Oh Boy! Where do I start with this one? Basic Instinct 2...it just basically stinks. No need to cross your legs and think of Catherine Tramell in this sequel. It’s just not remotely sexy. Sharon Stone reprises her role as cinema’s best known femme fatale, novelist Catherine Tramell. But 14 years on she’s about as seductive as a cockroach in a mini-dress.
After the disastrous Catwoman sent her fading career into freefall it’s no surprise Stone has been trying to set up this star-reinvigorating sequel. But the fact she’s the only remaining link to the original tells it’s own story. Four minutes in, Basic Instinct: Risk Addiction reaches it’s first climax (quite literally) with a car crash-an indicator of what’s to come, if you ask me. Former footballer Stan Collymore (he’s been doggedly practising for this acting role)dies in the wreck soon after pleasuring Catherine. Small mercies, but it’s all downhill from there.
The film is so lazy they haven’t even changed the plot, simply swapping Douglas’s deadbeat San Francisco cop in the original for David Morrissey’s strung-out London psychiatrist Dr Michael Glass (David Morrissey). Stone’s saucy novelist is in trouble with the law again as police investigate the death of Stan’s character. So they call in Dr Glass, a respected London shrink who’s brought in by sleazy cop Roy Washburn (David Thewlis) to quiz Tramell over Collymore’s demise.
Physically drawn to and mentally intrigued by her, Glass - against the advice of his mentor, Dr Milena Gardosh (Charlotte Rampling)- is quickly sucked into her web of deceit. ’’Is this where we’re going to do it?’’she purrs in the first of many lame double entendres. But once Tramell’s sprawled on Glass’s couch, he gets lured into her seductive game and the pair spend the next 90 minutes sparring pathetically. As bodies pile up, one dimensional Stone gallivantes around London snarling tedious sexual one-liners.
Asked if she’s traumatised about Collymore’s death she says: ’’Hey yes, who knows if I’ll ever come again?’’ Don’t worry, she does. There’s plenty of sex: Rough sex, lesbian sex, group sex, but sadly no sexy sex. Nobody is saying the original film was Oscar-winning stuff, but at least it was a genuine turn-on. That leg-crossing moment made cinema history.
The only way Basic Instinct 2 will go down in history is as one of the worst films ever. The audience is teased mercilessly about whether Sharon will flash her undercarriage again. She doesn’t. But she does do a full frontal starkers shot in a Jacuzzi. But don’t worry, you won’t have nightmares. There’s enough Vaseline on the camera lens to guarantee that. Can Glass avoid suspicion? Is Washburn implicated?
Does Tramell write true fictions? And, quite frankly, does anyone care? It’s a preposterous script, desperately wishing to elevate itself by confusion, false leads and lots of sexual tension, sexual activity and sexual line-crossing. But in the end it offers a rather absurd and unsatisfactory climax.
Seduction is the ultimate weapon in Basic Instinct 2, a lurid see-saw of manipulation and control which plays like an unoriginal, racy page turner. David Thewlis walks off with the acting honours (despite the worst screen death ever) with Stone, Morrisey and Collymore proving more wooden than the entire Thunderbirds cast.