Any good comedy sequels after long hiatus?

[Hampshire]

Let’s define hiatus as 8 years or more and sequel as including at least 1 or more of the main cast in the lead role (no cameo).

Over in the Bill & Ted thread people had asked if there were any good sequels to movies after a long hiatus. While there were several none of them were comedies.

Seems any attempt at this with a comedy results in something mediocre (Blue Brothers 2000) but more commonly downright awful (Zoolander 2, Dumb and Dumber To, Caddyshack 2, etc.)

Any examples where the sequel was as good as or better than the original?

Clerks 2 maybe?

[hogarth]

Season 2 of “The Comeback” on HBO was very good. Season 1 was in 2005 and Season 2 was in 2014.

[Skywatcher]

This year’s Bad Boys for Life garnered better reviews than the 1995 original and much better reviews than the 2003 sequel.

[RealityChuck]

The Freshman (1925) and The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) (aka Mad Wednesday). The latter takes footage from The Freshman to show what happened to the character’s life after college. While not a classic, the sequel is a pretty funny movie.

The Black Bird (1975) is a comic sequel to The Maltese Falcon (1941), with two actors of the original film (Elisha Cook, Jr. and Lee Patrick) in supporting roles as the same characters. Obviously, no classic either, but the movie does work.

[gdave]

I thought Men in Black III was decent - not as good as Men In Black, but better than Men in Black II.

I liked The Muppets (2011), but I’m not sure that really counts. It was almost more of a reboot than a true sequel to the previous Muppet movies, which never really had internal continuity, anyway.

One of the reasons I thought those movies worked is that the film-makers actually seemed to have something new to say about the characters and the settings.

The new Bill & Ted looks a lot like a re-tread of the second movie.

[Bijou_Drains]

Return of the Pink Panther in 75 was good. Peter Sellers last played the role before then in 64. A 68 version had different actors.

[Dead_Cat]

I enjoyed the recent Jumanji reboot, but admittedly I haven’t seen the original.

[Treppenwitz]

I have a British TV example that very nearly meets your criteria (a few months shy of 8 years). Not sure if either the original series or the “sequel” series is much known in the US.

The Likely Lads (3 series, ended 1966)

The original show followed the friendship of two young working class men, Terry Collier (James Bolam) and Bob Ferris (Rodney Bewes), in Newcastle upon Tyne in the mid-1960s. Bob and Terry are assumed to be in their early 20s (when their ages are revealed in the later film, this puts both characters at around 20 when the series started).

and Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads (2 series, started 1973, same leads and writers.)

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? is a British sitcom which was broadcast between 9 January 1973 and 9 April 1974 on BBC1. It was the colour sequel to the mid-1960s hit The Likely Lads.

OK, many episodes of The Likely Lads have been lost, it really hasn’t been rebroadcast much, but what I have seen of it just looks like a poorly realised and frankly slightly amateurish version of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads. Certainly the latter was much more mature than the former.

In terms of humour, the two shows are very different. The Likely Lads had been a broad comedy, full of jokes and obvious gags, whereas Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? used much subtler humour, derived from the dialogue and characterisation, often interspersed with sentimentality and even touches of pathos as the lads mourned or reflected on their lost past. Nostalgia was a strong thread running through the show. The lads frequently did ask each other the question in the show’s title, Whatever happened to us?, particularly during their more mellow moments in the pub.

There seem to be many episodes up on YouTube if you’re determined to investigate whether one ancient comedy is funnier than another. Here’s a snippet of the more recent one - fairly typical and not exactly what you would call culturally or ethnically aware (this was the 1970’s). Not sure that it merits a NSFW, but I’ll spoiler the link anyway.

Here

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[Wheelz]

If you don’t count a couple of straight-to-video titles with Eugene Levy cameos, the American Pie franchise includes the original in 1999, American Pie 2 in 2001, American Wedding in 2003, and then American Reunion in 2012, a nine-year gap.

None of these are cinematic masterpieces, but they’re fun for what they are. I enjoyed Reunion as much as any of them.

[hogarth]

I thought Monsters University was about as good as Monsters Inc. Finding Dory was pretty good, too.

[Jophiel]

Zombieland 2: Double Tap wasn’t near a classic like the original ten years prior but I legitimately enjoyed it anyway. It has a 68/88 on Rotten Tomatoes so I guess it counts as “good”.