Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)

And you thought FAUST made a bad bargain.

Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)
Directed by Jan de Bont
Written by Jan de Bont (story) and Randall McCormick

As this sequel begins, Sandra Bullock explains to DMV driving tester Tim Conway that she broke up with her Speed (1994) boyfriend because he gave her pepper spray and she thought it was perfume. Yes, Sandra is still plucky and perky and spunky, but she really should see the Wizard about a brain.

While Sandra chatters on to Tim about her new beau (who is not into hazardous stuff, like her last guy), her driving imperils the lives of everyone in her path. She smashes her way into a dangerous high-speed chase being conducted by LAPD SWAT officer Jason Patric, only to learn that her safe, cozy boyfriend is...Jason!

“I don’t even know you!” she rages, upset that he was an action hero behind her back. But Jason pulls out tickets to a Caribbean cruise and we cut to...

...The Love Boat, where Gopher is showing Sandra and Jason to their cabin. They’re interrupted by the cruise’s designated actor, Willem Dafoe, who demands that his golf balls be found now. When Jason and Sandra go up on deck, Jason notes that there is a golf tournament on TV but Willem isn’t watching it! Willem is no golfer! Jason has cracked the case!

Willem, of course, is a super-villain, and in requisite super-villain fashion, he has a pet that he talks to. But all the good pets were taken, so Willem’s stuck with pet leeches, which he keeps in his bathtub. Also, his golf balls are bombs and he has a fiber optic converter! Clearly he is up to no good.

Jason and Sandra go to the dining room, where we meet our Poseidon Adventure supporting cast members: the Fat Busters Conventioneers (pinch-hitting for Shelley Winters); and some jewelers, who brought along a billion-dollar diamond collection in an effort to score with Kate Winslet. Willem’s plan is to blow up a few golf balls, steal the diamonds, and crash the ship into a cliff.

At the first sign of trouble, Jason is champing at the bit to do brave stuff. He informs the incompetent ship’s officers that Willem is controlling the boat with his ThinkPad, and suggests they shoot him (Willem, I mean—although shooting Jason would have been my suggestion). But Willem is one step ahead of them, and has left his cabin! He taunts them via video camera, saying something about their fathers being hamsters.

Sandra, who thought she was the hero of this film, goes looking for her own people to save. She locates the fat folks, who are trapped in their room and stripping so they can use their clothing to block the fumes coming from the vents. Sandra knows she has to hurry, or this whole scene will turn into a thirst trap that’ll hijack the entire film!

Meanwhile, Jason remembers that in Speed, Keanu Reeves shot a hostage to prevent a kidnapping, so Jason comes up with the idea of sinking the ship to keep it from running aground, thereby proving the law of diminishing returns.

Willem’s laptop computer, HAL, tells him Jason has thwarted Evil Plan A, so he switches to Plan B—crashing the ship into an oil tanker. Willem, who is fed up with Sandra’s whining, takes her hostage and flees on a speedboat that was somehow just there.

Jason manages to avert the collision (it involves holding his breath for a long time), but now they are headed for St. Maarten’s harbor! The rogue ocean liner plows into the town, smashing the pier, the boardwalk, some condos, and a telephone booth. It seems that ocean liners demolishing towns must be pretty common in these parts because nobody pays much attention until the ship actually taps them on the shoulder and says, “boo!” The Love Boat hits a church and finally comes to a halt since, as we all know, cruise ships can only be stopped by crucifixes. So, the movie is over, right? Alas, no, because Jason still has to rescue Sandra, who is trying to sneak off the set to go make Hope Floats.

Jason hijacks a cigarette boat from some Jamaican guy and his date, and they head off in hot pursuit of Willem, who has abandoned his speedboat for a seaplane. Willem’s plane gets impaled on an oil tanker, he laughs maniacally (Top of the world, ma!), and the tanker and the plane blow up real good.

Jason and Sandra, who fell out of the plane before it exploded, sink into the ocean. Jamaican Guy, who is apparently there to explain the action to the less intelligent audience members, says “I hope they can hold their breaths a long time. Don’t run out of air!” Jamaican Girlfriend adds, “Me thinks they’re dead.” Me wish they were. Instead, they find Willem’s bag of diamonds, Jason gives Sandra an engagement ring, and they kiss. The End.

Except we’re now back in the car with Sandra and Tim Conway, and it’s cruelly apparent that this movie has more false climaxes than a Long Island housewife.

If you’re wondering why this limp, charmless rehash was piped into multiplexes in the waning years of the Twentieth Century, it all comes down to haggling and the barter system: a star agrees to do a crappy sequel to a successful action movie in exchange for the studio financing a project with great personal meaning to the star, which is a nice way of saying that it’s self-indulgent offal that most moviegoers wouldn’t touch with an asbestos glove. Ironically, it turns out that nobody wanted to see the crappy sequel either, which goes to show why negotiating with the forces of the universe is always a tricky proposition. You have no way of knowing what cards they hold, you don’t speak their language, and you can’t figure out their currency without one of those little conversion charts.

Basically, it’s the kind of bargaining inexperienced tourists do in Tijuana. They wind up buying the used Sandra Bullock, even though the seller tells them that he’s out of the Keanu Reeves upgrade and they’ll have to take the cheaper Jason Patric—but they’ll still come out ahead if they get the Willem Dafoe option (the same supervillainry as the national Dennis Hopper brand, with only half the sudden, unmotivated bouts of overacting). And the filmmakers walk off, smugly thinking that they did okay. But when they get their movie home, they discover that the high-mileage Sandra Bullock only had her perkiness spray-painted on, that the Jason Patric was just wood in the shape of a leading man, and that they really got rooked when they traded in their bus for the cruise ship.

Housekeeping Note: Ever feel like patting the writer on the head, but already subscribe to seven hundred other things? Me too. So I’ve added a Tip Jar below, if you ever feel like bunging in a few bucks to say “Atta Boy!”