Not sure where to begin here, this one is okay if you're in the right mood....I guess. It's really forgettable when all is said and done. Whereas the original MACHETE was good ol' standard over-the-top exploitation fun with nudity, CGI gore (and computerized T & A, if you remember the controversy!), and loads of action...this follow-up edition has no nudity (a crime!!!) and a tone of RIDICULOUS slapstick cartoonishness (aka: bad CGI) that goes beyond even the most juvenile Troma hijinks. Characters that died in the first film mysteriously reappear (like Tom Savini) only to get offed AGAIN here and others are shot in the head (through the eye, nonetheless!) and keep right on fighting---with no explanation! (Guess it's the ol' Monty Python "it's just a flesh wound" gag exaggerated to the zillionth power?!?) It's like director Robert Rodriguez just decided to do whatever the hell he wanted in his MACHETE universe without cluing the audience in on the joke. (Perhaps that's why it was such a box office bomb?) The plot? Oh yeah... President Carlos Esteves (aka Charlie Sheen) recruits the antihero MACHETE (played again by tough guy Danny Trejo without emotion or expression, but the man does have presence!) to go after elite bad guy Mel Gibson, who is trying to destroy the world with nuclear bombs while he and his hand-picked select group of "chosen ones" blast off into space in order to breed and repopulate the "New Earth" at a later date. Mel is fun and wacky for a spell in his role, but honestly, the plot is a direct ripoff of MOONRAKER and of course...STAR WARS, as Gibson's "base" has all kinds of weapons and equipment based on the Lucas franchise, including landspeeders and light sabers... Action and gunplay permeate the proceedings and after a while, the 4th of July fireworks gets boring and repetitive, not to mention Trejo being nothing more than a cartoon caricature- like a cross between James Bond and Wille E. Coyote. (I lost count of how many times his character basically fell off the cliff and went SPLAT!, only to be fine in the next scene.) At the end of the movie, Machete rides a nuclear bomb as it's blasted off at a target, working on the wires to "dismantle it" as he's hurtled through the sky at 500 MPH....Uh, yeah, guess someone had to beat the silly Indiana Jones dodging a nuclear blast in a flying fridge in that last, er, "classic" Indy epic CRYSTAL SKULLS....but seriously, folks...just because you CAN show ANYTHING on screen with computers and all doesn't mean you SHOULD... Anyway, Gibson's buffoonish bad guy gets away at the end (wearing a mask a'la David Cronenberg in NIGHTBREED) and heads on up to his space station, and ol' one syllable Machete follows...switching from a machete to a light saber...and we're promised several times throughout the movie (with a wacky faux trailer at the very beginning----or has Rodriguez already shot Part 3?) that Machete WILL RETURN and KILL AGAIN...IN SPACE, hee-haaaaw!!! I can wait, because overall, MACHETE KILLS got boring with all the obnoxious virtual action effects and the "anything goes" tone...At one point, they HANG Machete and he's inexplicably invincible---as all the ludicrous characters are in this installment---he won't die! He just hangs there, looking constipated, staring at his enemies while they wait for the rope to do its work, but...it just doesn''t happen. What is he, a zombie? As a viewer, all this was just frustrating and stupid to me and the over 90 min running time just seemed to drag on forever. Man, where were the naked ladies (real ones, not CGI) and gore and sleaziness of the original? None of that was here and MACHETE KILLS was just like watching a cartoon that didn't quite know what it wanted to be. Check it out if you can Stream it for pennies or see if for free, otherwise...use extreme caution... Someone needs to chop the Machete franchise's funding so Rodriguez can head for greener pastures...Enough's enough...probably should've just stayed a faux GRINDHOUSE trailer...