Lake Placid 2
2007
The Cast
Oh, My GOD!!!
How to take a dump on a decent film. After the successfulness of the first flick it was inevitable a sequel would rear its ugly head... and boy is it ugly.
I originally watched this on its DVD release, though I must have forced myself to forget how bad the story and film really are. I can't even say which is the worst as just about everything about this stinks, like a swamp in summer. The story is pretty lame and even though there were officials on the scene in the original, for some reason those events appear to have been covered up as everybody believes it was an urban myth. Even when they are presented with the facts they don't want to believe.
Then there's the acting which is dire to say the best. Though I've never rated John Schneider (Sheriff Riley) to be a great actor I did believe he was better than in this movie. I'm not sure if Flores was going for camp characters or not, but he failed if he was. The worst accent award goes to Sam McMurray (Struthers) his Irish Lilt was cringeworthy. Even the likes of Cloris Leachman (Sadie Bickerman) couldn't lift this out of the silt at the bottom of the lake. To be honest, it was the supporting cast that were probably the best actors in the whole thing.
Though I have to say, it could have been the director's fault for the characterisations, as he does call the shots. Take the teenage rebels. If they were wrote this unrealistically by Hurvitz and Miller it should have been Flores duty to make them more believable. He failed. These are basically your standard stereotypical bad-boys. Though I wasn't sure if this was supposed to be a parody of the genre and a joke in itself. Since the rest of the film is rubbish it's hard to differentiate.
Then there's the CGI. Okay, so this was back in 2007 but it's still no excuse for some of the animation. There's a lot of no thought gone into the making of this film and most are in the CGI scenes. There are way too many scenes where the "dinner" is in shallow water but somehow the giant crocodile swims up out of the deep... These crocs are also adept at pulling their prey from the shore or jetty. Not sure how they do it... maybe their tongues have evolved into something similar to frogs...
This is a bad film... and I usually love bad films. However, this has nothing good to recommend it to anyone. If you've watched the first Lake Placid, then I would advise you to watch that one again. Even if it's the hundredth viewing, you'll still get more enjoyment from that film than this.
I give this sequel a Crocodile Kiss of 2.75 out of 10.
The Trailer
