Basic Instinct 2

Basic Instinct 2
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Written by Leora Barish and Henry Bean
MGM

Basic Instinct 2 is a geisha in the film world. You dress up a movie that normally would go straight-to-pay-cable and make it look like it's a premium flick--but in the end, it's still just a dirty whore. Dressed down, this high-class call girl would be just another movie you flip by on your way to more challenging fare, like Predator.

And let me tell you, when I saw the name David Morrissey as Sharon Stone's next psychological victim, I immediately had fantasies that the singer Morrissey (born Steven Patrick) was the guy that they were talking about. Alas, no Irish blood, English heart for this film--which would have been great considering that the former Smiths vocalist announced many years ago that he was celibate. Imagine him taking on raw sexuality and...

Oh yeah, there's not much of that anyway. Word on the street is that several scenes were cut. Now we're left with a sequel to one of the most sexually charged flicks ever floated into the mainstream that has quite symbolically been stripped of its Viagra. Considering that the "franchise" has waited 14 years to unload a sequel, it really needed it.

In this go-around, author Catherine Tramell (Stone) has invaded London, and her sex & drugs freewheeling lifestyle ends up getting a soccer (football) star killed when her car zooms off into the water while getting pleasured. Enter Roy Washburn (David Thewlis), who really wants to send her away but has no evidence. A psycholigical exam is needed, so they get Michael Glass (David Morrissey from Derailed) to do an evaluation. The usual Tramell style enters in, where she starts the slow mind screw and you can't tell what truth and fiction is anymore. Of course, Glass is resistant at first, practically the whole movie even, before there's any physical screwing between the two. But, people Glass knows are ending up dead--he becomes a suspect, but then it's revealed Tramell knows these people too, and then Washburn himself gets cast into the shadows. By the end of it, you'll never really know for fact who did what. That's infuriating.

The 1992 Basic Instinct was a landmark for what you can show in movie theatres. But in the age of all sorts of regulation for what we watch, audiences who apparently should be more progressive 14 years later apparently can't handle a three-way or even close to what could be shown in 1992. That's extremely backwards to me, although I'm sure there are many people out there who are thankful that things are getting toned down. But here's my question. Since the only people who will essentially be watching this are adults, who are we trying to protect here? I would imagine most parents out there aren't going to go to the local bijou to have a family day culminating in Basic Instinct 2. If so, then the family depicted by "The Aristocrats" joke really exists.

Beyond that, though, the original Basic Instinct, despite its trashy nature, had a fairly decent mystery and good thriller behind it. The sequel, not so much. I didn't even get a cheap thrill or cheap B-movie entertainment from it. It's just limp viewing for so many reasons.