Believe it or not, Tom and I recently watched another movie that was released after 1995! I know, I know, this is so out of character for us, but we have a really good reason for seeing this one. Fright Night, starring Anton Yelchin and Colin Ferrell was released in 2011 but it is a remake (isn’t everything these days?) of the awesome horror movie of the same name from 1985. Now, I do have a soft spot for the original, since the next door neighbor/vampire is none other than Prince Humperdinck from one of my all-time favorites, The Princes Bride; and the Vampire expert is played by the great Roddy McDowall. How could you possibly top that in a remake? Because we are such big fans of the original, Tom and I were very skeptical of seeing a remake starring Colin Ferrell but were willing to give it a chance.
Here is Chris Sarandon in Fright Night and in The Princess Bride.
The 1985 Fright Night was everything a good 80’s horror movie should be. It’s cheesy/funny/scary/bloody/silly with a story that sucks you in all at the same time. The story of both the 1985 and 2011 versions revolve around a kid who thinks that a vampire has moved in next door. He proceeds to investigate this neighbor situation with the help of TV Vampire expert Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) who turns out to be a joke in the preternatural field, but only in the 1985 version. In the 2011 version, Peter Vincent is played by David Tennant and he is a rich successful Las Vegas act who has tons of half-naked hot women hanging all over him.
Can you believe that those two are playing the same character?
In both movies, there is this really great but annoying best friend character, Evil Ed. In 1985, he is played by this weird looking guy Stephen Geoffreys who in real life grew up to be a porn star. The 2011 version is played by McLovin.
The character is a little different in each movie. They sort of swap the roles of the main guy and the best friend around for the remake. In 1985 the main character has to convince his best friend that the neighbor is a vampire and in 2011 Evil Ed is the one doing the convincing.
The vampire character is very different as well. As I said earlier, in 1985 the vampire, Jerry (isn’t it awesome that the vampire’s name is Jerry?), is played by Chris Sarandon who is also Prince Humperdinck. (I love The Princess Bride so much that at our wedding ceremony we played the movie’s main theme for the Bridesmaids procession and I named my turtle after Princess Buttercup.) Humperdinck does have a surprise cameo in the remake, which we were both very excited to see. He gets brutally killed by Colin Farrell, the 2011 version of Jerry the vampire.
Going into the remake, I was very skeptical about Colin Farrell playing Jerry. Tom even said to me during the opening credits, “Let’s see how long it takes before his accent slips out.” But to our surprise, Farrell really nailed the role. He was brutal, violent and scary while being charming and sexy at the same time. He is exactly what you would think a vampire should be. That is, of course, as long as you aren’t on that ridiculous Twilight band wagon.
Just a little side note… I love vampire stories. I mean good vampire stories. I own and have read numerous times the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles Series and the Laurell K. Hamilton Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series which are both pheeeenooooomenal. I tried to read Twilight and wanted to throw the book out the window then run over it with my car, back up and run over it again. I forced my way through the first 2 books and found that they were not only poorly written (my English teacher sister wanted to take a red pen to them) but incredibly boring and anti-climactic. If you want to read a good vampire novel just let me know and you can borrow any of mine by Rice or Hamilton. I promise you will not be disappointed.
Anyway, I definitely would recommend both the old and new versions of Fright Night. When remaking this movie, they stayed true to the original by mixing humor with blood and scares. You should really try to fit this one into your busy schedule. After-all, even Prince Humperdinck made time for a cameo, and he's swamped.
On behalf of the McWatters Movie Blog, we officially give Fright Night two fangs up and The Humperdinck Seal of Approval.
Speed 2: Cruise Control, Everything but Keanu Reeves, The Romantic Comedy
I finally saw Speed 2: Cruise Control. I have been avoiding/boycotting/pretending this movie doesn't exist for fifteen years. I was doing a really good job of this too, until today when Tom decided he was going to help me with my New Year's resolution of writing in this blog more frequently then once every two months. He thought this awful movie would spark some creativity and right from the first scene I was hooked. It is so bad that I couldn't turn away and had no choice but to take a few notes. Tom knows me so well that he knew I would get sucked into comparing this sequel to its original which happens to be one of my favorite movies. Yes, I admit it, Speed is one of my all time favorites. I can quote the entire movie from beginning to end. Many of you may make fun of me for this, but I can't help it. I remember when I saw Speed for the first time. My Mom had seen in on HBO and thought I would like it. This was on during one of the rare months that we had HBO when I was a kid. I was in the seventh grade and fell instantly in love with the hunky lead who just happened to be the dorky doofus from Bill and Ted.
I remember watching it with my Mom and a girl that I used to be friends with, and we all agreed that Keanu Reeves was very easy to look at for two hours. I have gone off on a bit of a tangent here, and it is only because I don't know if many people really know about my my infatuation with Keanu and this movie. With that being said, I think that you can now understand why I have been avoiding Speed 2: Cruise Control for the last fifteen years.(Although, I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to avoid it.) How could they possibly make a Speed sequel without Keanu? Sandra Bullock's character was only the love interest and really has no business being the character that the sequel is about. Never the less, they made the movie without my childhood heart throb, and on this lazy Sunday afternoon, Tom broke my boycott.
Speed 2: Cruise Control opens with a chase scene featuring our new hero Jason Patric on a motorcycle in hot pursuit of a run away truck. We don't know why this is happening, who is driving the truck or why they are running from Patric, or as I like to call him, Not Keanu (he is also the older brother from the lost boys).
While this action packed opening scene is going on, Annie (Sandra Bullock's character from Speed) is taking her road test. In Speed when the bus driver gets shot she gets behind the wheel and confesses to Keanu that she had her licence revoked for speeding. Apparently this is how they are connecting the two movies and she is now trying to get her licence back. These two opening driving scenes collide when Not Keanu's car chase ends with the truck crashing into something and then out of nowhere Annie recklessly drives into the scene and crashes her car into the cones surrounding the truck. The driving instructor is all upset and Annie is trying to blame her recklessness on the car chase, and then just by chance, she sees her new boyfriend who is Not Keanu. She gets really angry with him because even though they are dating, and she knows that he is a cop, she didn't realize that he had a dangerous job. (Really?) She says things to him like "Don't you remember that I told you how Jack (Keanu) was a action star maniac?" and "I told you that I wouldn't date someone like that again." I guess this is their way of filling us in on why Keanu isn't in the sequel. This lovers quarrel finally ends when Not Keanu tells Annie that he is taking her on a Caribbean cruise, and somehow everything is now OK between them. This action movie sequel is quickly turning into a romantic comedy.
They arrive on the cruise ship, with Annie being sassy as usual. They give Sandra Bullock all the witty one liners in this movie. When they are being shown to into their cabin, we get a glimpse of their neighbor for the duration of the cruise, who happens to be none other then Willem Defoe with a glorious mane of hair.
We see Annie & Not Keanu go into their cabin and then the movie cuts to Willem Defoe in his cabin next door, where for some unknown reason, he keeps mason jars full of leaches... and he talks to them. I guess they are setting him up to be the crazy bad guy. Why else would he sweet talk a bunch of Jarred leaches? Anyway, Annie and Not Keanu think that he is a pro golfer, not a leach hoarder, because he carries his golf clubs around with him, even when he is laying by the pool. While he is getting some sun pool side, Not Keanu catches him staring at Annie. Of course Not Keanu gets all angry and starts giving her a hard time about it, this is a romantic comedy about their relationship after all. Once the delightful bickering scene is over, the movie cuts back to Willem's cabin. Somehow he has been transported from his lounge chair by the pool back to his cabin so he can do some sneaky things. He starts to take apart his golf clubs and sets a bunch of timers. (We are supposed to assume that he is making bombs, because he is the crazy bad guy.) Then, he pulls up the ships blueprints on his laptop. He used to be a computer programmer and he designed the ships auto pilot system, but we don't find this out until later in the movie.
This movie really has a hard time explaining why things are happening, and Sandra Bullock is such a mumbler that I can hardly hear her stupid witty remarks. I am guessing that she is supposed to be the comedy relief but her jokes are falling short (when you can hear what she is saying). She is really not funny.
Back on the cruise ship, Annie and Not Keanu are now having dinner and UB40 is the entertainment. Can you imagine spending all that money on a tropical cruise vacation and having to listen to UB40 every night during dinner? I would be very upset. You do remember UB40, right? They are that awful 80's British reggae/pop band with lead singer David Caruso. Just in case you need a reminder, here is David singing one of their hits prior to his role on NYPD Blue:
Although I as a huge fan of his music career, I feel that Caruso's talent is best showcased by his role as Horatio Caine on CSI: Miami.
You may or may not know this, but Tom and I are super obsessed with David Caruso's ability to dramatically take off his glasses when he has something important to say. Just in case you don't know what I am talking about, here is a little taste:
I am getting really distracted from this terrible movie. Sorry about that. Now back to business.
We were up to the part where Annie and Not Keanu are having dinner and listening to UB40. They are involved in a very dramatic discussion about their relationship (romantic comedy, remember) and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small box. (He is so about propose during a UB40 set! Real smooth.) he looks at her all romantically and asks her if he can "...order a la carte tonight" and she replies with "what if I'm not on the menu?" Give me a break. Is this really how he is going to pop the question? Well, apparently not because they don't get engaged. This movie really doesn't explain anything that happens! I could write a better screenplay then this. (Of course, it probably would involve a shirtless Keanu, but I would be sure to explain why his shirt was off and how he became topless.) I guess Not Keanu never actually got around to asking Annie to marry him, because the next scene shows him drunk and throwing up back in their cabin, or maybe it was just the UB40 that made him nauseous. Oh, and just so you can have a glimpse of what is going on inside my head right now, for your viewing pleasure, I present to you, shirtless Keanu:
Ok, let's get back on track shall we? After we have the privilege of seeing Not Keanu throw up all over their cabin, the movie graciously cuts away to a sneaking Willem Defoe. He is all dressed up for the prom and is tip toeing around the underbelly of the cruise ship with his magical exploding golf clubs (of course he is, how else would he make it so the ship can't go below 50 miles per hour?). When he is finished planting his bombs, Willem pretends to be drunk and stumbles into the main deck where the captain is directing the ship. He pretends to fall and catches himself on the desk where he plants a bug. He was really smooth, the stupid captain and first mate (who happens to be Jango Fett) have no idea what has just happened. Willem heads back to his cabin to take his clothes off, listen to opera and put his pet leaches all over his neck and chest. This bad guy is a real weirdo.
When Willem is finished playing with his pet leaches he gets dressed, putting on a Captain's uniform, then heads out for a moonlit stroll on the deck of the ship. While on his walk, he bumps into the real ship captain and pushes him overboard. He then bumps into some older drunken women who now think he is the Captain because of the costume. He flirts with them and takes pictures with them. Apparently it is really easy get rid of a cruise ship's Captain and take his place. Good to know.
After his encounter with the drunk ladies, Willem decides that it is about time to get the plot of the movie going and somehow the ship's computers all stop working. A lot of things start beeping and the ship starts shaking; but only in the control room. I guess the bombs that Willem placed throughout the ship only affected one room of the ship, huh. So anyway, he calls the ships first mate, who as I said before, is Jango Fett (so I guess that also makes him Boba Fett since he is a clone. I think I wall call him Boba from now on), and tells him to start evacuating because he is going to blow up the ship.
Meanwhile Annie and Not Keanu are on the dance floor. He is wearing a tux and Chucks (of course he is). Oh boy, this really is a romantic comedy.
They keep cutting between the chaos of the control room and the calm/romantic slow dancing where absolutely nothing is shaking. They really have not idea that the ship is full of bombs that are going off. Wow. Annie and Not Keanu are so oblivious and again start a deep conversation about their relationship. I think he is going to propose again, but just before he can, the dance floor starts to shake. Finally!! Maybe he will try again if they survive. I am betting that is how the movie will end, unless one of the chandeliers that are falling from the ceiling lands on them, but I don't think we will be that lucky.
Before a chandelier can fall and crush them, Annie and Not Keanu follow everyone else to the lifeboat.
This is the point in the movie where the writers decided that it would be a good idea to have a random side story to up the suspense. A deaf girl gets separated from her family and can't hear the emergency evacuation announcements. (I guess this is because Speed started off suspenseful and got increasingly suspenseful as the movie went on and this awful sequel hasn't had one suspenseful scene yet.) She gets into an elevator and it surprisingly gets stuck. (An elevator? Really?) If you haven't seen the first movielet me tell you why this is ridiculous. Speed opens with a bomb on an elevator and if the police don't comply with the bomber's demands he will blow the emergency brakes and send the elevator and its passengers plummeting to their deaths. Keanu and his partner, Jeff Daniels, have to risk their lives to save them in a very dramatic, suspenseful and heroic way.
Back at the lifeboat, Not Keanu smells danger with his cop nose and tells Annie to wait there for him while he runs off the prove that he is smarter then the ships crew. He runs into the control room & wants to know if they actually confirmed the fires that started during the explosions. Boba is baffled that they didn't think to check that out but still does nothing. Not Keanu is forced to take care of things himself and runs off to verify the fires.
While all this is happening, Willem Defoe finds a finds a briefcase full of diamonds. I want a briefcase full of diamonds.
Not Keanu gets back to the life boat and finds out that the little deaf girl is missing. He tells Boba that the fires aren't real, just sulfur smoke. It is a really good thing that he was vacationing on this ship, the crew is really incompetent, but this is not important. What is important is that Not Keanu is back when the life boat starts to fall. (Of course it is going to fall) According to Not Keanu, who knows everything, the cable holding the life boat will never hold so they have no choice but to get the people out of there and he climbs down to be the hero, again. Once again this is the opening elevator scene from Speed, only not as good. In Speed, Keanu and Jeff Daniels rig up this big cable so when the bomb does blow the emergency breaks, the cable will hold up the elevator and give them more time to rescue the hostages. Once this happens, they frantically discover that the cable is no going to hold and have to speed up the rescue. It is the exact same scene, just change the elevator to a life boat. (Oh, and just so you get the full picture, dramatic music plays every time Not Keanu does something heroic and the music is like a cheap knock off the the Braveheart & Conan the Barbarian themes. Can they get anymore unoriginal?)
After Not Keanu rescues the people on the life boat, which never falls by the way (It is actually still dangling off the side of the ship at the end of the movie, so Maybe Not Keanu isn't really as smart as he wants us all to think.), he discovers that there is nothing they can do to override Willem's auto pilot so he decides to trick the program. He announces to Boba (because he is in charge now) "I'm gonna slow it down." COME ON!!! Really?? Ok, so the last thing that happens in Speed, after they escape the bus, is they end up trapped on an out of control subway train and the tracks up ahead aren't finished. Keanu realizes this and discovers that the emergency breaks are broken and they can't stop the train. His only option is to jump the track by increasing their speed. It is at this point in the movie where he says "I'm gonna speed it up." Once Not Keanu is done quoting lines from the first movie, he sees the little deaf girl on a surveillance camera and goes to rescue her. He has to hurry because they are about to flood the floor she is on. Apparently he know sign language so he can communicate with her. They are unable to escape the flooding waters and still get swept away, but somehow they escape, because Not Keanu is a magical superhero.
Meanwhile, while Not Keanu is ruining one of my favorite movies, Annie is trying to help the people that are trapped in some room on the ship. This movie stays really true to form because we don't know where these people are stuck or why this happened. All we know is that they are trapped while smoke fills the room. The solution to this problem is really a great one. Annie finds a chain saw, on a cruise ship, and... you guessed it... she cuts the door down with said chain saw. They are trying really hard to make this into a comedy. After the hilarious chain saw scene, Annie and Not Keanu bump into each other and go after Willem. When they catch up with him they have a dramatic standoff that ends with Willem getting away and the chase recommencing. Does this sound familiar to you? It is the exact same scene that happens TWICE in Speed. The first time this happens is early on in the movie. Right after the elevator falls, Keanu and Daniels figure out that the bomber, Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper), is in a freight elevator so they climb on top of it ("Will our mystery guest please sign in?") Payne hears them and shoots at them through the ceiling of the elevator. Daniels gets shot & falls inside with Payne and there is a stand off between Keanu and the mad bomber. ("Pop quiz hot shot... What do you do?") The second time this happens is towards the end after Payne gets the ransom money but before they end up on the subway train. Payne has tricked Annie into coming with him by pretending to be a cop (and Willem Defoe was pretending to be a captain earlier) so of course, the helpless girl gets kidnapped. Keanu finds her with a bomb strapped to her chest so there is an dramatic stand off between him and Payne again, this time over Annie.
Anyway, back to the sequel. Everyone is ok and all happy on the top deck but Boba still doesn't have control of the ship, Willem still has control and he is heading directly towards an oil tanker. There is no way the tanker can possibly get out of the way in time and their rudder is not working! Oh no! Annie suggests that they throw a wrench into the propeller because that is what she does to her car when it breaks and it works every time. So, for some reason, they think this is a good idea and Not Keanu attempts to save the day again and not get sucked into the propeller. The next scene is again an exact duplicate of a scene from Speed. Do you remember the part when Keanu gets off the bus and while supported by a cable, slides under the moving bus to try to dismantle the bomb? Not Keanu does the exact same thing. He puts on a harness attached to a cable and jumps into the water. With the exception of the boat and the ocean, it is the exact same scene. Oh, and every time there is a scene just like one from the first movie, they play this weird remix version of the Speed theme music. I don't like it.
Once Not Keanu saves the day again, Annie gets abducted by Willem at gun point. (Because this movie will never end) He grabs her and gets on this jet ski thing that looks like a speed boat but is really two jet skis connected together. Once they are off the cruise ship we cut back to Not Keanu and Boba who discover that they are still on a collision course with the oil tanker. They jump into the water and manually turn the propeller to steer themselves away from the tanker. (This movie is trying really hard to keep you on the edge of your seat but is failing miserably.) There is this dramatic close call where they narrowly miss the tanker, but just as they are all breathing a sigh of relief, they realize that they are about to crash into the set of Catalina Caper. (If you are not familiar with this MST3K classic, it is a film from the 60's about a bunch of rich kids on vacation in Catalina while an art thief is on the loose. The entire movie looks like the picture below.)
The cruise ship can't slow down (of course) and so it crashes into sail boats, fishermen and eventually comes ashore when is crashes through the pier. When the ship eventually stops, the very tip of the ship gently touches a church bell, just like in the end of Speed when the subway train stops by gently bumping a tour bus.
At this point you may be asking yourself what happened to Willem Defoe and Annie? They somehow get off the jet skis and onto a sea plane. But wait, do you remember this guy from the first movie?
This is Glenn Plummber, and he plays the guy who owns the Jaguar that Keanu hijacks to catch up with the bus. I guess after that happened, he bought a condo in the Caribbean and is coincidentally there during all this chaos. He has a boat now and helps Not Keanu catch up with Willem and rescue Annie in a very Timothy Dalton, 007 sort of way (You know, with a harpoon attached to the plane. You've seen License to Kill, right?) Anyway, after Annie is rescued, Willem gets sun in his eyes and crashes the plane into the needle that is on the top of the oil tanker. He survives this and starts to laugh like a mad man! But wait, it gets better. Then from out of nowhere, the plane and the entire oil tanker blow up. For no reason! How does that happen? This is such an unbelievable/stupid way to take out the bad guy! Then, just as I predicted, Not Keanu decides that after all this, he is going to give Annie the engagement ring, and the credits roll. I so called that!
Oh wow. That was awful.
And just when I thought it was over, there are extra scenes during the credits. Why can't this movie just end already???
During the credits, Annie is once again taking her road test with the same guy from the beginning of the movie. She floors it and almost hits a bus. This is how the movie ends. It is about time.
Looking back on it, I am really glad that I never saw this movie until now. I don't regret waiting 15 years to watch it. Just as I thought, it is a terrible movie that never should have been made, especially without Keanu Reeves. The film makers should have gotten the hint when Keanu turned the roll down. Sandra Bullock's attempt at comedy falls flat with every joke. It was as if they wrote out all the scenes from Speed on index cards, shuffled them, put them in random order and changed the bus to a boat. There is no originality to it. Every scene, and even the score seemed to be ripped off from something else. I do not recommend that any of you see this movie. Just by reading my synopsis, you will know everything that you will ever need to know about Speed 2: Cruise Control. It is so bad that I can't even justify rating this movie from 1 to 10, it is just not worth it. Instead of seeing this terrible sequel, you should watch the first one, you can borrow one of my copies.
