|
|
  
Back Shelf Beauties
|
Basic Instinct 2 Somehow, going to see Basic Instinct 2 in a big movie theater with lots of serious, professional adults didn't feel right to me. I felt like I should have seen it the same way I saw the original Basic Instinct, alone in my parents' living room, late at night on cable with the volume turned down, so I didn't wake them up and have them discover me watching it (Sorry Mom and Dad). After seeing Basic Instinct 2, I'm convinced the only people excited to see it will be Sharon Stone's creditors and Cinemax. In many ways, Basic Instinct 2 is Gigli with nudity and sex. Sharon Stone is back as Catherine Tramell - a murderous vixen author whose novels are lurid accounts of sexual affairs, violence and death. She has found her way to England, where Catherine has been accused of killing a soccer star who was stoned out of his mind when their car crashed into the Thames as they, umm, pleasured each other (this opening sequence is your first clue you are about to see something historically stinky). After being examined by a leading court appointed psychiatrist, who happens to be harboring his own guilt about the misdeeds of a former patient, Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey) testifies to Catherine's abhorrent psychological make up, which drives her to seek out the stiff, controlling doctor to start a sexual mind game that slowly drives him mad with passion, anger and paranoia. Soon, some people are dying, some people are having sex, and some people in the audience are leaving the theater to save their sanity and get their money back. Will Dr. Glass find out the truth about Catherine before it is too late? Can he stop Catherine from killing again? Is it she who is doing the killing? Will they knock boots? Bump uglies? Get it on? Do the horizontal mambo? Basic Instinct 2 is one of the worst movies you will ever see, one so bad it will be a cult classic in the same way Showgirls has become a laughingstock mocked for its badness. Director Michael Caton-Jones and writers Leora Barish and Henry Bean desperately are trying to make Basic Instinct 2 into a sexy, shocking, mysterious psychological thriller, but they have created a bland, boring, tensionless piece of junk that elicits laughter from the audience who are incredulously watching a train wreck of a movie. Basic Instinct 2 has more laughs than a Rob Schneider comedy, and they're not even trying (granted, the writers of Rob Schneider comedy aren't trying very hard either, but I digress). Barish and Bean don't seem to have enough ability to write a Saturday morning cartoon, or a low class porn movie let alone a major motion picture. The two fill Basic Instinct 2 with idiotic, laughable double entendres like, "come with me, you'll enjoy it," or "is this where we do it." Then, Caton-Jones fills the movie with awkward, amateurish sex scenes that are not even close to sexy. You might as well watch your grandparents get it on. Who thought an orgy or Sharon Stone talking dirty could be this mechanical, uninteresting and unsexy? Even worse, Caton-Jones never raises the tension and emotion in Basic Instinct 2. The story, which might have been workable in the right hands, plods along with nary a moment of shock. Of course, everything that is wrong and heinous about Basic Instinct 2 begins and ends with the woman at the center of the whole movie, Sharon Stone. Stone is atrocious in this movie. She wants to be a viper, but doesn't convey enough sexiness and emotion to get under our skin and warm up our nether regions. Instead of moving like an enchanting vision of lust luring us in with her womanly wiles, Stone stomps through every scene with the subtlety of a Clydesdale and practically beats us over the head with her line readings. It's impossible to believe any man would become so intoxicated by a ghastly phony. The see-through blouses are too obvious, and more appropriate for a cheap roadside hooker than a cosmopolitan sex pot. What appears to be botox injections in her face make it impossible for Stone to emote with her eyes, mouth or anything else above her neck because she can't move those parts. And, she should have taken some of the money spent on what appears to be a dreadful and obvious breast augmentation to invest in better wigs, hair weaves and extensions, so her hair didn't look like it was stolen off a Raggedy Ann doll (before anyone says I am being unfair to her hair because she suffered from a brain aneurysm, I remind you that was back in 2001 and she had 5 years to grow her hair back). All of this is important because the audience is supposed to believe Dr. Glass is so taken by this sexy beast that he is willing to overlook all of the warning signs just so he can have her, but Stone is so plastic physically and acting wise that you have to laugh at her chewing up the scenery. Sure, she's 48-years old (with some parts of her still under warranty), and looks pretty good for that age, but not good enough to make this movie believable, and doesn't give Catherine enough of a personality to make us curious. Basic Instinct 2 is a bad idea that just gets worse as the movie goes along. The original Basic Instinct was shocking in its day, but the world has changed immensely since 1992. Now, Basic Instinct 2 is nothing more than a Friday night special on Cinemax with more boring sex, and less quality nudity. 0 Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2006 - WaffleMovies.com
|
