Yes!  Finally!  Here comes the movie you've been hoping for 10 
years that they wouldn't make!  But they did, because they knew you'd 
have no choice but to go see it.  I'm here to tell you now:  DON'T DO 
IT!!!!  If we stop encouraging them by paying to see crappy sequels, maybe 
they'll stop producing them.  So if you absolutely must go see this 
film, at least sneak into the theatre without paying.

But seriously, this film was everything I expected, and more.
Unfortunately, I expected it to suck, and the "more" part was the 
fact that it made me physically ill.  And just so you know:  "Hannibal" 
is NOT the story of  an ancient general who led his army across the 
Alps on elephants, so if you go in looking for a nice historical 
documentary, you're in for a bit of a rude awakening.....

(Pause as that historical reference races over the heads of the 95% of 
people out there whose high schools, when faced with funding 
shortages, decided to cut the history department rather than the 
football team....)

Normally, I'd take a paragraph or two now and outline the plot for 
you.  But it turns out the plot of this movie is so thin that it 
should only take a sentence or two, so here we go:  People keep 
trying to find Hannibal.  Hannibal kills people.  The end.

But if you simply must have more detail, here it is:   For the past 
10 years, Hannibal has been living in Florence, Italy.  He has been 
able to to maintain a low profile by wearing a disguise that consists 
solely of a hat and by giving lectures on Italian art to as many 
people as possible.  (You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.)
Meanwhile, the FBI's search for Hannibal has grown cold, mostly 
because they needed the extra agents to work all the crimes being 
committed by NFL players.  However, the only one of Hannibal's 
victims to survive (Well, HE survived, but his face really didn't) 
has somehow become very wealthy and has sworn to exact revenge by 
finding and capturing Hannibal and having trained farm animals eat 
his face off (Again, you think I'm kidding, but I'm not).  At the 
same time, our heroine Clarice Starling, who looks not at all like 
Jodie Foster, is apparently the only one left in the entire federal 
government who hasn't been corrupted or sold out.  So of course, she 
ends up getting "suspended" from her job for failing to report some 
"evidence" about the Hannibal case that had been planted in her 
office, even though she denies ever seeing it before.  If only the 
FBI had some sort of machine that could "detect" when a person was 
"lying", they might have been able to sort this out much faster.
Anyway, Clarice ends up meeting Hannibal for dinner at a nice restaurant, 
where she tells him she just wants to be "friends", so he kills her.  
Actually, that didn't happen, but it would have been way better than 
what really does happen.  I won't tell you what it is, except to 
say that if you do see it, you'll immediately wish you hadn't.

The acting in this movie isn't bad, but there's no way it can make 
up for the thin storyline or gratuitous gore.  Which brings me to my:

Official Rule of MovieGoing #17:  If Jodie Foster turns down millions 
of dollars to appear in a movie because she thinks the script sucks, 
it's probably going to be a bad movie....

As far as sequels go, "Hannibal" ranks right up there with "Jaws 2";
If all you cared about from the first one was seeing the shark eat 
people, then you'll be perfectly happy with the sequel.  If, however, 
you liked the first one more for its plot and character development, 
you'd be better off skipping the sequel and renting the original to 
watch again.


And now for a SPECIAL BONUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's Dr. Lecter's ARE YOU A SUPER-GENIUS QUIZ!!!!!!!

We know that Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a super-genius, even if he does 
get a bit flighty at times and eat people.  Here's an actual 
situation from "Hannibal" that will test your mind and see if you can 
think like that Super-Genius Dr Lecter:


You are handcuffed to someone else.  You need to become un-handcuffed 
to them as soon as possible.  There is no handcuff key readily 
available.  The only tools available to you are a meat cleaver and an 
electric saw.  You sort of like the other person, so you'd like to do 
this without harming them or yourself, if at all possible.

What is the best solution to this problem?

A.  Cut off the other person's hand with the meat cleaver.
B.  Cut off your own hand with the meat cleaver.
C.  Use the meat cleaver to slice through one of the 1/16-inch metal chain 
      links that hold the handcuffs together
D.  Use the electric saw to cut one of the 1/16-inch metal chain links
      that hold the handcuffs together.
E.  Take a small strip of duct tape, fold it into a handcuff key 
      shape, then use it to pick the lock just in time.

Scoring:
I don't want to give away anything from the movie, but let's just say 
that if you picked "C" or "D", you are NOT a super-genius.  If you 
picked "E", you're not a super-genius either, but you are MacGyver, 
which is almost as good.



:)
-john