Leading Ladies: March 2006

Basic Instinct 2

Stars: Sharon Stone, David Morrissey, Charlotte Rampling, David Thewlis
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Rating: R

The good news about this over-the-top, cheesy sequel starring Sharon Stone as the sex-mad, ice-pick-wielding writer Catherine Tramell, whose machinations, this time, focus on a shrink: Showgirls may no longer be the worst deliberately sexual movie ever made, say the female critics.

The Los Angeles Times's Carina Chocano says it's a "drag camp-fest for the Baby Jane crowd, fabulous fodder for future cabaret acts and a pleasure probably best enjoyed in a crowd ‑- preferably a vocal one. Dead serious and stone idiotic, the only basic instinct in evidence here is desperation."

The New York Times's Manohla Dargis agrees that the movie is "a disaster of the highest or perhaps lowest order," and USA Today's Claudia Puig says, "The 1992 phenomenon was creepy, tense and sexually charged in a bold yet tawdry way. This sequel lacks even a shred of those elements."

L.A. Weekly's Ella Taylor says it demonstrates "that (a) a sillier and more hackneyed movie than Basic Instinct is possible and (b)... shrinks have ids too, by golly."

And Salon's Stephanie Zacharek says the director is "aware of [the movie's] camp value (how could anyone not be?), but there are whole stretches where he forgets we're supposed to be having fun and takes the whole thing far too seriously."

Female consensus: Basically, it's bad

next : Ice Age: The Meltdown