Here's a review of TR2 by one of my favorite reviewers.
Possible spoilers (plotwise, if you call it a plot, lol)
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"Burying Lara Croft Tomb Raider ... Again!"
By Teddy Durgin
[email protected]
The first "Lara Croft Tomb Raider" movie two years ago
remains one of the worst movies ever to achieve blockbuster
status. I think more people know me from my review of that
film than any other I have ever written. I still have
subscribers email me every once in a while to tell me that
they printed that review out to read whenever they need a
good laugh. In it, I wrote such true and dead-on prose as
"'Tomb Raider' has all the subtlety of firing live rounds
off inside your house" and "If you want to go watch Angelina
Jolie's breasts jiggle, rip the poster off the movie theater
wall and shake it up and down real hard."
Now we have the second film in the series, ridiculously
titled "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" (new in
theaters July 25). Bad punctuation aside, that title makes
it sound like some hideous, straight-to-video, animated film
with songs by Elton John. Come to think of it, that flick
might have been preferable to what director Jan De Bont and
his cast and crew have given audiences in this big-budget,
live-action sequel.
I will say that "Cradle of Life" is slightly better than the
2001 original. It doesn't appear to have been made by
complete imbeciles, and I greatly admired the set design by
Kirk M. Petrucelli. But saying "Tomb Raider 2" is better
than "Tomb Raider 1" is like saying, "Wow, Johnny, that new
Yugo is sure a step up from that ol' Gremlin of yours."
Like the original, the sequel is hopelessly dull and utterly
devoid of character. It's only interested in showing the
very healthy Angelina Jolie in various parts of the world,
riding horses, piloting Stealth jet fighters, and searching
for some mythic place called the "Cradle of Life" where she
will find the fabled Pandora's Box.
Some Euro-trash named Dr. Reiss, played by Ciaran Hinds
(best known as the Russian president in "The Sum of All
Fears"), is also looking to possess the Box so he can use it
as the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Truth be told,
I never really understood exactly why Croft wanted this
prize. I mean, seriously, isn't the video-game character
supposed to be a mercenary out for profit? In "Cradle of
Life," Lara Croft seems to be more on the side of humanity,
fighting a would-be terrorist bent on killing millions.
Meanwhile, in an effort to further soften her character, the
writers team her up with Terry Sheridan, a dreamy Scottish
convict who used to be her one great love. He is played
with would-be roguish charm by Gerard Butler, who looks like
Tom Cruise's stunt double from "Minority Report" and sounds
at all times like he is about to report back to Captain Kirk
that the warp engines are off line and the Enterprise will
have to escape on impulse power alone.
Croft and Sheridan travel from Greece to Hong Kong to China
to Kenya, pretty much sucking the life out of each country.
And it's nearly impossible to follow what's going on from
scene to scene, because their dialogue is so stale and the
soundtrack keeps thrashing us so hard. It's really shocking
how little style the "Tomb Raider" films have. There is no
character or wit or personal quirks to them at all. Quick
sidenote: If you want to watch an entertaining travelogue
with compelling personalities, please check out the CBS
network's crisply paced, brilliantly edited series "The
Amazing Race 4" each and every Thursday evening this summer.
It's a cut and a half above all of the other reality fare
on the tube, and the contestants have already had tense and
exciting adventures in Italy, Austria, and India.
Not once did I feel anything resembling real tension or even
human interest in "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life."
How are we supposed to root for the idiotic Croft, who gets
captured at least a half-dozen times in the flick only to
somehow escape and be seen five minutes later riding or
flying or jet-skiing at ludicrous speeds to her next point
of non-interest on the map, only to get captured again.
That's essentially 80 percent of the movie, by the way.
Lara Croft gets caught by the bad guys, Lara Croft escapes.
Lara Croft gets caught again and escapes again. Lara Croft
then finally finds shiny artifact and fights bad guys and
CGI cave creatures for it.
The Powers That Be are laboring desperately for the title
character to be the female James Bond. But 007 has his four
decades of history and tradition to lean on, traditions that
often save even the weakest entries in the series. And Bond
has Q and Moneypenny. He has his gadgets and his vodka
martinis. Lara Croft has nothing. She's nothing more than
a large-breasted thrill seeker with a love of weaponry.
Hell, last time I checked, that's half the chicks trolling
for dates on Match.com!
It also doesn't help that the "Tomb Raider" sequel comes on
the smoking heels of about two straight months of one
gargantuan action flick after another. I'm numb, folks. I
really am. I've seen 'em all, from "The Matrix Reloaded"
and "2 Fast 2 Furious" to "Terminator 3" and "Bad Boys II."
I can go at least a couple of months without another
well-staged, highway pile-up or kung-fu, karate-chop fest.
Perhaps the biggest failure of "Cradle of Life" is that it
doesn't give us one sustained action setpiece to even come
close to rivaling the burly brawl and freeway chase in
"Reloaded," the constant car hijinks in "2 Fast," the
demolition derby through downtown L.A. in "T3," or the Miami
highway shootout in "Bad Boys II."
To all concerned, please end the "Tomb Raider" movie series
now. And to the good folks at Paramount Pictures, the next
time you think about cradling the summer box office, stick
to your other, truly great tomb raider. Dr. Indiana Jones.
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"Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life" is rated PG-13 for
action violence and some sensuality.
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