Film: Basic Instinct 1 & 2
Jun. 14th, 2009 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseHaving been on a little drive to watch some classically bad thrillers last week I found time to watch Basic Instinct and found to my surprise that I rather enjoyed it. In fact I think it was hilarious and works as a rather good piece of black comedy. Everything about it was melodrama and because of that I was never really under the impression that I was meant to take it seriously. There were some genuinely funny lines and nicely clichéd dramatic moments all of which held my attention quite easily.
As a serious thriller I’d say it fails on most, if not all, fronts but as a deliberately melodramatic dark humoured take on the matter it works beautifully. The characters were so over the top but not enough to make them parody and even the plot twists weren’t nearly sensible enough to seem like they were approaching serious thriller territory. And the overly dramatic soundtrack didn’t hurt either.
Basic Instinct 2 on the other hand which I caught up on today was merely made for TV material. It took an overblown melodramatic storyline and tried to repeat it with more gravity which, instead of making it a serious piece of drama, turned it into fairly average viewing..
There was some nice repetition of the set formula in the first film but it still didn’t manage to carry over that high melodrama feel. The characters weren’t larger than life and the main character seemed quite plainly contradictory in his actions. There really wasn’t much else to notice about it other than the rather artificial London sets. The various locations were reasonable enough but put together were just too much. I don’t ever remember SoHo looking quite so Hollywood seedy and the fact that the main character worked at the Swiss Re Building didn’t help either. But, perhaps, as a result of this I might have to further investigate whether or not David Thewlis can actually act.
As a serious thriller I’d say it fails on most, if not all, fronts but as a deliberately melodramatic dark humoured take on the matter it works beautifully. The characters were so over the top but not enough to make them parody and even the plot twists weren’t nearly sensible enough to seem like they were approaching serious thriller territory. And the overly dramatic soundtrack didn’t hurt either.
Basic Instinct 2 on the other hand which I caught up on today was merely made for TV material. It took an overblown melodramatic storyline and tried to repeat it with more gravity which, instead of making it a serious piece of drama, turned it into fairly average viewing..
There was some nice repetition of the set formula in the first film but it still didn’t manage to carry over that high melodrama feel. The characters weren’t larger than life and the main character seemed quite plainly contradictory in his actions. There really wasn’t much else to notice about it other than the rather artificial London sets. The various locations were reasonable enough but put together were just too much. I don’t ever remember SoHo looking quite so Hollywood seedy and the fact that the main character worked at the Swiss Re Building didn’t help either. But, perhaps, as a result of this I might have to further investigate whether or not David Thewlis can actually act.
