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September 02, 2006
In terms of things I've been watching lately, I rented Starship Troopers 2 and Hollow Man 2. Both are jaw-droppingly bad low-budget sequels to Paul Verhoeven's last two huge-budget American sci-fi movies. The sequels are official releases from Columbia TriStar, who wanted to make a quick buck on direct-to-DVD titles with a guaranteed audience. I figured they would both be bad, because I hadn't heard anything about them at all, but I didn't think they would be quite as bad as they are. Hollow Man 2 is a sub-TV-quality chase picture with almost nothing remarkable about it except for the casting of Christian Slater as the title character. What's remarkable about that is not the fact that Slater is in the film, but that the production was too cheap to afford him for more than two or three scenes, because he is conveniently invisible for the rest of the picture.
Starship Troopers 2 is marginally better, if only because it has some real action sequences and gore effects, and was able to hold my interest for more than the 10 minutes I watched of Hollow Man 2 before I hit the fast-forward button. The problem with Troopers 2 is that Aliens is now 20 years old and everyone has seen it. Does the world really need another paltry, dimly lit imitator with weak acting and low-rent computer effects where a cast of unknowns are preyed upon in dark tunnels? The only bonus points go to the casting of The Last American Virgin's Laurence Monoson and Death Wish 3's Ed Lauter in two of the lead roles. The behind-the-camera talent, including Robocop and original Troopers writer Ed Neumeier and veteran FX supervisor turned director Phil Tippett, must have been out to lunch when they came up with this. I also finally watched The Adventures of Pluto Nash and want to devote an entire post to dissecting its wonders. And as an update: That's My Bush will be released on DVD in October. |