Most comedy movie sequels are a bitter disappointment. However, from Shrek 2 to Clerks II to 22 Jump Street, there are a few exceptions to this rule.

Sequels in general are tricky to pull off, but comedy sequels in particular tend to be a bitter disappointment. It’s difficult to recapture the magic that made a comedy classic so great. They usually just rehash the jokes from the first movie without bringing anything new to the table. The list of comedy sequels that failed to live up to the greatness of their predecessors is practically endless: Zoolander 2, Caddyshack II, Horrible Bosses 2, Little Fockers, Dumb and Dumber To, Blues Brothers 2000, The Hangover Part II, Hot Tub Time Machine 2, Airplane II: The Sequel. But not all comedy sequels are a let-down. From Shrek 2 to Clerks II to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, there are a few exceptions to this rule.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s movie adaptation of 21 Jump Street was a game-changer. It was initially dismissed as an unnecessary reboot of an old TV show no one remembered, but it emerged as a must-see comedy thanks to its meta riffs on the pointlessness of rebooting Jump Street and the impeccable chemistry shared by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. The film’s unexpected box office success earned it a sequel, 22 Jump Street, in which the heroes go undercover on a college campus. While the first movie’s high school setting evoked the works of John Hughes, the second movie’s college setting evokes Animal House.

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The story is more or less the same – this time, Tatum pulls away from Hill – but the gags are all new, from a cost-cutting campus car chase to Ice Cube furiously demolishing a buffet. Like the original, 22 Jump Street is a smart, self-aware gem that pokes fun at itself, mocking sequels instead of reboots. As Nick Offerman’s police chief points out, “It’s always worse the second time around,” except that’s not the case here. Much like the first movie, that self-awareness is bolstered by an emotionally engaging bromance between the two leads.

The first Shrek movie was a pitch-perfect satire of fairy tale traditions. Shrek subverted the usual expectations of fantastical legends with the story of an ogre with a heart of gold falling for a princess locked in a tower. Shrek 2 could’ve just repeated the original storyline with another villain capturing Fiona and another hero’s journey for Shrek. Instead, the sequel expanded the worldbuilding with the glitzy Beverly Hills-inspired metropolis of Far Far Away and presented Shrek and Fiona with entirely new conflicts. Fiona’s parents don’t approve of her new husband, so Shrek takes a potion to turn himself into a handsome human. Like all the best sequels, Shrek 2 is a totally different movie than its predecessor, but it’s just as much of a masterpiece.

Kevin Smith’s Clerks II chronicles another day in the humdrum lives of Dante and Randal. This time, they’re working at a fast food restaurant. Despite following a similar story formula, the Clerks sequel doesn’t just transplant the first movie into a new workplace. The original film is about being an aimless twentysomething trying to find direction in life; the sequel is about the struggle to follow that direction and pick the right path.

With Dante and Randal in their thirties, Clerks II deals with more mature subjects like marriage and fatherhood. Dante reckons with being engaged to the wrong woman and getting his boss pregnant. Clerks II is just as hilarious as the first one – with plenty of memorable gags, like the Star Wars vs. Lord of the Rings debate and Jay’s Buffalo Bill-style “Goodbye Horses” dance – but it’s also more emotionally engaging. The upcoming Clerks III has a lot to live up to.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character was conceived as an outsider to expose prejudice and idiocy within the American consciousness. The on-camera targets of Baron Cohen’s pranks let down their guard in the presence of what they believe is a wacky foreigner and reveal their own bigotries and blind spots. Baron Cohen reprised the role a decade and a half after the first film became an unexpected cultural sensation to satirize a new generation of American lunacy. The first movie captured the absurdity of the Bush era, while the second movie went after the Trump/COVID era.

In the surprisingly satisfying sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Borat quarantines with a pair of QAnon conspiracy theorists, sings a ditty about the “Wuhan Flu” at an extremist right-wing rally, and captures Rudy Giuliani trying to seduce a young interviewer. Baron Cohen slips effortlessly back into the role of everyone’s favorite Kazakh reporter, and this time around, he’s joined by Maria Bakalova as his estranged daughter Tutar. Oscar-nominated for her turn in the film, Bakalova proved to be just as adept as Baron Cohen himself at the Borat franchise’s unique on-the-fly acting style.

The first sequel to National Lampoon’s Vacation, European Vacation, offered a string of tired gags without the emotional throughline that made the original movie so compelling and relatable. Fortunately, the third movie redeemed it. Whether he’s struggling with the Christmas lights or trying to carve a dried-out turkey, Chevy Chase is as hysterical as ever in the role of Clark, the quintessential exasperated suburban dad, in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Instead of rehashing the first film’s family trip storyline, Christmas Vacation allows audiences to spend a holiday season with the Griswolds. Alongside Elf and Home Alone, Christmas Vacation is one of the funniest Christmas films ever made. In the decades since it hit theaters, this timeless gem has been a staple of yuletide movie nights.

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Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He's currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.