Toad's Vietnam story was an insult to what people went through in Vietnam and what happened there, turning a serious issue into a lot of cheap comedy. And Toad's missing-in-action thing in the first film was clearly meant to be a serious recognition of how people one knew died out there in Vietnam, but the sequel turned it into a silly joke, thus robbing the original film of profundity and making a joke of the deaths of people in Vietnam. All because the people making the film didn't have the guts to kill off the character, I guess. At least they didn't retcon Milner's death out of existence, but they did just as bad by turning him into arsehole.
As for split screen stuff and form the story was told in, that adds nothing of value worth noting. Innovative form is useless without a good story, emotional depth or real content. The original film was overly sweetened and didn't ring fully true, but at least it had a certain degree of emotional depth. The sequel was just shallow dumb comedy.