even 28 Years Later looks like a colorful wonderland compared to how gloomy this one is.”

Tessa Smith at Mama’s Geeky says “Greenland 2: Migration is an okay sequel that suffers from poor pacing at times. It does the heavy lifting of expanding the lore and keeping us invested in the Garrity family, but it lacks the tight, suffocating narrative structure of its predecessor. It’s a decent post-apocalyptic road trip, but it trades the first film’s desperate atmosphere for a more episodic adventure.”

Josh Parham at Next Best Picture says “A flimsy plot and uninteresting characters would be tolerable if the dramatic moments of intense destruction were more intriguing. Instead, the palette is wholly bland and lifeless, unsupported by the framework of the storytelling and performances.”