Empty script, dull direction sink ‘The Ring Two’

In theaters

THE RING TWO, directed by Hideo Nakata, written by Ehren Kruger, 110 minutes, rated PG-13.

The water budget for the new horror movie, “The Ring Two,” must have set Hollywood on its can. It’s likely the biggest since that old Kevin Costner clunker, “Waterworld.”

In the film, bathtubs overflow, ceilings drip, entire houses flood, walls weep, wells vomit, characters nearly drown, yet ironically, the movie suffers from the lows of a creative drought.

As directed by Hideo Nakata from a script by Ehren Kruger, the film joins most of today’s mainstream horror movies in that it’s bored with itself and with the genre – in your bones, you can feel the ache of its fatigue, and it hurts.

The movie is unique in that it doesn’t mock the genre, which has been in vogue since the 1996 debut of Wes Craven’s “Scream.” Still, maybe a little good-natured hair-pulling wouldn’t have been so bad for “The Ring Two.” In this case, it might have given the movie the personality it lacks and the beneficial jolts it needs.

A sequel to Gore Verbinski’s 2002 film “The Ring” – itself a so-so, Americanized version of Nakata’s superior 1998 Japanese film, “Ringu” – “The Ring Two” finds Naomi Watts back as Rachel Keller, a former Seattle-based journalist who nearly died in the first film when she viewed a videotape whose contents were so disturbing, they might have killed her within seven days had her sleuthing not put a stop to the clock.

Now living in Oregon with her creepy son Aidan (David Dorfman), Rachel finds herself in the unenviable position of once again having to deal with a copy of the videotape she thought she had destroyed.

Its contents aren’t exactly the stuff of Merchant Ivory. They involve a nightmare of Victorian severity, with humorless, middle-aged women tossing themselves off cliffs and a sketchy young girl with bad hair and worse teeth wreaking all sorts of havoc.

On second thought, maybe this is Merchant Ivory.

So, what gives here? If you’ve seen the first film and understood its endless haze of puzzles, which kept accumulating until the ideas that fueled them turned on themselves, you’ll know what gives – there are no revelations here, not even when Sissy Spacek slums through a kitschy cameo to help sort things out. And if you haven’t seen the first film? Well, come expecting a Rubik’s Cube without the payoff.

“The Ring Two” has its moments, such as a scene in which several angry young bucks go berserk in a forest, which are well done. Watts also is good, far better than the material, with screen presence to spare in spite of the empty script she inhabits. Still, for her and for Hollywood, this is a bland, underwhelming product, a cash cow meant for a big opening weekend, nothing more.

If “The Ring Two” came with a ring tone, it also would be wet. It would be a raspberry.

Grade: C-

On video and DVD

BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON, directed by Beeban Kidron, written by Andrew Davies, Helen Fielding, Richard Curtis and Adam Brooks, 108 minutes, rated R.

In “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason,” Renee Zellweger is back as Bridget, a full-figured wreck of a career girl who still has fears of spinsterhood, still smokes too many cigarettes, still makes an ass out of herself in public, and still has problems with the two men who chased her in the first movie.

Foremost is Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy, a human-rights barrister and former childhood playmate of Bridget’s who once found her to be verbally incontinent before ultimately claiming to like her just the way she is, wobbly bits and all. Now they are six weeks into an uneasy relationship, one complicated by Bridget’s exasperating self-doubt, which teeters on paranoia.

Second is Bridget’s former boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), a rakish lout who has joined Bridget in becoming something of a television star. Whenever he can, he hits on her shamelessly.

With Bridget uncertain about Mark’s love for her, she is, to say the least, a handful to deal with. On paper, that seems to mirror the tone of the first film, but here, with a new director taking the reins, it strikes quite a different note.

What was once an endearing, witty glimpse into the harrowing world of dating for Rubenesque, thirtysomething women has become a carnival of human neurosis that deserves its own sideshow.

The first movie was a post-feminist take on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” with broad nods to Silvio Narizzano’s “Georgy Girl” and P.J. Hogan’s “Muriel’s Wedding.” It was about Bridget Jones coming to terms with the real enemy in her life – Bridget Jones – while working hard to do something about it.

“The Edge of Reason,” on the other hand, is about Bridget Jones being ransacked by a comedic series of pratfalls as she works through her problems, all of which are brought on by herself. Some of the pratfalls are funny, but the idea that the film generates its laughter solely by humiliating Bridget for her size isn’t wit; it’s just cruelty softened by the waning appeal of Zellweger’s squinting pucker.

Grade: C

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.