Jamie
Annie is back, Jack! And now she has a new boyfriend, Alex, who is in no way similar to her much more famous ex-boyfriend. They decide to go on a cruise, but uh oh! It gets hijacked by a terrorist hell bent on revenge against the cruise ship navigation company that did him wrong (wait, what?). Can Annie stop him before it’s too late? Find out in Speed 2: Cruise Control.
What?! Annie is still the same old girl we knew and loved from Speed. Can’t drive and is always joking around. Boy oh boy, sure do love Annie from Speed. She has a new boyfriend, Alex, who swears he’s a bike cop but is actually a SWAT team member… just like her last boyfriend. Hmmm, almost as if his role was written for someone else. The discovery of this fact throws their relationship into turmoil and you know what that means: vacay time! They hop on a Caribbean cruise ready for some fun in the sun and that’s pretty much all they get…. besides some light international terrorism! John Geiger, a former programmer for the company that makes the navigation system on the cruise ship, is on board and he’s got an axe to grind. That’s because he got sick and the company was like “no way, we don’t like sick people” and dropped him. He plants all kinds of bombs all over the ship and then takes over controls. He forces the captain to abandon ship, but Annie and Alex have a bad feeling about it and throw his plan into flux by being total bosses. Realizing his plan is going awry at the hands of a super cop, Geiger starts to target Alex and try to take him out. Fat chance, jokester. Alex is totes cool and just as famous and awesome as Keanu Reeves, don’t worry about it. They realize that Geiger is controlling the ship and attempt to flood the ballasts to slow them down. They then try to jam the propellers when they realize that the ship is aimed directly at an oil tanker but Geiger ambushes them and escapes with Annie as a hostage. Desperate, Alex used the bow thrusters to turn the ship away from the tanker and crash it into land. He then hops on a speedboat and chases after Geiger who is attempting to fly away in a plane. Fat chance, sucker. Alex is on your tail and he totally takes him out and smooches Annie. THE END.
Why?! Oh boy, this is going to be good. So, our main man Geiger is totes sick because he worked on computers for the navigation system. The electromagnetic waves and prolonged exposure to computer parts gave him copper poisoning. This turned into some kind of chronic condition so in a very Philadelphia-like scenario he is fired by the company. Unlike Philadelphia, though, Geiger doesn’t aim to remediate this through litigation, but rather by becoming a domestic terrorist that will end with him escaping an exploding cruise ship with millions and millions of dollars in stolen diamonds… the whole thing is crazy and pretty much amazing.
What?! In a shocking twist there is not a MacGuffin in this film. There are a bunch of diamonds but not the MacGuffin’s Jewel or some such that is super valuable. There were a couple different movies shown on screen, which is always fun. We saw both The Enemy Below (another film where a boat crashes into another boat) and Lolita (another film where a grown man has an inappropriate relationship with a young girl). I kid of course, as Alex does not in fact have a relationship with the deaf 14-year-old girl in the film but there were all these weird things in the film that made you think that he might.
Who?! No less than three musicians/bands appear in this film. The smallest part goes to Carlinhos Brown, who performs A Namorada in the film. We also see the band UB40, which performs Tell Me Is It True and has a Speed 2 themed music video:
Finally we have the mononymous Tamia who actually appeared in the film as the character Sheri Silver and performed Make Tonight Beautiful… it was her only feature film role ever.
Where?! I thought for a while we would have a vague “Caribbean” setting, but fortunately near the end it’s revealed that the ultimate target of Geiger is the island of Saint Martin where the tanker is docked. Not even the first film we’ve seen set there. The island was also the setting of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
When?! Buckle your seatbelts because this is my favorite temporal setting of all time. That’s because Geiger gets his bombs on board disguised as golf balls. When the cruise temporarily loses his clubs he is freaking out. Alex and Annie see this and are totally confused and a little suspicious when then this apparent golf nut has no interest in The Players Championship at Sawgrass. This would place the events of the film at the end of March… it’s just so good. It’s so randomly vital to the plot. I’m giving it an A-.
This may in fact be the lamest film ever. It’s sooooo 90’s and has like 3 different smooth R&B/Ska bands that play in the beginning of the film. Jason Patric may not have been wearing mom jeans in reality, but I pretty much remember him that way because this film was so lame. I feel like someone made it as a joke… but I don’t think they did. I just think they didn’t really know what made Speed such a success (or didn’t care) so they just made something dumb because they had to make something. Should I even talk about the strange Lolita storyline they had in the film? Nah, I could write a novel about that storyline because it’s bonkers. Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Speed 2: Cruise Control? More like Speed 2: Snooze Control amirite? A bunch of people unwisely signed a contract promising a sequel to the smash action hit Speed. Now, I’m not saying they intentionally botched it, but … let’s get into it!
The Good – There is a kernel of a good movie here (see Get Yo Rant On below). Sandy Bullock is as charming and beautiful as ever. Dafoe knows what he’s gotten himself into and acts accordingly. The grand island-crushing finale is satisfyingly grand, even though these days you’d be able to do the same thing for pennies on the dollar using special effects.
P’s View on the Preview – We had both seen this film before (many times in bits and pieces over the years on cable as well). Re-watching films has, up until recently, been a very rare occurrence. I was immediately interested in knowing how BMT would hold up in the face of these prior experiences. Would it end up being kind of boring as I know the beats of the film (which has happened with one or two of the Hall of Fame films), or would the non-stop pulse-pounding Jason Patric action take (cruise) control.
The Bad – This film is straight up nonsense. Dafoe has copper poisoning from working with computer systems for years? He uses leeches to clean his blood? His plan is to steal a bunch of diamonds from a cruise ship? Did he intend to crash it into an oil tanker? Why didn’t Jason Patric turn the boat completely around when they were manually steering it with the bow thrusters? Why didn’t they manually steer the boat initially instead of trying to stop the propellers? What was the point of Bullock or any of the other non-essential characters? Are we to believe the same person who had his car commandeered and crashed in Speed lives in Saint Martin and then also gets his boat commandeered and crashed in Speed 2?! Forget all of the other questions, I’m most concerned about the last one, the man only known as … Tune Man.
Get Yo Rant On – This movie could have been a fine Die Hard knockoff. A couple, a cop who can’t relax and his straight talking girlfriend, go on a cruise. He plans on proposing, but can’t find the right time. During the ballroom show one night the cop gets seasick and goes to his cabin. At that moment a group of criminals take control of the boat. Under the guise of eco terrorists hell bent on crashing the (diesel guzzling) ship into a (environment destroying) tourist island, they are actually after the diamonds stored deep in the belly of the ship. Little to they know that our hero, overlooked initially, is roaming the ocean liner foiling their every move. Can the cop stop the disaster, kill the bad guy, and pop the question? Don’t you know it! All aboard, Cruise Control!
Welcome to Earth – Straight off the dome, this is a long one! Sandy Bullock is in both Speed 2: Cruise Control and Miss Congeniality, which stars Benjamin Bratt who is also in Catwoman, which stars Halle Berry who is also in Swordfish, which stars John Travolta (who by the way is in Battlefield Earth, welcome to Earf) who is also in Old Dogs, which stars Robin Williams who is also in Big Wedding, which stars Robert De Niro who is also in Righteous Kill, which stars Al Pacino who is also in 88 Minutes, which stars Leelee Sobieski who is also in Here on Earth. Welcome to Earf!
The BMT – The more I think about this film the more enamored I become. The initial watch was just kind of blah. It is pretty dull if you don’t psych yourself into it. But after a lengthy discussion with Jamie about it I came around a bit just because the film itself is so ludicrous. Absolutely nothing in this film makes sense, and it is kind of beautiful. I don’t know if it’ll end up being much more than a I’ve-seen-this-film-a-few-times-and-it-is-dumb-fun film, but I wouldn’t not watch it again if asked. It’s legacy, I think, might end up being that it is the worst sequel ever made and thus was required viewing for any good Bad Movie Twin.
StreetCreditReport.com – This is considered one of the worst films ever made. It is number two on this list for the worst of the 90s! And number twenty on this other one. It is number one on the worst sequels ever made list! Amazingly we’ve only seen 20 of those 50, some outside of BMT even. It mainly gets play on worst of sequels lists, which I think is fair. It is very arguably this is the worst sequel ever made.
Did I re-watch Speed? No, I watched it about a month ago randomly anyways, so it was fresh enough in my mind that I could pull refs like Tune Man on the fly. No regrets. Speed is a good movie, but, in my opinion, it is not a great movie. The last third sinks it hard. You end up wanting to shut it off once they get off of the bus.
Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 