Mission Imbecilic

Rating: Null/10 (21 July 2003)

SPOILERS: Concluding a short-lived movie franchise, Mission Imbecilic 2 once more sets out to entertain the average four year old and once more winds up insulting their intelligence. This time around the plot involves the theft of some valuable clichés, in which jewel thief Zeta Jones  whoops: wrong movie  is pressed into service by Cary Grant (nope: wrong movie again) to help defeat A Deranged Criminal Intent On Destroying The World (ah: originality at last!) The cast is led by a Notebook Computer, with supporting roles played by its siblings, all of whom interact in so pleasing a way that it comes as a surprise to find that John Woo and not Intel lays claim to directorial credit. Justification for MI 2 is that it's entertainment', so it doesn't really matter if everything has been seen before and done before: one should merely sit back and enjoy it, in much the same way one should enjoy being slapped repeatedly around the head with a wet haddock. The script is full of memorable 27-liners, not to mention biting humor, so that won't be mentioned, though attention ought perhaps to be drawn to the gag `If I tell you where I'm going on holiday, it wouldn't be a holiday!' not merely because it is so epically hilarious but because it merits not one but two re-runs in the movie. Laugh? We nearly went into a coma. But forget the script: movies such as this depend for their vitality on set pieces. Once the preserve of second units, stunt teams and special effects crews, today they've all been replaced by Computer Generated Images, something which Woo happily confirms in the opening minutes when people start changing their faces in much the same way they did in a film by John Woo in which  no: never mind. Shortly afterwards, Cruise stands on a chair in his bedroom and changes a light bulb, which CGI then transforms into him appearing to scale the north side of The Grand Canyon. The fact that we know he's not there, that in reality nothing is there, is a knowledge of which Woo himself seems entirely unaware, for CGI continues to be deployed throughout the rest of the movie in a way that makes everything incredible in the worst (though most accurate) sense of the word. Naturally, the high camp and high style of the original TV show is missing entirely here, because back then it was necessary to rely on good scripts and reasonable actors and competent journeymen directors (which just goes to show how tiresome it must've been in the 1960s). Woo does, however, attempt to inject some style into a CGI gun battle in Cruise's rear yard (it's made to look like a Top Secret Laboratory but hey, you can't fool us!) by dint of slashing post-production sound and overlaying it with a Hans Zimmer score that may well have been rejected 20 years ago by Michael Mann as unworthy of `Miami Vice' but which here gets full play in all its monotonic monotony.
On which basis, MI 2 is almost, though not quite, worth viewing: an opportunity to see a director first distance his audience from action they don't believe in then bore 'em to death with a score they were hoping never to have to hear. Rating? Well; it's a close run thing between watching MI-2 and watching non-CGI paint dry. But paint wins it so. . . 0/10. Shame, really, when MI-1 was worth one point more.