Review

Review Date: 22-January-06
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Junk

Underworld: Evolution (2006)

2006 must be very proud.

Only just graduated from training pants, the baby new year has produced a flick that rivals the worst stinkers of its forefathers. I speak of Len Wiseman's "Underworld: Evolution," an abysmal lesson in blaring tedium that would look bad on a two-bit cable channel at three o'clock in the morning. This movie is a shoo-in for bottom-of-the-barrel recognition when white-haired December rolls around, and for actress Kate Beckinsale, Wiseman's wife, it's unassailable grounds for divorce.

Mind you, I'm a fan of the 2003 picture from which this abomination springs. "Underworld" was an imaginative introduction to the long, violent history of vampires and "Lycans" (werewolves), and it paid ample attention to a few warriors who grew as the story progressed. The sequel, however, is altogether devoid of imagination and character development. Flashbacks of the original abound in the first half; flashbacks of the first half abound in the second. In between self-references is a flimsy story about the desire of the primal vampire (Tony Curran) to resurrect his brother, the primal Lycan, and take over Earth. (Last one to ravage Europe is a rotten egg!) Standing in the way of this plan is sexy bloodsucker Selene (Beckinsale) and her newly minted vampire-Lycan beau (Scott Speedman, again looking like he crashed the party), along with Sir Derek Jacobi as a mysterious man of nautical bent. Instead of tooling around a slick, Gothic London as before, Selene and Michael slog their way through snowy back woods (Siberia?) and evince an uncanny knack for landing in dilapidated castles and pools of waist-deep water.

The location is actually quite confusing. The plot seems to follow directly on the heels of the first chapter (i.e., to the hour), which was set in England and made mention of the fact that vampires can't fly. Yet here is Selene in some country where they speak Russian and where she has quick access to her coven's safe house, her childhood home (?), a clansman in exile, and Jacobi's docked ship. But what has coherence got to do with any of this? The once-promising story is entirely given over to shoddy action and sex (also shoddy). The script is so painfully inane that it has Selene admitting she hasn't been in a certain place for 300 years and then saying in the next breath, "That's odd, I don't remember this gate being here before." She has also forgotten, apparently, that she once had dignity and walked in a world where everyone and everything wasn't stupid. Let us hope that survival of the fittest adheres in Hollywood so that this monstrosity doesn't evolve any further.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.