Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997, Sandra Bullock) – Bad Movie 2

Director Jan de Bont’s 1997 Keanu Reeves-less sequel to the 1994 megahit is a farrago. Everything about it goes wrong where everything went right the first time. You wouldn’t think it was the same director, but it is. It won the 1998 Razzie Award for Worst Remake or Sequel. It’s the only award this film ever won.

Willem Dafoe stars as a mad bomber who is aboard a luxury ship (the Seaborn Legend) where young loves Annie Porter (Sandra Bullock) and her new SWAT cop boyfriend (Jason Patrick) are cruising – for a bruising it turns out, of course.

A disgruntled cruise line ex-employee, Dafoe finds it easy to hack into the ship’s computer system and soon sets off on crash course with an oil tanker. Can Sandra Bullock save the day? Well, she did in part one, didn’t she?

A naff screenplay (by Randall McCormick and Jeff Nathanson, working on a story by de Bont and McCormick) and some really dumb performances add up to a really rotten trip this time, with several too many false endings and about three ‘disasters’ too many tacked on at the end to seem to be giving money’s worth. It may not be a capable Bullock’s fault, for carries on briskly, no-nonsense and generally regardless, but the normally reliable, sometimes brilliant Dafoe overplays his hand desperately and Patrick is as flat as a pancake.

The band UB40 appear as themselves, performing Can’t Help Falling in Love. The movie’s song My Dream, written and performed by Shaggy, is pretty terrible.

Movie rule of thumb: never make the sequel without the original star.

(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Bad Movie 2 derekwinnert.com