Bad film features bad star

In ‘Basic Instinct 2,’ Sharon Stone reprises the role of the sexually voracious vixen that made her famous

By Soren Anderson, for the Northwest Guardian

Vamp. Rhymes with camp.

Vamping shamelessly in “Basic Instinct 2,” Sharon Stone turns the picture into unadulterated camp.

That smile. More of a smirk really. If a praying mantis had lips, you can bet they’d be curled into just that expression: a come-hither look that says, “C’mere, you big hunk of stuff, and let me bite your head off!” That wardrobe. Black and white and tight. Skirts, scandalously short. Heels, high enough to induce nosebleeds in ordinary mortals. I’d like to meet her tailor.

That body. Displayed to the very best advantage by those revealing outfits. Age 47 has seldom looked so good. I’d like to meet her trainer!

And now, a question: Is she, or isn’t she? A devious, heartless, sexually voracious killer, that is? Yes, yes, yes and … maybe. Director Michael Caton-Jones and screenwriters Leora Barish and Henry Bean keep us guessing right up until the end about whether she’s bumping people off.

But in fact it barely matters one way or the other. The plot is insanely complicated, and the victims are disposable nonentities for the most part. Whodunit? Who cares?

You’ll be too busy giggling at Stone’s extravagantly arch and carnal performance.

It’s been 14 years since she last (and first) played Tramell, the man-eating mystery novelist with a thing for ice picks, in the feverish original “Instinct.” “Basic 2” was planned as far back as 2000 with a 2001 release date contemplated at one time. Then it was scrapped and later revived. In those years, her career arc went from superstar to something verging on has-been status. Now she’s back. And she’s bad. But in a good way.

Though the movie itself is bad in the old-fashioned way – overcooked, overplotted, overacted – Stone is clearly having the time of her life. Whether she’s sexing it up with some sports star in a sports car going 110 mph through the heart of London or slinking around on those sky-high heels, you can sense her intense pleasure as she channels Tramell’s bad, bad self. Wicked becomes her, and does she ever know it. And she knows how to show it. But she shows it only up to a point. While there is considerable nudity here, there’s nothing in the league of the boundary-breaking leg-crossing scene that propelled her to superstardom in the first “Basic.”

Still, Tramell is the only character who seems actually alive in “BI2.” And she’s the only holdover from the first film. Gone are director Paul Verhoeven, writer Joe Eszterhas and male lead Michael Douglas.

Caton & Co. have relocated from San Francisco, the setting of the original picture, to London, and they’ve tapped British actor David Morrissey as the male lead, a psychiatrist hired to determine whether Tramell is mentally fit to stand trial for the death of the sports star in that speeding car. Bad choice.

Morrissey is almost a caricature of a thin-lipped bloodless Brit. He is supposed to be a super smart shrink, but one look at Tramell – that body, those legs, that smirk – and his brain melts into steaming goo. Or so the filmmakers would like us to believe. But we can’t believe because Morrissey is such a stiff.

Beyond Stone’s vamping, the camp factor is fed by outrageously obvious imagery. Phallic symbols abound, from a Big Ben lighter lovingly fondled by Stone, to an ice pick she regards in a suggestive fashion in a scene that briefly nods at the first movie, to the unmistakably tumescent so-called Gherkin Tower in the heart of London where Morrissey’s character has his office.

Caton-Jones returns to the Gherkin again and again, and even re-creates it in another lighter, which Tramell ostentatiously plays with, generating laughs as she does.

All right, already. We get the dirty joke. Naughty, naughty. Bad movie. Bad.

Basic Instinct 2

Director: Michael Caton-Jones

Cast: Sharon Stone, David Morrissey, Charlotte Rampling, David Thewlis and Hugh Dancy

Time: 1:53

Rating: R for sexual situations, nudity, violence, language