Basic Instinct 2

Basic Instinct 2 opens 'œwith a bang,' said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Novelist Catherine Tramell, played by Sharon Stone, and her latest conquest are playing erotic games while speeding along a London roadway. With her hands in places they shouldn't be, Tramell drives the car into the Thames. Alas, 'œthat may be the last moment of unbridled joy' in the film. Tramell survives, her lover doesn't. The courts send her to shrink Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey) to evaluate her sanity. Naturally, she reduces him to a puddle of lust, said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. But the movie is fatally British. When it 'œtries to get down and dirty, it just seizes up.' Director Michael Caton-Jones seems more interested in architecture than in people, as is evidenced by the overabundance of shots of the phallic Swiss Re building in London. Caton-Jones also fails to make sense of the plot, which ends with an unconvincing Big Twist. Don't blame Stone, said Eleanor Ringel Gillespie in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She looks fabulous, and is every bit as wickedly alluring as she was 15 years go. But 'œeven Meryl Streep would have trouble playing off Morrissey,' who is too blandly asexual to deserve her attentions.

Rating: R

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