Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Needed more of Jennifer Love Hewitt's breasts

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinz, and Brandi
Director: Danny Cannon
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

The survivors of a murderous rampage by a hook-wielding mass-murderer (Hewitt and Brandi) win a free Caribbean vacation. However, their trip to paradise turns into a stay in hell when the slicker-clad killer seems to return from the dead to stalk them once again.


"I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" is perhaps the worst big-budget slasher-flick ever made. From a really dumb title, to a weak set-up, through a barely coherent middle, to a lame and boring unmasking and final confrontation with the killer who has a motivation so thin that it makes the psycho in "Scream" look like a heavy-weight, there isn't a single story element in this film that works. It's not like a slasher flick is hard to do, but these folks couldn't even use the cliche building blocks of the genre properly.

The technical crew does a fine job, the actors are all pretty good (even if Brandi's "I'm a hipper than hip ghetto chick" routine is grating), and even the camera work is decent. If the film had a better script, it might have risen to an average level. The same might have been true if the film had been played partly for laughs like the aforementioned "Scream." Even Jennifer Love Hewitt, who is one of my favorite current actresses and who was interesting even in the most boring episodes of "Ghost Whisperer", seems to struggle in this morass of cliches and bad dialogue.

In the final analysis, the most watchable things in this movie are Jennifer Love Hewitt's breasts, but since we don't get to see her in as many tight tops as we did in the first film of the series--"I Know What You Did Last Summer"--even they aren't quite the reasons to watch this film they were. Everything about this movie is disappointing.




4 comments:

Matthew Coniam said...

Ah but come now, we do get her in a bikini - with gratuitous close up - in the terrifying 'locked in a tanning machine' sequence...
I actually like this movie a whole lot. Though admittedly I could watch her in anything. And have.

Steve Miller, Writer of Stuff said...

That is a plus... and I'm glad you brought it up, because I cut my reference to it in my effort to keep this review short-and-sweet. (I'm TRYING to curtail my tendency to drone on, with limited success.)

Direct to Video Connoisseur said...

How do you not love Jennifer Love Hewitt? And you can make the argument that she was the better pop singer in this, over Brandi. Remember her album "Let's Go Bang"? Um, sure, why not, let's... I agree that a tongue-in-cheek approach would have made this much more enjoyable. In the end it was only a tawdry cash grab.

Steve Miller, Writer of Stuff said...

I don't know that I ever heard that album, so I can't judge. :)