CONTENT WARNING: THIS BLOG DEALS WITH WEIGHT AND IMAGE ISSUES. IF THIS IS A TOPIC THAT AFFECTS YOU, THEN THIS MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR VIEWING.
Sequel book time again. Not my favorite works to cover from Stine. Due mostly in part that they've almost always sucked. But, you know, Haunted Mask, Living Dummy, Monster Blood, they at least make sense in terms of doing a new book on. But, I don't know, who was really asking for another Say Cheese and Die? Other than it being one of the original ten and being a strong seller, what value is there to a follow up? Well, strap yourself in for a prime example that no, we didn't need this—again! It's Say Cheese and Die—Again!
SAY CHEESE AND DIE—AGAIN!
RELEASE MONTH: June, 1996
FRONT TAGLINE: Think negative. Real negative. (Later Smile For The Camera...)
COVER STORY
I talk a lot about how the original cover for Say Cheese and Die scared me. I don't really know why, never had much of a skeleton fear before that. I guess it's such a mix of a moment of normality turned dark and freaky that just messed with me. And with this one, I don't think it even comes close to that same reaction. That being said, it's still a neat cover and the skeleton family designs still feel jarring and creepy, but this one felt like a mandate to make it less freaky.
Case in point, adding eyeballs in the skulls. It's such a pivotal detail in the fright factor of the original cover, but adding it here just makes things goofy. Then little additions like the combover on the dad and the lipstick on mom and the anatomically incorrect skeleton dog. But the book wins points for the kid on the right clearly wearing a Grateful Dead shirt. Always thought that Grateful Dead was very much an inspiration for the original cover and I guess I was kind of right? And, it wouldn't be a Jacobus cover without the Chucks.
PICTURE PERFECT NIGHTMARE!
Sourball. That's what Greg calls his teacher, Mr. Saur. He's a real grouch. And now he just gave Greg a big "F" on his oral report.
He didn't believe Greg's story. About the camera Greg found last summer. About the pictures it took. About the evil things that happened.
Poor Greg. He just wanted to prove old Sourball wrong. But now that he's dug up the camera, bad things are happening. Really bad things.
Just like the first time...
STORY
This book starts with Greg Banks recapping us about the whole incident with the camera over the summer, only to be stopped by his teacher Mr. Saur. Mr. Saur is the meanest teacher in school. Super serious, never smiling and certainly isn't going to believe Greg's story about a magic camera that nearly killed his dad, made one of his friends disappear and we didn't even get to the part where it literally killed the guy who made it. Mr. Saur, or Sourball Saur as many call him, decides to give Greg an F for his oral report. This puts Greg in a panic because this will screw up his chance to see his cousins in Yosemite. But, Mr. Saur decides for some leniency. Show him the camera. Prove it works. Then he may reconsider.
As Greg leaves school, he gets picked on by two bullies named Donny Greene and Brian Webb. No, we never get an answer as to what befell Joey and Mickey. They shove a camera in his face and utter the words "Say Cheese and Die!", the only time that's actually ever said in these. Greg also calls them Sumo 1 and Sumo 2 due to them being heavyset, and trust me, that's going to be horribly ironic very soon. Greg talks to Michael, Bird and Shari about going to find the camera back at the Coffman house, but they all think it's a bad idea, which like, duh, it is.
However, when Greg heads to the Coffman house, he sees that it's no longer there. It had been recently demolished. Greg looks around in the dumpster, hoping to find the camera, and after finding a dead raccoon, he indeed finds the camera. But another kid shows up and tries to take it from him. The kid's name is Jonathan, and it's his father that is building a new building over the old Coffman residence. As Greg and Jon struggle with the camera, it goes off. Jon runs off with the camera, only to suddenly collapse to the ground, clutching his foot. In his haste, he ran over a carpenter's nail that impaled his foot. Greg snatches the camera and checks the photo. Sure enough, it shows Jon's accident. Greg thinks maybe this is enough proof, but is still taking the camera to school.
The next day, Shari confronts Greg about taking the camera and tells him to get rid of it. She's more level headed here than in the last book, but I guess being blinked out of existence for a spell does that. Greg and Shari fight over the camera when it goes off in Shari's face. But when the photo comes out, it's a negative of her. So that's different. Shari, obviously annoyed that her future is screwed, gets back at Greg by taking his picture. When the photo shows up, it shows a massively overweight Greg. So, the camera has gone from disastrous events to being able to physically change whoever it takes a picture of. Point for freshness at least. However, those points are going to be deducted super quick given what's to come. But for now, Greg tries to take the photos to Mr. Saur, but there's a substitute in, so no luck.
As Greg heads home, he begins to feel heavier and more tired. When he gets on his bike, the tires pop. The effects are already kicking in and he's gaining more and weight. The next day, Mr. Saur is back, but because Greg now can't get out of his desk, he can't show the pictures. Greg also learns that the camera has affected Shari already too, only making her more and more skinny. So skinny that we get a scene where her skirt falls which, okay, we didn't need that image Stine. So, much like a lot of Stine's modern books, we've gone from book about magic camera shenanigans to his new interest: Fat jokes.
Greg gets picked on for his weight, particularly by Michael and Bird because this... this is a really shitty group of friends. But, even stupider are Greg's parents, who think that their son gaining 300 pounds must be some sort of allergic reaction. Goosebumps parents, why are you the way you are? And even with the fact that their son is rapidly gaining weight, they send him to school anyway because this book needs to really hit the nail on the head to its readers.
So, it's like bad at this point, but it gets much worse as the next day, Mr. Saur really begins to lay into Greg about his weight. Making comments like Greg shouldn't sit near the window because he'll block out the sun. Or to go to the nurse to learn about the food groups. With all his hack commentary I'm surprised he didn't add in "Greg, when you sit around the house, you really sit around the house." And the interesting thing added is that nobody in the class laughs at this. Not even Donny and Brian, who given the book had Greg mock their weight, may also have these same image issues that Mr. Saur is insulting Greg with. Like, in the age of phones, this would mean that Mr. Saur would probably get fired super quick for literally treating his students like garbage. But, this is the mid 90s and even before the sickening norm of school shootings, so of course we had teachers treating students like this.
Greg sees Shari again and sees that she's so thin and skeletal that her bones are shrinking. Also that day, Greg is now so heavyset that he has to be carried out in a van. OKAY STINE, WE GET IT, REEL THIS IN ALREADY! But thankfully we're near the end of this book. Greg and Shari try to think of what to do to reverse the effects. Of course, the original book made it clear that ripping the pictures reverses the effects, but that would make things too easy and they decide to... just keep taking pictures instead, good lord this book is stupid. This just ends up giving Greg scaly skin. Then they come up with one more idea. Greg's brother Terry is now working at Kramer's Photo Mart. If they can get him to turn Shari's picture negative and Greg's picture positive, it should reverse the effects. Terry does so, and sure enough the effects disappear.
TWIST ENDING
Greg still takes the camera with him to school. Now it's less about proving things to Mr. Saur as it is getting some form of revenge. Cool, bring the deadly object to school, what could go wrong? Well that answer ends up being that before Greg can take Mr. Saur's picture, Mr. Saur grabs it from him and takes a picture of the class. And we again end with us never knowing what the picture showed.
CONCLUSION
Here's the thing about this book. It's a bad book. Bad because it's a lazy sequel, bad because it's just lacks anything of quality, bad because it feels like a totally different story got squeezed into another book sequel. But it's one of the first books I think is bad for people's mental health. Especially people who have issues with their weight. Goosebumps is supposed to be escapism. It's supposed to be fun. But I can't imagine people who have those weight issues finding much fun in a book that makes light of someone's weight issues. Do I think Stine did this with malice? Not really. I can imagine he just wanted to do his own take on Stephen King's Thinner. But a lot of Thinner came from King's own life. This does not appear to be the case with R.L. Stine. And I'll put it this way, this is not something that Robert Lawrence Stine should have covered.
Even for 1996 when society didn't even consider how a lot of this stuff could bother people, that's no excuse for what just feels like Stine interjecting in a subject he's not educated in. He simply wasn't qualified to make light of weight gain and the stress of image issues for many. And then there's Shari, who Stine went far more kid gloves on, save for the pointless skirt scene. I think Stine figured that he could make fun of the "fat boys" and get away with that, but if he had focused the book on what could be looked at as an anorexia allegory, he'd have been killed for it far more than he has been already.
And to have all this in a sequel book to Say Cheese and Die just feels baffling. The camera is far less used in this book than the previous, and aside from the nail incident, it becomes more of a magic camera that can affect your DNA. And the best idea Stine can come up with is "let's make the camera make Greg fat"? Props to Say Cheese... And Die Screaming! in HorrorLand at least. It's not perfect, but it is a far better evil camera story. And there was some weird stuff in that book as well with the reptile skin and the bee head, but at least things felt interesting and it at least felt like something you could enjoy reading without feeling gross afterwards.
Greg's just okay as a protagonist, but stupid for not treating the camera as a threat. Pacing is fine, and the one scene with the impaled foot is at least a scare. But, the plot might be the dumbest excuse for a sequel in the series. Especially given that in the first book, when Shari vanished, Greg tried to show an officer that the camera was behind it, only to not be believed. So why would he think that any teacher would believe his story, let alone Mr. Saur, who the book establishes is this serious grump who is a super skeptic at that? Like, I'll rag on the redundancy of the dummy sequels, but at least they do often have better plots and reasons for Slappy to return. This is just weak sauce from Stine.
And unlike some other people who reviewed this book, I'm not angry. I'm not in a rage over this book. I'm not cursing Stine's name. I'm just really disappointed. Disappointed in how bad this is as a sequel, disappointed in Stine's poor judgment, just disappointed that this book exists at all. This feels like something Stine had no passion for and made as a quick cash grab. And given that there's really little to enjoy, and even a lame twist ending, it's a definite avoid at all costs. I can't in good faith call it the worst in the series, there are ones like Revenge R Us that are far more abhorrent. But, I can say without hyperbole that that there was no need for the again. Say Cheese and Die should have just stayed dead.
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