Remember how
Freddy Krueger was a terrifying killer in Wes
Craven's original A Nightmare on Elm
Street (1984), only to become an irritating,
one-liner-spewing quip machine just a few sequels
later? The sleek and sexy Catherine Tramell gets the
same treatment in the boneheaded Basic Instinct
2. Gay activists staged a boycott of the original
thriller, objecting to Sharon Stone's bisexual
murderess character, but lots of queer audience
members wound up embracing the flick. Lesbian and gay
movie fans are encouraged to boycott the
sequel--not for any political reasons, but because it
stinks on ice.
Remember how
Stone's Tramell was icily sexy in those white dresses
and the blond updos? Instead of cool, she's now
smug, and instead of sleek, she's now tarty,
like your inappropriate aunt who dresses half her age
and boozily hits on her daughter's embarrassed
boyfriend. Stone was a star in the making in the first
movie, but now she's the whole show, and the
strain shows in her performance. She bludgeons every line of
dialogue to death and vamps around with all the
subtlety of an amorous Sherman tank. As for her
oft-displayed body, she's gone the Madonna route and
turned herself into a perfectly preserved glamour slag.
There's nothing inviting about her hard body;
it's more like a monument to plastic surgery
and Pilates.
What's the
story, you ask? I'm still working on that one myself.
Catherine goes to London, and the credits aren't over
before we see her shove a soccer player's
finger under her skirt while she speeds through town
in a zippy sports car. As she brings herself to climax, she
drives off the road and into the Thames, leaving the
drugged-out jock to drown. Was it murder?
That's what Scotland Yard homicide detective Roy
Washburn (David Thewlis, slumming) wants to prove with
the help of psychiatrist Michael Glass (David
Morrissey). Glass determines that Catherine has a
"risk addiction," and after she walks on the
murder charge she starts having sessions with Glass,
despite warnings to Glass by his mentor, Dr. Milena
Gardosh (Charlotte Rampling, really slumming).
Of course,
it's about that time that all of Glass's
enemies start getting bumped off. Is Catherine up to
her old tricks? Is Glass trying to pin the crimes on
her? Is Washburn trying to frame either of them?
Honestly, do you
care? If you're going to this movie expecting
Showgirls-level laughs, you'll be
disappointed. In further resemblance to Madonna, Stone
has made plenty of crappy movies since her
breakthrough in the original Instinct, and this is
just another one of those: her Swept Away, if
you will. Most of the laughs come from the parade of
phallic symbols in the movie, particularly the
chrome-and-steel skyscraper where Dr. Glass works. It looks
like, and is filmed like, a butt plug.
And if
you're going for the R-rated nooky, you'll
find that fairly disappointing as well. There was a
potentially steamy three-way in an Internet trailer
that was making the rounds a few months ago, but that
scene is nowhere to be found; look for it on the eventual
"unrated" DVD release. Besides, most of
the sex scenes involve the pudding-ish Morrissey, who
radiates neither charisma nor sexuality; he's like
the least interesting parts of Liam Neeson mixed with
a heavy dollop of Joe Don Baker.
Top it all off
with a ludicrous twist ending that tries to make the movie
retroactively less predictable, and you've got a
major disappointment. Nothing in the ensuing years has
made the original Basic Instinct look more like
a Hitchcockian masterpiece than this idiotic sequel.
Making a movie written by Joe Eszterhas look great?
That's a feat even Freddy Krueger
couldn't have pulled off.