The first and hopefully last attempt by cinematographer-turned-director Jan de Bont to craft the story as well as the visuals for one of his big-budget action adventures, this follow-up is a catastrophe of dumb ideas, silly characters, and bad dialogue. The fatuousness begins with the basic concept of a cruise ship "speeding" (get it?) out of control toward destruction in a Caribbean port town. The resulting crash is a slick, special effects-laden thrill, but the problem is that it takes a long, long time to get there, during which one's sense of the ship's speed across open water is rather limited. A "you had to be there" feeling is not exactly conducive to exciting storytelling and this sequel is replete with such moments. The film works best, frankly, when it's so bad it's good, which means the teeth-gnashing, over-the-top performance by Willem Dafoe is pretty much the only reason to watch. He's a terrific, hilarious, high-camp villain straight out of the 1966-1968 Batman TV series, a copper-poisoned techno-villain who needs leeches to suck the deadly toxin from his bloodstream and somehow manages to hijack a sea vessel with his laptop computer, despite being clearly nuts. Of course, Dafoe's character is meant to be taken seriously, which is the major problem with Speed 2: Cruise Control. While it's occasionally entertaining in its extreme asininity, the film wants to be taken seriously, and that's just not going to happen.