What were they thinking?

Rating: 4/10 (30 May 2000)

So much potential wasted. Mission Impossible 2 could have been a great movie. Story was fine, Thandie Newton is hot, Tom Cruise kicks butt, and the action sequences were exciting...at times. Unfortunately at other times the action sequences are laughable and over-stylized. At the Chinese theater in Hollywood on opening night (when I saw it) the entire theater was laughing at the movie because it was so bad at times--times that were supposed to be dramatic and serious.
The ruining of the movie is helped by the long slow parts that drag on and on; the contrived shot-gun romance of the leads (that left everyone wondering what the heck just happened); and the dependence on the same plot-device over and over for "twists" that just come off as obvious, confusing, and/or ridiculous.
I wasn't expecting Mission Impossible 2 to be more than an explosive action movie with a relatively thin plot...I was prepared to just have fun with it, since I like these kind of movies. But in the end the bad parts overwhelmingly outweigh the good.
Save your money for Shanghai Noon--it's well worth it, and loads of fun.