How do you improve upon camp perfection? Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN was already ideally programmed for maximum meme-ification, thanks to the heavily marketed sequence of its killer robot doing TikTok-ready dances while it chases its latest victim. But even when the sassy AI doll was destroyed by its creator Gemma (Allison Williams) and her grieving niece Cady (Violet McGraw), it was clear that M3GAN had to get a sequel. And it did it the only way M3GAN could: by going full superhero.M3GAN 2.0, which sees Johnstone return as director alongside screenwriter Akela Cooper, proves that the first film was no fluke. The first M3GAN was explicitly made to be a silly, absurd horror hit — from the schoolgirl stylings of its uncanny valley doll, to the pop song needle-drops and dance scenes. And its raucous reception showed that Johnstone, Cooper, and James Wan (who wrote the story alongside Cooper) hit all the right notes. With its sequel, they double down on the camp silliness, and then some. You liked M3GAN dancing? Well, here’s a whole choreographed show where she pops and locks for a cheering audience. You were a fan of M3GAN singing an early aughts pop song? Here’s her bringing the movie to a halt to sing Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work” to a perplexed and increasingly irritated Gemma. You embrace M3GAN as our new horror icon and savior? Well, now she’s a superhero.Gemma (Allison Williams) and Tess (Jen Van Epps) observe the depowered M3GAN. | Universal PicturesTwo years after the events of M3GAN, Gemma has miraculously turned her career around by becoming an advocate for increased federal regulation of AI. She’s written a best-selling book on parenting, she regularly gives TED Talks warning of the dangers of unregulated technology, and she’s even got herself an anti-AI lobbyist boyfriend (Aristotle Athari) who helps her start a foundation. In the meantime, Cady has turned to akido and Steven Seagal movies to stave off the bullies, but still harbors a secret affection for M3GAN, despite all the murder the doll committed in her name. Little do they know that M3GAN has been living in their walls (literally, she’s stored herself into their smart home tech) and has been lying in wait until the next crisis — which comes when a secret black-ops android called AMELIA (The Acolyte’s Ivanna Sakhno) goes rogue, and starts to search for the creator of its source code: Gemma.That’s right, M3GAN takes the T2: Judgment Day approach to its sequel, turning its robot antagonist into a (sorta) reformed ally that Gemma and Cady are forced to turn to when faced with another, even stronger, killer robot. But not one to settle with being a horror-comedy version of just one movie, Johnston and co. throw in even more influences: M3GAN 2.0 is also kind of a Mission: Impossible movie, and a little bit Venom. M3GAN 2.0 takes the gang on some wild detours — there are no less than three heists, one of which involves M3GAN doing an Ethan Hunt-style maneuver that would sadly be impossible for Tom Cruise to pull off (though, he may take that as a challenge). There are several entities either pursuing Gemma or pursuing AMELIA, including a decidedly buffoonish military organization, and one creepy seduction scene involving Jemaine Clement’s arrogant tech titan. At some points it feels like M3GAN 2.0 is an exercise in “how to make a horror comedy hit” by committee, but you’ll be having so much fun watching M3GAN engage in her latest hijink that you won’t much care.She’s back, and she’s taller. | Universal PicturesWith 2.0’s antagonist shake-up, M3GAN naturally takes center stage. Voiced as before by Jenna Davis with an even more acrobatic physical performance from Amie Donald, M3GAN’s personality has been magnified — she’s bratty, she says things like “hold onto your vaginas,” and, oh yeah, she still has that killer instinct. The film finds the most joy in the scenes between Gemma and M3GAN, their odd couple-style banter and barely-veiled hostility forming the central conflict of the movie: Gemma refuses to trust the robot that tried to strangle her, while M3GAN can’t help but follow her original programming to protect Cady.Despite the fun that M3GAN 2.0 finds in having M3GAN and Gemma trade barbs, it does result in the movie losing some of the little emotional heft that the original film had. The sweet relationship between Cady and M3GAN is only briefly alluded to here, while an emotional moment that flirted with the absurd in the first film, the scene in which M3GAN comforts Cady by singing David Guetta’s “Titanium,” gets a much sillier, much more cynical follow-up here that brings the movie to a screeching halt. The handful of moments like these — and a few too many twists — result in the movie feeling about 15 minutes too long. But hey, you can’t stop a diva from vamping.Despite a likable performance from Violet McGraw, Cady gets sidelined in the sequel. | Universal PicturesDespite the layer of cynicism bubbling under the surface, and the film’s sometimes irritating insistence on doubling down on the original film’s most meme-able moments, M3GAN 2.0 is a grand, absurdly fun good time. It takes the original film’s campy send-up of a tired genre and gives it a genre remix — a little action, a little heist caper, a little superhero. But the one thing that’s inarguable: it’s all M3GAN.M3GAN 2.0 opens in theaters June 27.