Impartial? feh

It was recently remarked that I use my ‘bad-movie formula’ (or bad movie formula) to keep from having to watch stuff I don’t wanna. Yeah, that’s me. There is a lot of perfectly good stuff out there that is simply not on my radar. Call it my post-Ring II defense mechanism but its difficult for me to get past what I know (or what I think I know) and try new things. And up to now, it’s worked out pretty well in as far as I can tell. The upshot is a circumstance in which everything involved sucks and it works for damn-near everything- Politics und politicos? They all suck. School und work? Sucks. Burning down KFC’s because of an insensitive cartoon? Stupid AND sucky. Smoking and/or quitting smoking? Top 2% of suckiness.
The best part of all this is I’m rarely surprised by the sick, sad world we live in. However, when I am surprised, in those extraordinary flashes when my Cassandra-like prognostication fails and I’m proven utterly wrong, it’s delightful. It rocks. Such was the case when I viewed Underworld: Evolution. Yeah, I know… a sequel begat from a sub-par movie born out of a genre more fractured, hackneyed and derivative then any other in the horror film pantheon. So I’ll come right out with the verdict: it didn’t suck. Here’s the breakdown:

Who was involved? Kate Beckinsale. She’s purty. Everyone else is b-list or lower… not that that’s a bad thing or anything, I just don’t care enough about them to piss on them right now. Except for director Len Wiseman, Kate’s lucky man. Len was also responsible for directing the first opus and it’s my opinion that he should seriously start thinking about another career. Don’t feel bad, Len, I don’t play tennis because I suck at it… find something you are good at or just stick to defiling Kate.
What company was involved? That would be Sony Screen Gems and a look at their credits between now and 1999 (when the company’s properties started being directly responsible for movies since 1974) is anything but stellar. I thought ‘Arlington Road’ was interesting but the rest is suck-tastic.
When was it released? January ’06, that’s right… the poop-chute for the vast majority of awful movies.
How long did it take to get made? No idea but the way cheesy Hollywood works we can safely assume that it was green-lighted immediately after the original’s release… in 2003.

The story, such as it was, wasn’t so much a sequel as it was simply a continuation of the original- like a 106-minute alternate ending or a reeeealy extended edition… like the ‘Matrix’ sequels; nuthin’ new, just more of the same stuff. Not super, but, if you liked the original and wanted it to be longer, this here’s for you. Now, why doesn’t it suck? Well, I liked the original as an action/horror genre movie. I mean the story and acting weren’t great and it screwed with some of the more familiar vampire conventions but I didn’t watch it expecting something smooth like ‘The Hunger” or even something mediocre and funny like “Fright Night”. Naw, it was what it was: blood, guns and fangs and so is it’s sequel. The best part tho was this: it was free! When you don’t have to pay for a crappy thing, it becomes less crappy! And that changes the equation. Yup, the internet is a vast and wondrous thing and it's nice to be wrong occasionally=)