UNDERWORLD  EVOLUTION   ;   A  Narada Film Review

 An early battle between the
 'wolf-bitten' and the 'bat-bitten'.
   
 Scott Speedman practices in front
 of a mirror, determined to make
 himself appear credibly frightening.
   
 Kate Beckinsale augments those
 pointed teeth of hers with some
 good old-fashioned 'firepower'.
Underworld Evolution - 2006     Len Wiseman - Director  and  David Coatsworth - Producer
         
   2.0  out of   5.0
   -  Just scraping by...
      Regurgitated unrepentantly, UNDERWORLD EVOLUTION is nothing more than Chapter II, being identical in every way to the original (Underworld, 2003).   We hoped they would have learned something about "casting" since then, but apparently not.   So a quick note to Director Len Wiseman:   --Here Len, is how it works, ; Bela Lugosi makes a good Dracula, that is to say, a good vampire.   Scott Speedman does not make a good vampire.   Scott Speedman makes a good companion to Scoobie Doo, or he makes a good Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter in a Superman flick.   Strike One, Len, or actually Strike Two, as this is your second identical blunder.
         At one stage in my downward spiral into film review, I thought Hollywood had an exclusive lock on stereotyping - I was wrong - Hong Kong, Bollywood and England are just as bad.   But why, as in UNDERWORLD, would Hollywood adopt an English stereotype?   Why is it at the end of every blood-spattered trail of horror we finally come to the "King" baddie, who is invariably an old, wrinkled, effete guy with an Oxford English accent?   I don't mean to imply this happens most of the time in these horror flicks, it happens all the time.   Is it supposedly a part of the human psyche that we secretly fear any senior citizen who speaks in an "educated" manner?   Strike Three, you're out, Len.
         But our main concern here is cross-species sex.   Realizing that this film would be indistinguishable from the original unless they interjected something different, Producers scheduled in a sex scene between Selene (Beckinsale) and Michael Corvin (Speedman), without considering the full impact of what they had created.   The offspring of this will be three quarters vampire and one quarter weir wolf, as Corvin is himself a cross-breed between weir wolf and vampire.   So what supernatural powers will their child be imbued with?   The Producers never thought of that, did they?   And what happens when this offspring reproduces?   We are going to have Underworld quadroons and octoroons of every description coursing through our sewers and subways and howling at the moon from the tops buildings.   The mish-mash of supernatural powers that will have to be attributed to these vamwolf licans and licanpires will have special effects people working overtime for the next thirty years!
     LEAST  Enduring Line or Phrase:  "...he's a hybrid...?"


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