Tomb Raider 2 - The Cradle of Pain

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Last night was a life changing experience.  I didn't go to see Tomb Raider 2 expecting to be changed, but I was.  I have a new perspective on life now.  Before I was a lazy, unkempt dork who just sat around surfing the Internet all day, but now I am an unkempt dork with a purpose.  It is my destiny, no my privilege, to harness the hatred and bitter rage within my mind into a beam of energy which will melt from the inside the brain of whomever directed that movie.

Needless to say I didn't enjoy Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life.Now, I know most of you have a voice in the back of your head saying Â"Pyro, how could you not enjoy a cinematic masterpiece like Tomb Raider?Â"; it's probably a very sarcastic voice and sounds like your mother.  However, unlike when your dog talks to you, your mother is right.  I went into this movie with low expectations, for sure, but they were all surpassed with Olympian feats of suckass.

Here's a little primer to help you follow the review a little better.  The Tomb Raider movie universe makes no sense unless you take into account the following social hierarchy, decribed below from lowest to highest.

4) Average Stereotype Guy - This is almost every character in the movie. Their entire existence revolves around fulfilling a certain stereotype to it's most boring and {ableist slur} apex.  Occasionally you get the over achiever who dabbles in more than one stereotype but they're few and far between.  All the Asian guys stare with their mouths agape when an enemy appears.  You almost expect one of them to scream Â"Look out, it's Godzirra!Â"  The African guys all have that Shaka Zulu accent and wear red robes.  The English are all snooty complete with the hair slicked back and finely pressed cheap suits.  This group can be somewhat forgiven since most of them get shot, or eaten, or just trip over a rock.

3) Somewhat Compotent Stereotype Guy - This is a much smaller group, still vastly inferior to Lara, that consists mainly of anyone who might get to say a few lines before being punched in the face by Lara.  Her love interest and the main villain fall into this group, whatever their names are - I can't remember their names because I don't think they had any, everyone was just Â"Lara CroftÂ" or some jackass.

2) Reality - The laws of Gravity, Mathematics, Physics and Psychology all fall into this category, anything that keeps the real world sane bows to ....

1)  Lara Â"f*ckingÂ" Croft - The top of the food chain and every other chain, probably at the top of some chains she just made up.  Anything Lara says is right and anything she does always works, no matter how completely idiotic it looks at the time.

  Here's an example:

Real World: Â"I am drowning in the ocean, I should try to swim to the top while holding my breath and await rescue.Â"

Lara's World: Â"I am drowning in the ocean, I'll cut myself cause I'm such a badass then I'll punch a shark in the face to show the world I am OMGSOHOT.  Then for kicks I'll ride a shark to the top because I was the shark rodeo champion 8th year in a row last year.  I will then wait for rescue even though I could just pull a giant space plane out of my ass and ride that.  The rescue bit is just for dramaÂ"

What gets me is that the other characters think whatever she says is a good idea!  Observe another bit of bizarro vision.

Generic Love Interest #857: Â"Let's go through the mountains to avoid detection and make it to Hong Kong safely.Â"

Real World: Â"Ok, that sounds like a sensible plan and will keep us safe so that we can do our job.Â"
Lara's World:  Ã‚"That's not fast enough, let's charter a military plane to fly over China which would normally start a war but they know it's me and I'd kick all their asses.  Then we can jump out of that plane into another tiny completely useless plane, which looks ridiculously expensive and high tech for no reason.  That's going to come in handy because we have to ram it into the ground and jump out in parachutes, which we could have done in the first place.  This will land us in a village where I have hidden a weapons cache that would make Stalin blush, from which I will take only two pistols.  Two and only two, any more and we might collapse in on ourself in a time-space paradox and end up in a universe where I am not completely f*cking insane.  We can ride dirt bikes on the Great Wall, because nobody ever looks at that old thing, and then ditch them on the side of the road halfway there for no reason.  This will lead us into Hong Kong safely.Â"

Generic Love Interest #857: Â"That was a great plan Lara, much better than my plan, you're the best and your tits look great, lass!  Excuse me now while I go get drunk and beat my wife with a sack of Irish potatoes.Â"

For those of you unfamiliar with the background of the story Lara explains it in one scene and it's never mentioned again, so it's easy to summarize it.  At the beginning of the movie Lara finds a museum built by Alexander the Great, where he kept valuable treasures.  One of the treasures is a map built by the Easter Bunny in the form of an egg, and it leads to the location of Pandora's box found by Confucious and Hitler while they were scouring the Earth for the Holy Grail.  When they found this box, it was filled with anti-life, because everything has to have balance, so life has anti-life, just like Kirk has Evil Kirk except not nearly as cool.  As they tried to take the box, Jesus showed up and kicked their asses while Julius Ceasar built the pyramids with Leprechaun slaves.  Some random bad guy wants the box so Lara has to find it first to stop him, erotically.  Okay so I made some of that up, it's not really that erotic.

Some of the best parts of the movie are the fight scenes; during one of them I went to get popcorn and it was really great.  Watching them sorta sucked though.  They were your standard gunplay kickfests except they weren't even very good at it.  The most annoying part was the slow motion. For example, after a frantic gunfight with multiple enemies Lara stops to take a breath.  It's then that the slow motion kicks in.  She takes something out of her backpack, sloooowwwlllyyy.  Love Interest Man walks toward her, so very very slowly - I would fall over at that speed.  Then the motion kicks back up to full speed as they start talking.  The special effects man must have major timing problems, I can imagine him in bed with his boyfriend shouting Â"Give it to me harder, cockranger!Â" about 30 minutes after they've done their homoerotic ballet.  Did I mention I hate anyone who made this movie?

In the end what really matters is the overall experience and how much fun you have while you watch the movie.  I'm here to tell you, the only thing that kept me from clawing my eyes out was the thought of getting on the Internet and writing this review to warn my fellow man.  Does that make me pathetic?  Possibly but this movie drove me there, or at least called a taxi.  Now I have even less dignity than before and I really didn't think that was possible.  Thanks, Tomb Raider 2, you taught me so much about myself.  It's like an afterschool special except I don't have nightmares about Gary Coleman telling me not to smoke.

Pyroman[FO]

Comments

So you didn't like it then?

Hey at least you didn't have to see Gigli.

Wow, Pyro... it was might brave of you to take a bullet for all of us! My god, you are GWJ.com Hero of the Month! By the way great review...

Dude, that was awesome.  I have tears in my eyes.  I had to call my fiance in here to read the bit about the shark because we have been wondering why the hell she was holding onto it during the previews.  You are a good man for seeing it and brave at that.

Before you guys sign me up for the purple cross, just remember I did it so that the guys I saw it with would go see Pirates of the Carribean. Still, I didn't expect it to be that bad.

I can't believe so many people went to go see this and are saying it sucked? Umm couldn't you already tell by the trailers and the god-awfulness of the first one. Granted Angelina Jolie is hot but look can only take you so far.

Quote "The special effects man must have major timing problems, I can imagine him in bed with his boyfriend shouting "Give it to me harder, cockranger!" "

Pyro, you're my f*cking hero. You've warned me off the movie and given me the gift of laughter at the same time. A fine review.

I guess it's a question of expectations... I loathed the first one, for reasons I don't understand I went to see the second, but I actually thought over all it was pretty good, at least compared to the first... damming with fain praise to be sure but still worth the matinée romp.

This is the only part of your review I didn't like.  Sorry to get all "liberal" on you, but this seemed like childish gay-bashing to me (however unintentional it may have been).

The rest of the review... immensely entertaining.  Thanks!

Sorry to get all "liberal" on you, but this seemed like childish gay-bashing to me (however unintentional it may have been).

Yeah it pretty much was, I was trying to get across the point that I hate everyone involved in this movie so much that I imagine even the tiniest inconsequential player in the most derogatory way possible. That takes care of the childish, and as far as the gay bashing goes you got me there, I was using it as an insult. I think it's funny