AMERICAN PSYCHO 2: ALL AMERICAN GIRL (2002) Does it suck? One guess. Even though its subject more or less gets away at the end, American Psycho hardly needed a sequel. And I guess it wasn't going to get one either, but this movie - filmed under the title All American Girl - re-invented itself during production as a sort-of followup and thus, here we have it. American Psycho 2. It's as bad as it sounds. Mia Kunis plays Rachael Newman, who uses murder and more murder in order to secure her place at a prestigious university. She was inspired by the original American Psycho, Patrick Bateman, who once kidnapped her and her babysitter, and in an oversight unworthy of him (and doing away with the first movie's fantasy/reality ambiguity), allowed the kid to free herself, kill him, and leave the scene in a manner that raised no suspicion from anyone (she voices over that she was "never tied to the scene"...what, the cops never looked into whether the babysitter was on the clock?). Kunis also plays a soulless harpy on That 70's Show, so she's not really stretching herself here. Rachael aspires to study under the tutelage of an FBI legend played by William Shatner (bwaaaa, hahahaha!) who establishes his brilliance by pointing out the well-documented Gein-Bates-Leatherface connection to easily-impressed coeds. So she knocks off whoever she has to in order to get the job, even making some enemies (like when she sees a shrink, who's friends with Shatner) just for the sake of making more enemies for her to kill. Much of AP2:AAG seems like it's geared for a very, very young audience for this kind of thing (there's a character named "Elizabeth McGuire", there's lots of rocker-grrl stuff on the soundtrack, and the script is to shy to even use the word "condom" - repeated references are made to "any" and "them"). It's rated R, but there's almost nothing for gore or suspense, and I don't recall even seeing a sickle, despite there being one featured quite prominently on the cover. The score by Norman Orenstein is alternately whimsical (lame) and heavy-handedly silly (super-lame). There are some pretty girls (including Lindy Booth, who would go on to have a role in the Dawn Of The Dead remake, a movie I'm starting to suspect will become a new standard by which many horror movies will be judged for years), and...uh...that's really about it. I know I was bored watching this one, because there are doodles all over this page of my notebook. Movies like this, I'm sure, are partly why Laura Prepon has only been in, like, two. And Slackers was pathetic. Dammit. BACK TO THE A's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE