Basic Instinct 2 is a horrible, horrible movie ' and not even in the Showgirls sense of the word ' but the biggest flaw might be the fact that it's not bad enough.
First of all, it is worse than the original Basic Instinct. The first film had a kind of lurid soft-core appeal heightened by the most unrealistic San Francisco ever to appear on film and a deliciously campy performance by Sharon Stone.
Its sequel, which picks up with Stone's infamous Catherine Tramell 14 years later, could have been an unintentionally hilarious, raunchy trash-fest but favors a plodding, convoluted plot instead.
Ironically, Stone's performance in this film ' as a novelist whose books resemble murders she may or may not have committed ' infinitely is more interesting than it was a decade and a half ago.
Maybe Stone has become a worse actress, because the trashiness of the role fits her so well. Or maybe she has just become better at playing a part that makes her seem like a worse actress. Whatever the case, her apparent insanity and lots of plastic surgery have made her more fun to watch, even if every scene without her is a mind-numbing bore.
A central flaw of Basic Instinct 2 is the fact that Stone appears in far too little of the film. It gets off to a rousing start ' Tramell driving a sports car through the streets of London at 110 mph with a man in the seat next to her. As she comes to a rather noisy climax with his help, she crashes the car off a bridge and into the water. He dies, she lives, and a psychologist, Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey), rules that Tramell has a risk addiction. Because Glass apparently is an idiot, he agrees to take on Tramell as a client.
While the film initially seems like a sorry excuse to see Stone prance around like a dominatrix and spout dirty dialogue ' which a) she does well and b) would have been more than worth my five bucks ' it quickly devolves into a boring little whodunit. Someone dies, Glass suspects Tramell. Someone else dies, Glass suspects Tramell. Eventually, her blatant temptation leads to some well-lit sex that looks tame compared to the original film. Yawn.
Who wants to see a movie primarily about Glass? Morrissey is by no means a bad actor, but he's simply adequate, a Liam Neeson for a dirt-cheap price. Stone ' now age 48 with a piercing, flinty voice ' has a Norma Desmond-like hubris that makes Tramell an irresistible train wreck of a character. Every line and every squinty glare is a work of gorgeous, campy perfection.
As if enough of the film isn't laughably awful, its resolution elevates it to the heights of imbecility. Basic Instinct 2 simply is no fun if Tramell isn't an ice pick-wielding psycho, but this film actually tries to draw us away from thinking the killer is the obvious person to thinking it is the person the obvious person obviously wants us to think it is. Of course, it obviously could be the person we haven't been thinking of but should have since it was obvious all along. But obviously, it isn't. Or something.
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Matt Burns
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David Morrissey and Sharon Stone star in the steamy "Basic Instinct 2." The thriller is not as risque as the 1992 "Basic Instinct."
