Ebert continued, “I have here an e-mail from Adam
Burke, a reader who says, “I’m tired of reading your reviews where you give a
movie three stars but make sure we know it isn’t a great movie. You always seem
to want to cover your butt, making sure we know you’re smarter than the movie.”
He has a point. Of course I am smarter than most movies, but so are you. That
doesn’t always prevent us from enjoying them. What Burke doesn’t mention is my
other maddening tendency, which is to give a movie 1-1/2 stars and then hint
that it’s really better than that.”
Which brings us full circle to “Basic Instinct 2.” It
has a daring plot that depends on 1. A psychopathic serial killer being able to
manipulate everyone in her life, or 2. A woman who unbelievably seems to be a psychopathic
serial killer, while there is 3. An alternative explanation for everything.
Ebert said, “True, (a), (b) or (c) are equally impossible, but they’re the only
possibilities, I think.” That leaves us feeling cheated at the end, which is
how everyone in the film feels, so we end up there together.
So much for the plot. Now for Sharon Stone. She must
have gotten some of the worst reviews in years, but she delivers the goods.
Playing Catherine Tramell, a terrible novelist who plays with life, death, and
love while doing “research” for her next best seller, Stone brings a compelling
fascination to her performance. You don’t believe it, but you can’t keep your
eyes away. She talks bad better than anyone in the movies. She can spend hours
working her way through “every position in Masters and Johnson,” she sighs regretfully,
and forget all about it in a week, “but I’d remember it if a man died while
making love to me.”
She says this, and lots of other things, to a shrink
named Dr. Michael Glass, played by David Morrissey. He’s selected by the courts
to evaluate her mental state after the car she is driving goes off a bridge at
110 MPH and her passenger, a soccer player, dies. In court, we see she has a “risk
addiction” so severe that “the only limit for her would be her own death.” They
say with any addiction you have to hit bottom. Death may be taking it too far.
Outside the courts after unlikely legal procedures,
she comes slobbering after Dr. Glass, who badly accepts her as a client. Also
involved in this disaster are his ex-wife (Indira Varma), a gossip writer (Hugh
Dancy) his ex-wife is currently in a relationship with, a Freudian in a wig
(Heathcote Williams), a fellow shrink (Charlotte Rampling) who warns Glass he
is playing with fire, and a cop (David Thewlis) who looks around the case
convinced that if something fishy is not currently happening at this moment, it
was happening not very long ago.
Some of these people die horribly during the course of
the film, possibly giving Tramell something to remember. Some of them are
suspected of the murders. The details are not very important. Ebert said, “What
matters are the long scenes of dialogue in which Tramell mind-whacks Dr. Glass
with speculations so detailed they rival the limerick about who did what, and
with which, and to whom.”
The Catherine Tramell role cannot be played well, but
Sharon Stone can play it better than any other actress. Ebert said, “The
director, Michael Caton-Jones, alternates smoldering closeups with towering
dominatrix poses, and there’s an extended Jacuzzi sequence in which we get the
much-advertised full frontal nudity — which does not, somehow, manage to be
full, frontal and nude all at the same time. First a little nude, then a little
full, then a little frontal, driving us crazy trying to load her simultaneously
onto our hard drive.”
Ebert described, “Dr. Glass is played by David
Morrissey as a subdued, repressed basket case who listens to Tramell with a
stony expression on his face. This is because he is either (a) suppressing his
desire to ravage her in lustful abandon, or (b) suppressing delirious laughter.
I’ll bet there are outtakes of Stone and Morrissey cracking up.” How else does
someone respond to dialogue like, “Don’t take it so hard – even Oedipus didn’t
see his mother coming.”
Ebert said, ““Basic Instinct 2” is not good in any
rational or defensible way, but not bad in irrational and indefensible ways. I
savored the icy abstraction of the modern architecture, which made the people
look like they came with the building. I grinned at that absurd phallic
skyscraper that really does exist in London. I liked the recklessness of the
sex-and-speed sequence that opens the movie (and, curiously, looks to have been
shot in Chicago). I could appreciate the plot once I accepted that it was
simply jerking my chain. You can wallow in it. Speaking of wallowing in the
plot, I am reminded of another of today’s e-mails, from Coralyn Sheridan, who
tells me that in Parma, they say, “The music of Verdi is like a pig: Nothing
goes to waste.” Those Parmesans.”
Ebert ended his review by saying, “Of Sharon Stone,
what can I say except that there is within most men a private place that
responds to an aggressive sexual challenge, especially when it’s delivered like
a lurid torch song, and Stone plays those notes like she worked out her own
fingering.”
This is a terrible sequel. Why did they see a need to
make a sequel to “Basic Instinct?” Was there really a story to tell in the
sequel, especially since the first one didn’t end in a way that would hint a
sequel. Don’t make the mistake of seeing the sequel because it is just awful. You
will not like it at all. They were talking about making a third one, but
thankfully that has been scrapped.
Alright everyone, we have now ended “Sharon Stone
Month.” Hopefully everyone enjoyed this month. Sorry I had to end off on a
terrible note, but that’s what happens sometimes. Next month, I will be
bringing in some more reviews.
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