Wild Things 2 (2004) (V)

Director:

Jack Perez

Writers:

Ross Helford (written by) and
Andy Hurst (written by)

Release Date:

23 February 2004 (UK)

Genre:

Thriller

Plot:

Based on the hot movie Wild Things, Wild Things 2 sees teenage bad girls Maya and Britnney go on a sex and killing spree to win millions.

Plot Keywords:

Sex | Stepfather | Money | Plane | Plane Crash

Cast

Susan Ward	...	Brittney Havers
Katie Stuart	...	Shannon
Leila Arcieri	...	Maya King
Dorit Wolf	...	Lecture Hall Girl
Brett Gilbert	...	Titch
Michael Chieffo	...	Principal Mosster
Linden Ashby	...	Detective Morrison
Joe Michael Burke	...	Julian Haynes
Chad Gordon	...	Kip Kiepki
Anthony John Denison	...	Niles Dunlap (as Tony Denison)
Kathy Neff	...	Brittney's Mother
Ski Carr	...	Cicatriz
Isaiah Washington	...	Terence Bridge
Dylan Kussman	...	Irvin Brillman
Kimberly Atkinson	...	Teri Breur

Also Known As:

The Glades (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong sexuality, language and violence.

Runtime:

95 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Brazil:18 | Iceland:16 | Singapore:PG (heavily cut) (video rating) | Singapore:R21 (cut) (re-rating) | USA:R (certificate #40165) | Netherlands:12 | Argentina:16 | Australia:M | Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) | Finland:K-15 | Germany:16 | Italy:VM14 | Norway:15 | Sweden:11 | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Palm Beach, Florida, USA

Company:

Destination Films

Goofs:

Plot holes: If the girls had really arranged for the corpse of Maya's real father to be in Niles' plane during the crash, Terence's suspicion that the coroner (Julian) swapped the corpses is wrong. Then however, the coroner wasn't needed in the scheme at all. They could have done without his help altogether.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Wild Things II: Making the Glades (2004) (V)

Wild Things minus all the things that made it interesting = Wild Things 2

One of the standout features of Wild Things was that in spite of having an obvious emphasis on the eye-candy content, it also contained enough to keep the other areas of the mind stimulated. In addition to a cast that was very pleasant to look at, doing some things that were equally pleasing to the eye, it had a credible plot that read like an everyday event in parts of America. Most importantly, however, the original Wild Things wasn't afraid to recognise that adults have a right to be entertained, too.

As my summary suggests, when you take the original Wild Things and remove everything that made it worthwhile, you get Wild Things 2. Many key scenes from Wild Things get replicated here, only there is a certain something lacking. It could be credible acting. It could be a decent script. But what is most apparently missing here is creativity. The photography, so lush and dynamic in the first film, is flat and uninteresting here. About twenty-eight minutes into the film, we hear one of the detectives say something along the lines of "oh, plot thickens". This plot would need to eat a whole turkey for every meal every day for a year in order to stop resembling a death camp survivor.

Speaking of the plot, one critique of Ralph Bakshi's production of The Lord Of The Rings states that about a third of the way through, Ralph shifts gears and simply gives all the neat highlights without any of the setup that links them together to give coherence. Wild Things 2 never shifts gears. It starts out on the assumption that it has given enough exposition to make sense, and simply throws scenes in the viewer's face without any hint of transition. It is almost as if an entire half-hour of footage was deleted from throughout the film, all from between one scene or another.

Another feature of Wild Things that Wild Things 2 left out is the plot twists. Sure, there's plot twists here, but the lack of setup in the rest of the film, combined with the scenes' rapid-fire handling, gives them the same level of impact as a funeral in an Ed Wood film. After the half-hearted attempt to recreate the threesome scene, and its ability to demonstrate how "wider audience" seems to mean "children/adolescents only" in Hollywood, I'm sure nobody who's seen the film will be surprised that I tend to think of this mess as Wild Things Lite.

In all, I gave this mess a two out of ten. It is a perfect example of a Hollywood studio trying to please everyone, and winding up pleasing no one as a result. Save your money and buy the original instead. You won't feel as if you wasted ninety minutes of your life and a few thousand brain cells as a result.