Dear Mr. Loder: You are turning 61 in May.
As such, you should not be writing things like, "[Basic Instinct 2] rocks. It does so by boldly embracing the preposterousness at the core of its story right away, and then moving on to more important things like ultra-nasty sex, hyper-lurid dialogue and a species of over-the-top set design that hasn't been attempted with this much brio since the early Bond films, or maybe the gargantu-westerns of Sergio Leone."
Speaking of which, Basic Instinct 2 is doing poorly, despite Loder's best efforts, because of George W. Bush. Or maybe because of the Christians who got him elected. From Paul Verhoeven's statement on that topic I cannot be sure; maybe there's a language barrier problem, because he also said anything erotic is banned in the U.S., which it isn't.
Or maybe he means his movie is not erotic? It certainly wasn't banned. It pulled in $3.2 million last weekend. Less than 20 people per showing is not a lot -- indeed, it is hilariously tiny -- but it is evidence that it hasn't been banned.
So why is this movie doing so poorly? Why are erotic thrillers so rare these days? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the main attraction of these movies was the sex scenes. Find any VHS copy of them and chances are the sex scenes will be more worn-out than the rest of the movie. And yet, the content of those scenes pales in comparison to what is available for free online.
If you're into that sort of thing, what would you prefer: sitting in a public theater for $10, waiting a couple of hours with 20 strangers, to catch a few fleeting seconds of a 48-year-old Sharon Stone; or downloading several minutes of high-resolution on-demand video of girls half that age that you can pause, freeze, and watch to your heart's content in the privacy of your own home?
Oh well. The point is that Kurt Loder is way too old to be writing things like that. And also, Paul Verhoeven is an idiot.
