Harry here... But what about the nipple shots, that has to make it better than the first film... It can't possibly suck as bad as the first film... Could it?
Hey Harry,
Guess you were still out of town as I didn't see you waiting in line last night for the glory and splendor that was Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Way Too Long a Name, so perhaps you can use this.
You know, when I went into this I had low expectations, but there was a slight glimmer of hope. A shining ray in the darkness of the theatre. It was that Simon West, the man who tormented us in the first installment of this 'franchise' was replaced by none other than Jan De Bont. While personally I felt this wasn't too far an evolutionary step above West, it was at least a step. Jan de Bont, after all, has thumbs. But alas, despite the hope that was there, despite Mr. Beaks touching interview and despite all of Jan's own talk I'm afraid I'm gonna have to do this film like the Laker's do a Colorado Consierge.
Personally, I hope Jan de Bont burns in hell for this shit. No really. I hope hell is a hot screening room with locked exit doors, broken seats and sticky floors that shows nothing but Jan de Bont films. Over and over again. And Speed breaks during the title sequence EVERY TIME only to be replaced by a second helping of this. Oh, and as a slight side note, to those reviewers that keep referring to 'Speed' as the best or one of the best action films of the 90's, I have to say this. You need to get out more. Off the top of my head you need to see, oh, I don't know, maybe The Professional, The Rock, La Femme Nakita, The Matrix, True Lies, Total Recall. And probably a dozen other films. Sure, Speed isn't a BAD film, but the rest of Mr. de Bont's filmography as a director is. The Haunting, Speed 2 and Twister.
Well, folks, get ready to add another notch in Jan de Bont's bedpost for fucking you, because he's going to do it yet again with Tomb Raider 2. I never imagined that de Bont could do worse than Simon West. But he did.
This film is dead on arrival. From the opening sequence on, this film fails to engage the audience even once. It meanders listlessly from 'action' sequence to 'action' sequence, never once offering anything even remotely exciting. In the previous film at least the robot looked kind of cool and the aereal bungee shoot out had a slight air of originality to it. Here there's nothing like that. Not one visual that sticks with you, not one stunt that raises your pulse even the slightest bit. In a word, this film is BORING.
But boring doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. It's also bad in every way it can be save bad in a good way, meaning that you can't even really laugh at it as a bad movie. It's simply painful. Every line is poorly written, awkwardly delivered and what comedic timing there is is off just enough to keep you from even chuckling.
But you don't care about any of that, right? You're interested in just one thing, or maybe just two. The twins. Yeah, well the performances here are even more stilted and painful to watch than in the first film. Angelina Jolie (she's the pair of lips attached to the twins) attempts at every chance to pose for the male members of the cast between every line but comes across more like a pathetic plastic accessory than an actual member of the cast. And the twins? At least Simon West got them to bounce at the end of his Tomb Raider. Here, well, I've seen Stephen Hawkins move more than that. Gerard Butler (who was actually charming as Christian Bale's ill fated sidekick in Reign of Fire) seems to be trying here as the scottish traitor that Lara ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE to accompany her on the mission, but his character has little to do other than fawn all over Lara and act as an enabler to get us from point A to point B on occasion. His character is wafer thin and his performance is entirely in his accent, but he's heads and shoulders above the rest of the cast. Djimon Hounsou (Gladiator, Amistad, Stargate) simply looks bored everytime we see him, almost like he's not even happy to be in the movie. There's this glazed 'where's my check?' phoned in look on his face everytime he's on screen. But dear god, the end all be all of bad performances here is Ciaran Hinds, who despite being fantastic as Russian President Nemerov in last years "Sum of All Fears" gives arguably one of the worst villainous performances in recent memory. This isn't just Alec Balwin in Mercury Rising bad. This is 50's B-movie villain bad. This is Tor Johnston bad.
And to top all of this off, this movie refuses to be tongue and cheek about itself. Do I think action films have to be tongue in cheek nowadays? No. But they do if they're this bad. They do if your heroes brilliant plan to escape an underwater death is to cut herself, fan the blood and wait for a shark to show up so she can deck it (you read that right...she punches a shark square in the nose) and then hop on it's back for a quick ride to the surface (something there's no logical reason for it to do). This scene is a perfect example of why this film fails at every turn. For every improbable stunt, for every over the top moment this film offers up the film maintains an absolute tone of seriousness. We're supposed to believe whats happening is real and we're supposed to be excited about it.
What makes films like the Indiana Jones movies work is that when the shit hits the fan, Harrison Ford knows how to give the audience a look like he knows he's fucked. He just knows it. He convinces us that he knows he's just about to die. And Steven Spielberg knows how to convince us at every turn that Indy is surviving only out of sheer luck and by the grace of sudden inspiration. Heroism, after all, does always triumph in the end. Here, in LCTR:TCOL (Jesus, it's even a long acronym) however, we're supposed to believe Lara survives simply because she's Lara Croft and she's a badass (supposedly). Never in the film are we given a reason to like her, or even for a moment think she's anything but a stuck up grave robber who loves to get men hard only to leave them hanging. She's bitchy, arrogant and never once displays the slightest hint of humanity. And most of all, she always looks like she knows what she's doing. Even bond gives us a good "Dear god I am so fucked" look every once in a while.
And what's up with the soundtrack? At least the first film sported the likes of BT and Nine Inch Nails. In fact Tomb Raider is on my top five list of the greatest soundtracks ever for the worst movies, right above The Crow: City of Angels. But this. Not a single tune to tap my foot to, nothing to help make the visuals just that much less lifeless.
All in all this film is a waste, an utterly painful romp back into the oh so cliche world of Lara Croft. But if that's not enough to sway you away from the theaters this weekend and keep this from making enough money to warrent a third and possibly even more painful film (because hey, Paul W.S. Anderson and Simon "Time Machine" Wells haven't given it a go yet) then let me leave you with this High School Level analogy: Tomb Raider is to Speed as Tomb Raider 2 is to _________ ?
If you said Speed 2, pat yourself on the back and find something else to see this weekend. If not consider yourself warned.
Pyul Mactackle
