Movie:
Disc:
In the 2000 flick The Cell
Jennifer Lopez (just what did happen to her career?) was a psychic FBI
agent who could literally "enter" the mind of other people.
The plot
itself was a derivative psycho killer affair that merely served as a
clothesline for visionary director Tarsem Singh onto which to hang some
really disturbing surrealist imagery inspired by the likes of Jan
Svankmajer, Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali. In fact, without its
flimsy Silence of the Lambs wannabe plotline The Cell would
have been the first genuine surrealist flick since Luis Bu?el?s 1929
Un Chien Andalou!
This belated straight-to-DVD sequel however doesn't have
the budget for J. Lo or any expensive eye candy so all we are left with
now is the idiotic Silence of the Lambs plot about an FBI agent who
helps to track down an elusive serial killer by, yes, "entering" his mind.
(What she finds there is an old Windows 3.1 screensaver . . . no, really.
The budget must have been really really small!)
The only problem is that now the story is so moronic and
filled with the sort of frustrating idiocies that wants to make you either
tear out your hair or roll your eyes and groan aloud that Stupidity of the
Lambs would have been a better title for the movie!
THE DISC: A digital copy of the movie can be
found on a separate disc and the sad truth is that The Cell 2 is probably
the sort of movie that will actually be improved by watching it on a puny
iPod Nano screen!
Image is fantastic as you'd expect from BLU-RAY, but
nothing can distract from the stupid screenplay. Not the gratuitous female
topless nudity eight minutes into the movie, the pointless car chase
twenty minutes later or the hero dangling from a helicopter by the movie's
end.
Nope, things simply aren't helped by the fact that
The Cell 2 boasts the sort of production values and acting you'd find
on some late night TV show you'd rather not watch. (Also watch out for
some gratuitous aerial footage over the end titles - what is it with
that?)
There is a Making Of feature included but the chances
are that you wouldn't want to check it out.
WORTH IT? No.
RECOMMENDATION: Start a letter writing campaign
that New Line release the original The Cell on BLU-RAY instead. (At
the time of writing it is only available on DVD.)
