In the second installment of our Deliberately Bad Film Festival, Sheila, Jess, Linus and I went to see The Ring Two. Before any of you film snobs remind us of the bad reviews this film received, let me just say, YEAH, WE KNOW. It's part of the fun. You see, we possess a need and a desire to see complete and utter crap. It's why we sat through Brown Bunny, for fuck's sake. And it's why we're going to see Red Eye when that bad boy comes out.
Sheila has an excellent recap of the film over on her blog. I agree with all of Sheila's observations and would like to tack on the following to the list. Warning, there may be a spoiler or two:
1) Naomi Watts had surprisingly easy access to ambulances, crime scenes and devastated witnesses. She just waltzed in and out of things with very little resistance. When caught interrogating the aforementioned devastated witness without permission, the worst that happened was that a cop said, "Hey you! Stop that!" Apparently badgering a devastated witness evokes the same penalty as, say, nosepicking.
2) Naomi Watts works for The Daily Astorian, a rather rinky-dink publication catering to the community in which she now lives. Despite having a small circulation and not much news to report, that paper was surprisingly well staffed. It employed more reporters than a New York tabloid. Totally bogus.
3) Poor Elizabeth Perkins. I really dig her and she's been reduced to playing a rather inept shrink who buys it in less than 15 minutes. Oh and they made the talented Gary Cole sell real estate!!! They spared him the shame of the gold blazer but saddled him with a troubling inability to handle balloons. He was decorating for an open house of the creepy well chick's childhood home, you see, and he couldn't quite wrangle the balloon bouquet that would attract and entice would-be buyers. This little bit of "character development" preceded a supposedly intense scene where Naomi wanders into the basement of the creepy well chick's house and realizes exactly what she's dealing with. At this point, the audience is supposed to be piecing together why the creepy well chick haunts and terrorizes people. But, for me, I couldn't quite deal with the fact that the man who brought us Capt. Jeffrey MacDonald, Mike Brady and Bill Lumbergh had such difficulty with helium and mylar.
4) It really bugged me that when wanting to snoop around the victim's house, it automatically occurred to Naomi Watts to look for a key in one of those fake rocks you find in a Lillian Vernon catalog. Like, she didn't even look under the mat first or check the top of the door frame. Instead, she went straight for the tchatke. "Obviously these people eschew the typical hiding places and have one of those plastic key-hiding doohickies and obviously it's in the flower bed... FOUND IT!"
That is all for now. Go read Sheila's and Jess's reviews.
