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yendiAmerican Psycho 2: All-American Girl. 2002. Directed by Morgan J. Freeman. Written by Alex Singer and Karen Craig. Released by Lion's Gate.
The first American Psycho was a surprisingly good movie, one that exceeded the quality of the book on which it was based*. It was a witty little satire that delightfully skewered the business world of the late '80s, and it pretty much shifted Christian Bale from second banana to star (even if he tried to derail it with stuff like Reign of Fire and Shaft). It's also a movie that in no way, shape, or form merits a sequel. So, naturally, the good folks at Lion's Gate decided to greenlight one anyway.
American Psycho 2: All-American Girl is everything that first movie isn't. There's an attempt at black humor, but the satire that so smartly drove the first movie is missing here, replaced by a by-the-numbers slasher with a few vaguely interesting twists.
There's not much plot here. See, Patrick Bateman, the killer from the first movie, went on this date with a hot babysitter who dragged her charge along on the date. Naturally, he tied both of them up, but the twelve-year-old scamp escaped her bonds and killed Bateman. As a result, she's been obsessed with Bateman (and psychotics in general) ever since, and has become every bit the psychopath he was. Oh, and she's now a college student named Rachel Newman, studying criminology under one of the country's most famous profilers**.
The professor's TA is leaving to head off to Quantico to join the FBI, so naturally there's an opening for a TA. And, of course, our smart little freshman wants the position, even though that's not realistic, given the fact that she's in her first semester of college and that the hotshot professor is much likelier to give the position to one of three other candidates. Those candidates include a rich kid with lots of influence at the college, a girl who's sleeping with the professor, and a smart guy who might just be as twisted as Rachel herself.
Needless to say, all three folks in her way, as well as the departmental secretary who won't accept Rachel's paperwork, die in horrible ways. Including strangulation by condom***. And the only person who catches on is Rachel's shrink****, who tries to warn the profiler, but it's too late. Eventually, in a denouement that seems to run for about an hour, we get a dead profiler, we discover that the real Rachel Newman is actually dead (and that our "heroine" has a severe case of Tom Ripley syndrome), and we see things end with a fatal car crash!
But wait! Sometime later, the psychiatrist (now a nationally-renowned author) is speaking at Quantico when a trainee with the same name as the old teaching assistant comes up to get her book signed. But wait! It's actually Rachel, and she survived!
There's a lot to hate about this movie, but there are three things that stand out in particular.
The first of these what AP2 does to the original movie. We see Patrick Bateman killed by a twelve-year-old. Even ignoring the idea that a kid is somehow able to outsmart a devious psychopath (something even more annoying here than in crap like the Home Alone films), there's the whole notion of treating Bateman like just some typical killer. Half the point of the first movie is that the entire sequence of killings could be taking place entirely inside Bateman's head.
But AP2 doesn't stop there when it comes to disrespecting the first movie. This "sequel" doesn't even seem to be cut from the same genre. I wouldn't be surprised to find that there was a crappy screenplay called "All-American Girl" sitting in the drawer of some Lion's Gate exec, and that exec decided to toss off a stupid flashback sequence to tie it to the first movie. But none of the dark humor or social commentary of the first movie are seen here. It's as if the director and writer thought that the first movie was actually about a bunch of murders, instead of a look at the effects of greed and materialism on the human psyche.
The second sin here is the casting of Mila Kunis as the killer. She's cute enough in a very limited role on That '70s Show and (in an even more limited role) on Family Guy but as an actress who's actually expected to express emotion and convincingly play a character, she's utterly dreadful. We're talking worse than the crappiest of the crappy Full Moon actresses. So, given an actress who can't deliver a single line, why not have her character offer voice-over narration throughout? The screenplay blows (more on this below), but Kunis could make David Mamet dialogue sound like it was written by Uwe Boll.
And if Kunis weren't bad enough, we come to the third fatal flaw in this film: William Shatner. Look, I'm all about the ironic Shatner love. Free Enterprise is one of my favorite movies, and his unique blend of bad and Shakespearean acting can work wonderfully in the proper circumstances. But playing an FBI profiler and criminology professor just isn't one of them. We're supposed to believe that his character has depth and intelligence. Shatner might be deep and intelligent, but he can't convey either one very well, and he looks like he doesn't know what he's supposed to do with his role here.
And those are just the big flaws. The screenplay, even after accounting for the sins against the first movie, still blows. Screenwriters Alex Sanger and Karen Craig made their debut with this stinker, and between them, they've only gotten one more bomb made (the direct-to-TV Kristy Swanson vehicle Forbidden Secrets, written by Craig). Nice as it is to give first-time screenwriters a chance, it's even nicer to give good screenwriters (regardless of experience) a chance. When the best line of dialogue comes while murdering someone with a condom*****, there's not much there. They get some mild points for the core concept of Rachel's character (that she's a sociopath who will kill her way to the top and then help capture other sociopaths), but the end result isn't exactly Dexter.
I can only assume that director Morgan J. Freeman scored this gig because some studio exec assumed he was the Oscar-winning actor. I can only imagine how disappointed they were to realize their mistake. In fairness, Freeman avoids the sloppy cutting and editing so prevalent amongst direct-to-video horror releases, but he fails to coax anything from his cast, and if there's nothing terrible in most of his direction, there's nothing inspired here, either.
There are a few small bright spots in the cast, notably Geraint Wyn-Davies as the psychiatrist. He actually puts some serious effort into his acting here, but manages to not give in to his tendency to chew scenery (see Cube 2). And Lindy Booth, always a solid genre performer, has some nice moments as Rachel's friend/competitor before getting killed off. But they can't do much to save this stinker. American Psycho 2: All-American Girl is a waste of time, and as bad a sequel as you're going to find anywhere.
*It helps that Bret Easton Ellis, as overrated a writer as you'll find, didn't craft the screenplay.
**Yes, season 3 of Veronica Mars is just a rip-off of American Psycho 2.
***Note: Trojan brand condoms are not rated for strangulation, and might burst during use. Using a condom to strangle someone will not prevent the spread of HIV or sexually transmitted diseases.
****No, she isn't seeing a shrink because she realizes that she's nuts. She's seeing a shrink because the shrink is the best friend of the profiling professor. It's like a screwball comedy's plotline got mixed up with the slasher movie's screenplay.
*****"Ribbed for her pleasure."
The first American Psycho was a surprisingly good movie, one that exceeded the quality of the book on which it was based*. It was a witty little satire that delightfully skewered the business world of the late '80s, and it pretty much shifted Christian Bale from second banana to star (even if he tried to derail it with stuff like Reign of Fire and Shaft). It's also a movie that in no way, shape, or form merits a sequel. So, naturally, the good folks at Lion's Gate decided to greenlight one anyway.
American Psycho 2: All-American Girl is everything that first movie isn't. There's an attempt at black humor, but the satire that so smartly drove the first movie is missing here, replaced by a by-the-numbers slasher with a few vaguely interesting twists.
There's not much plot here. See, Patrick Bateman, the killer from the first movie, went on this date with a hot babysitter who dragged her charge along on the date. Naturally, he tied both of them up, but the twelve-year-old scamp escaped her bonds and killed Bateman. As a result, she's been obsessed with Bateman (and psychotics in general) ever since, and has become every bit the psychopath he was. Oh, and she's now a college student named Rachel Newman, studying criminology under one of the country's most famous profilers**.
The professor's TA is leaving to head off to Quantico to join the FBI, so naturally there's an opening for a TA. And, of course, our smart little freshman wants the position, even though that's not realistic, given the fact that she's in her first semester of college and that the hotshot professor is much likelier to give the position to one of three other candidates. Those candidates include a rich kid with lots of influence at the college, a girl who's sleeping with the professor, and a smart guy who might just be as twisted as Rachel herself.
Needless to say, all three folks in her way, as well as the departmental secretary who won't accept Rachel's paperwork, die in horrible ways. Including strangulation by condom***. And the only person who catches on is Rachel's shrink****, who tries to warn the profiler, but it's too late. Eventually, in a denouement that seems to run for about an hour, we get a dead profiler, we discover that the real Rachel Newman is actually dead (and that our "heroine" has a severe case of Tom Ripley syndrome), and we see things end with a fatal car crash!
But wait! Sometime later, the psychiatrist (now a nationally-renowned author) is speaking at Quantico when a trainee with the same name as the old teaching assistant comes up to get her book signed. But wait! It's actually Rachel, and she survived!
There's a lot to hate about this movie, but there are three things that stand out in particular.
The first of these what AP2 does to the original movie. We see Patrick Bateman killed by a twelve-year-old. Even ignoring the idea that a kid is somehow able to outsmart a devious psychopath (something even more annoying here than in crap like the Home Alone films), there's the whole notion of treating Bateman like just some typical killer. Half the point of the first movie is that the entire sequence of killings could be taking place entirely inside Bateman's head.
But AP2 doesn't stop there when it comes to disrespecting the first movie. This "sequel" doesn't even seem to be cut from the same genre. I wouldn't be surprised to find that there was a crappy screenplay called "All-American Girl" sitting in the drawer of some Lion's Gate exec, and that exec decided to toss off a stupid flashback sequence to tie it to the first movie. But none of the dark humor or social commentary of the first movie are seen here. It's as if the director and writer thought that the first movie was actually about a bunch of murders, instead of a look at the effects of greed and materialism on the human psyche.
The second sin here is the casting of Mila Kunis as the killer. She's cute enough in a very limited role on That '70s Show and (in an even more limited role) on Family Guy but as an actress who's actually expected to express emotion and convincingly play a character, she's utterly dreadful. We're talking worse than the crappiest of the crappy Full Moon actresses. So, given an actress who can't deliver a single line, why not have her character offer voice-over narration throughout? The screenplay blows (more on this below), but Kunis could make David Mamet dialogue sound like it was written by Uwe Boll.
And if Kunis weren't bad enough, we come to the third fatal flaw in this film: William Shatner. Look, I'm all about the ironic Shatner love. Free Enterprise is one of my favorite movies, and his unique blend of bad and Shakespearean acting can work wonderfully in the proper circumstances. But playing an FBI profiler and criminology professor just isn't one of them. We're supposed to believe that his character has depth and intelligence. Shatner might be deep and intelligent, but he can't convey either one very well, and he looks like he doesn't know what he's supposed to do with his role here.
And those are just the big flaws. The screenplay, even after accounting for the sins against the first movie, still blows. Screenwriters Alex Sanger and Karen Craig made their debut with this stinker, and between them, they've only gotten one more bomb made (the direct-to-TV Kristy Swanson vehicle Forbidden Secrets, written by Craig). Nice as it is to give first-time screenwriters a chance, it's even nicer to give good screenwriters (regardless of experience) a chance. When the best line of dialogue comes while murdering someone with a condom*****, there's not much there. They get some mild points for the core concept of Rachel's character (that she's a sociopath who will kill her way to the top and then help capture other sociopaths), but the end result isn't exactly Dexter.
I can only assume that director Morgan J. Freeman scored this gig because some studio exec assumed he was the Oscar-winning actor. I can only imagine how disappointed they were to realize their mistake. In fairness, Freeman avoids the sloppy cutting and editing so prevalent amongst direct-to-video horror releases, but he fails to coax anything from his cast, and if there's nothing terrible in most of his direction, there's nothing inspired here, either.
There are a few small bright spots in the cast, notably Geraint Wyn-Davies as the psychiatrist. He actually puts some serious effort into his acting here, but manages to not give in to his tendency to chew scenery (see Cube 2). And Lindy Booth, always a solid genre performer, has some nice moments as Rachel's friend/competitor before getting killed off. But they can't do much to save this stinker. American Psycho 2: All-American Girl is a waste of time, and as bad a sequel as you're going to find anywhere.
*It helps that Bret Easton Ellis, as overrated a writer as you'll find, didn't craft the screenplay.
**Yes, season 3 of Veronica Mars is just a rip-off of American Psycho 2.
***Note: Trojan brand condoms are not rated for strangulation, and might burst during use. Using a condom to strangle someone will not prevent the spread of HIV or sexually transmitted diseases.
****No, she isn't seeing a shrink because she realizes that she's nuts. She's seeing a shrink because the shrink is the best friend of the profiling professor. It's like a screwball comedy's plotline got mixed up with the slasher movie's screenplay.
*****"Ribbed for her pleasure."
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 04:27 am (UTC)There are far worse Rob Bowman films to skewer. And serious props to Alexander "Dr. Bashir" Siddig as the radio operator. Small part, but damn well played.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 02:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 07:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 08:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 07:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 06:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 07:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 12:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-19 07:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-04-20 01:01 am (UTC)Bret Easton Ellis, of course, wrote his own sequel (http://www.briankotek.com/psycho/movie/am2000.cfm) of sorts. This was back in the days when email narratives were hot, such as when New Line did that Se7en (http://www.drivingmrspacey.com/Se7en.htm) email promotion for the then-new special-edition DVD.