Starring - Michael Madsen; Natasha Henstridge; Marg Helgenberger; Mykelti Williamson & George Dzundza Director - Peter Medak MPAA - Rated R for strong sexuality, sci-fi violence/gore and language. I'm going to start right out by saying that Species II is not as good as the first movie. The story is good, the acting is good, and the special effects are better than the first Species, but Species II seems to lack something. Oh I know, it must be the fact that Natasha Henstridge isn't naked in every second scene she is in. While that may seem like a really sexist comment, (which it probably is) nobody will deny that that little fact was part of the ingredients that made the first film so successful. So when the lovely Natasha declined to do as much nudity in the second movie as she did in the first, (don't worry guys, she still takes her clothes off in one scene) the producers must have thought that the lack of skin would hurt the movie. So we now have no fewer than three additional women with nude scenes in Species II. Now don't get me wrong boys and girls, I love to see beautiful naked women running around on the screen, but this was just too obvious. They might have well just put a disclaimer at the first of the film -- Since Natasha only gets naked once, we have included a whole bunch of other naked women to make up for Natasha's excessive clothing. Species II has a simple enough premise. A manned mission to Mars comes into contact with some alien DNA that decides to hitch a ride with the astronauts back to Earth. It infects the mission commander, Patrick Ross, (Justin Lazard) who, much like the alien Sil from Species, finds himself compelled to mate with as many women as he can to start a race of aliens. When dead bodies start turning up, the army goes to Press Lenox, (Michael Madsen) one of the only surviving members of the team that destroyed the alien in the first Species. Meanwhile, back at a government lab, Dr. Laura Baker, (Marg Helgenberger) the other survivor of Species, has gone to work for the government and cloned a copy of Sil, the alien from the first movie. This new clone is named Eve and is again played by Natasha Henstridge. Eve has been raised a little differently from Sil. Having learned from past mistakes, the scientists have made some genetic changes which make Eve more docile than her predecessor and try to restrain her naturally overactive libido Anyway, in the hunt for this new alien, Eve is asked to help. It doesn't take a real stretch to figure out that an over sexed female alien and an over sexed male alien have only one thing on their minds. So when the two finally get together, watch out. Seem like a simple plot line? Well kids, it is. The producers of Species II didn't put a whole heck of a lot of thought into this one. Hey it's a nice touch that Natasha Henstridge gets to play a good alien in this film, just the opposite of her character in the first film. It's just too bad that little plot device was already used in Terminator 2, and with much better results. My guess is that when this film was being written, the writers thought that Natasha Henstridge would again be topless for most of the movie, and no one would care about little technicalities like a plot since they would be to busy drooling over her chest. Considering the writing, Species II isn't all bad. The acting is pretty good. I mean we aren't talking Oscar nominations here, but its average for a sci-fi action thriller. Natasha Henstridge continues to improve with each movie that she is in. Michael Madsen and Marg Helgenberger do their normally good jobs. Nice additions to the cast include Mykelti Williamson as one of the astronauts from the infected Mars mission, as an added bit of comic relief. James Cromwell as a senator and father of the infected astronaut, and George Dzundza (whom some may recognize best from his work on the first season of Law & Order) as the army colonel in charge of cleaning up this latest batch of aliens. Not a bad film, just not nearly as good as it could have been. Definitely not for the squeamish, or those who don't approve of nude scenes thrown in for any reason other than that the producers like looking at naked women. Hey, it's a fun movie as long as you don't go expecting too much. 6/10 - Not bad, but not great.

¶ 4/12/1998 04:33:00 PM

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