"Where Movie Critics Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine"
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Is "Final Destination 2" humorous
or horrifying?"
by Herb Kane
February 9, 2003
out of 4 stars
CRITIC DOCTOR EXAMINES: Mike Hall (Critic Doctor's friend), Jeff Vice (deseretnews.com), Gerry Shamray (sunnews.com), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), David Grove (filmthreat.com), Phil Villarreal (Arizona Daily Star), David Keyes (Cinema 2000), Rod Armstrong (reel.com)
My wife didn't care to see "Final Destination 2," so I thought to myself, "Hey! I'll get Mikey. He'll go see it. He'll see anything." My friend, Mike Hall, absolutely refused to go. He didn't like the first "Final Destination" movie and figured this one wouldn't be any better. I agree the first film sucked, but I thought the sequel had potential. So I offered to buy Mike a ticket on the grounds that I could use him as a subject in my column - and if he liked the movie, he would refund the cost of the ticket ($4.75). We agreed. Did Mikey like it?
"Final Destination 2" is a sequel that once again starts out with a character who has a premonition of death. Kimberly (A.J. Cook) envisions a traffic pileup on I-80 (filmed very realistically) and so she stops cars from getting on the freeway. But you cannot stop "death's design," so it hunts down each survivor. This movie features a plot similar to the first movie and plenty of gory death scenes. This time the movie added something new - humor!
Mike and I both laughed throughout the film. I thought for sure he liked it! When the movie came to its final destination, Mike gave it "zero stars." Zero! Why? He said he laughed at the movie, not with it. I told him that the movie intended for people to laugh at funny scenes. Mike replied, "I completely disagree - period. It was a movie trying to be a serious, scary movie and it was so predictable. It was stupid!" He's not alone in his opinion.
Jeff Vice (deseretnews.com) said, "Unfortunately, all of those sequences are done with a straight face, and on the whole, the movie lacks the playful sense of ironic humor that might make it tolerable." Lack of humor? For the love of God! Why didn't some film critics (and my friend, Mike) get this movie? It was suppose to have dark humor!
In an interview with IGN.COM, FD2 producer Craig Perry said, "We've structured the sequences in such a way that you're hopefully laughing before we deliver the goods…It's supposed to be funny. That's one of the gifts the writers brought to it - they're funny guys and they were able to make this potentially dark and dour experience much, much more palatable by having that humor."
Exactly! In fact, I remember one scene in the movie where a lottery winner guy has his hand stuck in a garbage disposal and his apartment simultaneously just caught fire. While all of this craziness is going on around him, he is on the phone with a girlfriend who says, "You're so lucky!" It was hilarious.
I rest my case, Mike! Luckily, others got the humor in this movie:
The movie is much better than the original, even though Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times) disagrees. He said about the first film, "That movie depends on all the horror cliches of the Dead Teenager Movie (formula: teenagers are alive at beginning, dead at end). But it is well-made and thoughtful." David Grove (filmthreat.com) adds, "There was a creepy irony in 'Final Destination' in that the young hero had to survive in a world where his high school colleagues were all dead. The guy felt really guilty. Here, we just have a bunch of boring, random characters whose only significance is that they survived a car accident."
Listen people. The original movie pissed me off because of the way the characters treated each other. Yes, David. The guy did feel guilty about losing all his friends because almost everyone blamed the plane accident on him! It was so unrealistic and the interaction among those characters was annoying, not "thoughtful." Though this new sequel is a non-thinking vehicle of death and humor, at least I could watch the characters without wishing they were all dead.
Rod Armstrong (reel.com) got it right: "What is most shocking about director David R. Ellis' clever and extremely gory film is that it's one of the few horror sequels to outdo the original."
Phil Villarreal (Arizona Daily Star) summed the movie up best: "It doesn't matter that the logic is nonexistent and the characters lack little more substance than paper dolls. This is a funny lark for lovers of cheesy horror."
When all was said and done, I had a great time and Mike hated the movie. My total out-of-pocket cost was $9.50 (excluding popcorn and pop). The cost of my Critic Doctor column? Priceless! Watching Mike laugh his head off, as the filmmakers intended him to do, was well worth the price of both tickets.
I hear another sequel is already in the works. Hey, Mikey!
-- CRITIC DOCTOR
Copyright © 2003 Herb Kane
All rights reserved.
Critic Doctor.com
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Buy The Poster! |
Clear
Rivers: Ali Larter Kimberly Corman: A.J. Cook Thomas Burke: Michael Landes Evan Lewis: David Paetkau Tim Carpenter: James Kirk Nora Carpenter: Lynda Boyd Kat: Keegan Connor Tracy Rory: Jonathan Cherry |
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Director:
David R. Ellis Screenplay: J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress
Running Time: 1 hr, 40 min. Release Date: 12.31.2002.
MPAA Rating: R (for strong violence, language, drug content
and some nudity)  OFFICIAL MOVIE SITE |
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