"Basic Instinct 2" is not as bad as you may think it is. That's assuming you think it's the worst movie ever made. It's not. It's not even one of the worst movies ever made.

Given that the original "BI" has been somewhat relegated to the "What were we thinking?" hall of shame of the '90s; that everyone else involved in this movie aside from Stone is a relative unknown; and that the story this time around makes almost as little sense as the original, you might wonder why anyone cares about this movie.

1. Stone doesn't really get naked until the last part of the movie, although she does a great deal of teasing up to that moment. The reason this is relevant is that the actress has done everything short of walking up and down Hollywood Boulevard with a sign that says "I get naked in 'BI2' " to make sure everyone knows she does just that.

2. Stone's overacting -- she keeps switching from know-it-all power woman to bloodsucking vamp -- falls unfortunately short of full-on diva insanity, so it's not really funny, just sort of sad.

This time around, the mysterious, sexy, thrill-seeking, bisexual, conniving and brilliant novelist Catherine Tramell (Stone) is in London, where she -- oops -- manages to drive through a plate glass window and into the river Thames, thereby causing the companion she was sexually abusing at the time to end up a very wet corpse.

Not surprisingly, British authorities want Catherine's psyche checked out, so they send her to Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey, a sure bet for trivia immortality), who can't tell if she's nuts but does notice she's majorly hot.

Then a lot of people start turning up dead, murdered in perverse ways, and everyone suspects Catherine is the killer. This somehow leads to the aforementioned nudity and some laughably kinky sex.

This may sound interesting, but it's not. And that is the great crime of "Basic Instinct 2." Director Michael Caton-Jones apparently hates to get messy, so there are no big bloody moments, just a trail of unappealing cold bodies and a bit of psychobabble.

Put into a wilder context, Stone's crazed character might have worked. But "Basic Instinct 2" really doesn't do the basics -- action, shootouts, attacks, chase scenes, even sex scenes -- very well. Instead it wastes too much time talking and teasing.

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