Call this one dead in the water. Like the mammoth cruise ship on which the movie is set, Speed 2: Cruise Control is big, bulky and going nowhere. Even the film's climactic showpiece fails to wow: The ship plows head-on into a dock populated by hundreds of startled tourists, then takes out row after row of flimsy condominiums (which, oddly, have neither residents nor furnishings). It seems to have traveled the width of the island by the time it finally lurches to a stop. But then we get an overhead view, and half the ship is still in the harbor. Say what?
It's all very disappointing. The original Speed, released in 1994 and starring Bullock and Keanu Reeves, was an intense, often droll, humdinger of an action film. Speed 2, which reteams director Jan De Bont (who also did Twister) with leading lady Bullock, seems like just another obligatory sequel. Reeves was smart to bail out. His stand-in here, the ever stolid Patric, plays a Los Angeles cop who heads up the gangplank for a romantic, week-long cruise with girlfriend Bullock. Once onboard, Bullock purrs, "This almost seems too perfect." Good call, oh prescient star. Before she can order a second drink with a paper umbrella sticking out of it, a disgruntled fellow passenger (Willem Dafoe, so intense he sticks leeches to his own chest) has tapped into the ship's computer system and hijacked the boat. It's up to Patric and Bullock, with a little help from the crew, to get everyone safely back to dry land.
What's most galling about Speed 2 is its almost laughable sexism. Except for a scene in which she wields a mean chain saw, Bullock spends the movie flapping her arms helplessly and cautioning Patric to "Be careful" while he does all the heroic heavy lifting. It's a shame, since a great deal of the appeal of the first Speed was how well Bullock measured up to the high-speed bus-driving duties that were thrust upon her. Here, Bullock is left trying vainly to inject humor and hints of spunk where she can. The effort shows. (PG-13)
Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz, Rupert Everett
Julia Roberts is on a mission: "I've got exactly four days to break up a wedding," says her character, a food critic, early on in this frustratingly self-sabotaging movie. The nuptials she intends to stop are those of her closest pal (Mulroney), a sports-writer with whom she had a fling back in college, and the perfectly lovely heiress (Diaz) with whom he has fallen head over heels in love. Roberts doesn't believe theirs is the real thing. After all these years, she has now decided that she loves Mulroney, that surely he must love her, and they belong together.
Fine. Tell the man. Tell him now. Of course, if she did that, we wouldn't have a movie. So, instead, Roberts spends most of Wedding pulling every lying, vicious, dumb trick in the book on Diaz to make her squirm and to turn Mulroney against his fiancée. It's painful to watch. Why should we care about such a deceitful, nasty character? In classic romantic screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby and The Awful Truth (rent these, you'll be glad you did), leading ladies Katharine Hepburn and Irene Dunne never set out to make their rivals look bad. Rather, they just tripped up the hero until he finally stumbled onto the truth about whom he really loved.
Roberts, very much back to her Pretty Woman adorableness, smiles wide, tosses her long curly locks with gusto and dutifully executes numerous pratfalls, but her heart never really seems to be in her character's evil doings. The talented Mulroney, who has smoldered sexily in smaller films such as Kansas City and Trigger Effect, seems muted here. Diaz is winning, but the movie is stolen by Everett, who plays Roberts's gay confidant. Whether urging her to simply tell the truth or convincing an entire restaurant full of people to join him in a spirited rendition of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David tune, "I Say a Little Prayer," he is to this movie what Eve Arden was to numerous pictures of the '40s and '50s. Which is to say, the film gets a huge lift every time he appears, and we in the audience go, oh boy, we'll have pure unadulterated fun for the next few minutes. (PG-13)
Peter Fonda, Patricia Richardson
It has been nearly three decades since Peter Fonda starred in a memorable movie (1969's Easy Rider), which is why you're caught by surprise at just how powerfully good he is in Ulee's Gold, a small, sinewy character study made by writer-director Victor Nunez (Ruby in Paradise).
Fonda, who will remind many viewers of his father here, plays a reclusive beekeeper in Florida. A widower, he's taking care of his two young granddaughters because their father, his son, is in jail and their mother is a druggie. When a couple of his son's lawbreaking buddies threaten to harm the family, Fonda, in his own slow, deliberate way, swings into action. Also contributing a lovely performance is Home Improvement's Richardson, who plays a divorced nurse who recently moved in across the street. Watch for the scene in which, while deciding whether to accept a cup of tea from Fonda, her unsparing gaze makes it clear that what she's really weighing is whether it's worth her time to take a chance on him. (R)
>Sinking Sensations
HOLLYWOOD'S WATERLOOS
STEVEN SPIELBERG, WHOSE MEGAHIT Jaws weathered financial tempests and real-life squalls during shooting, once gave director Kevin Reynolds some advice: Never make a movie on water. Reynolds promptly set about filming Waterworld, whose production challenges matched its $175 million budget. Despite the lessons of wallet-draining epics, from 1962's Mutiny on the Bounty to 1989's The Abyss, filmmakers refuse to throw in the towel. This year, no fewer than four waterlogged pics—more than $400 million worth—are washing up at theaters. Why? "It's like Mount Everest—look at all those people still going up," says producer Peter Giuliano, whose Sphere, based on Michael Crichton's thriller about the discovery of an alien spaceship in the sea, is now underway. "We all say, 'I'm going to be different and not make the same mistakes.' "
One mistake, says Jon Landau, producer of the $200 million-plus Titanic—whose July release was pushed to December—is "exposure to the elements." To avoid them, the Titantic team built a 16-million-gallon tank. Speed 2 used the real Caribbean—and sent more than 50 walkie-talkies to Davy Jones's locker. "If they weren't working," says cinematographer Jack Green, "it was, 'Throw 'em in!' "
Every time Minnie Driver, costar of The Flood, a film about bank robbers sloshing through a town six feet under water due out this fall, got thrown in, "she'd complain how cold it was," reports a camera loader. "She'd say, 'Why can't they make the water warmer?' " But her cries will pale in comparison with the yelps of studio execs who may take a bath on these soggy sagas.
- Contributors:
- Jeffrey Wells.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
