Review

Naturally they discover the Lake is home to a bunch of huge crocodiles, three this time round and hang your head in shame if you don't see the big plot twist coming, with the rest of the movie following various characters getting munched up by CGI crocs. What else do we have going down here? A big game hunter, Struthers, arrives with his African servant, the Sherriff's son Scott is partying somewhere on the lake with hottie Kerri, and we have an old lady who's a few brews short of a barbie. I just can't pick it but that sounds awfully familiar, it's almost like I have seen this movie before.

Lake Placid 2 is the sort of movie that will have Reviewers and Critics falling over themselves making up puns and word plays on the movie title or content. I just think that's way too easy and really not worth the effort considering just how "B" �grade the movie really is. I seem to be one of the few people who really appreciated the original movie and was thus dead keen on seeing the sequel. But as ever horror manages to disappointment, how on earth you can possibly get it wrong with a "B"� grade creature feature remains a mystery. Just pointing out some respect is due the "Lake Placid" thing due to the under-rated original feature.

If anything Lake Flaccid 2 is simply swimming in the same waters as the original movie. Which would be all good and dandy if the sequel was some sort of piss take on the first movie, it's not hence you have to wonder if a new idea would be lonely in Hollywood horror circles. It's not enough that we get the exact same characters, motivations, etc that we got in the original movie, but come on the exact same plot twist! Actually it's a stretch to call the plot turn a "twist" as it can be seen coming over the horizon like a real bad giant croc prop. LP2 simply restates the situations from Lake Placid, includes pretty much the same characters, and really offers nothing new to the crocodile farm. If you have seen the original, and by far superior movie, then there really is no point in having anything to do with the sequel.

Lake Plastic wowed me with the effort put into post production CGI and you really have to take your hat off to the props department for a job well done. For the most part the crocs are seen via CGI effects, and believe me those are really noticeable CGI effects. We are almost talking road runner animation levels here, and I really do wish I had of taken the tequila option to get through this flick. Through out the movie we have the misfortune to witness crocs changing size, awesome love that shit, crocs appearing in the wrong place, Jason isn't the only one with a teleportation option, and crocs so badly animated that you are left wondering if the CGI wasn't knocked out by someone's kid brother on a Commodore 64 wire frame program. Just when you think the team behind LP2 have achieved their aim of setting back computer generated effects by a decade or so they go one better. The plane, our rich hunter and servant arrive in, is also CGI. Just how cheap can they make a flick look these days! Even after a three day bender I would have noticed that one. It would be nice to level all the blame for LP2 at the feet of the computer geeks but unfortunately the prop department also came to the party in making LP2 less than a reasonable movie watching experience. We get quite a few shots of what is clearly a prop floating across the Lake. Awesome, had all the croc realism of a poo floating on a toilet.

I'm always impressed when a sequel matches the power and zest of the origin movie.

Surprisingly script writers, term used loosely, Todd Hurvitz and Howie Miller do drop one decent development on this movie in a don't charge to the fridge for a beer else you'll miss it fashion. In the original movie the crocs are simply explained away as some sort of throw back to prehistoric ones via Asian (from memory), in LP2 the giant purses are explained as being the result of human growth hormones in their feed. (Sorry can't give anything away on the whole "feed" thing in case one of the two people likely to watch this movie who haven't seen the original are tuning in). Well okay I can dig the old blame science and greedy corporation line, but that doesn't explain how we ended up with crocs in the Lake in the first place. Naturally the writers after coming up with something completely new from the original movie immediately drop the idea, do nothing with it, and don't bother mentioning it again. Either this is a prime example of concise writing or Hurvitz and Miller have very low attention spans. I'm opting for the later to be honest.

About the only other original idea the writers, term used loosely, can come up with in this turgid retread of horror cliches is a pretty prejudiced and quite frankly racist take on rich dude Struthers' African servant. I don't want to come off as all PC here, but lets call a spade a spade, Ahmad all but refers to Struthers as "bwana" �during every one of his scenes. At best lazy writing, at worse, well I'll leave that to readers to draw their own conclusions.

While labouring through the ordeal that Lake Ponderous turned out to be I couldn't help but think that the flick looked like a tele-movie. There's the same innate ability to take a cheap looking movie seriously that we see done in Australia all the time. A bit of post viewing research turned up the fact that LP2 premiered on the North American Sci-Fi channel. This kind of explains why we got the raw end of the Gucci loafers on the movie, since when has the Sci-Fi channel finance a flick that was even remotely good. Similar to Australian commercial television company output, you just know nothing good can come out of tuning into a Sci-Fi channel movie.

As expected the acting wasn't anything to write home about, and I didn't bother taking notice of anything else.

Once again they managed to bitch slap my expectations with a sub standard sequel in the creature feature bargain bin. For sure I was up to see Lake Placid 2 and was bouncing around like a kid on a sugar hit when I saw it in my review queue, but I should have known, nothing good comes from wishing for stuff in the horror genre. The Sci-Fi channel strikes again with another inept movie delivered to long suffering patrons and really should be ashamed of themselves. Every cloud has a silver lining and mine was that I decided to scratch the Sci-Fi channel from my Fox wish list. Yes it was that bad an experience.

If you have mental disorders, are dirty on yourself, or have people coming over that you want to give the arse too, then by all means go rent Lake Placid 2. Under no other conditions should you even pick up the cover, nothing good can come of it. I give the movie one and a half plastic reptiles out of five.