Lake Placid 2 is a light-weight version of the 1999 comedy/thriller, Lake Placid, about a couple of giant crocodiles who menace a lakeside community. Unlike the first film, Lake Placid 2 has a disappointing movie-of-the-week feel.

The second film is a Sci-Fi Original Movie which places it in a category with other, less-than-stellar Sci-Fi Channel flicks including “Mansquito,” “Riverworld” and “Species III.”

Justified or not, there is the assumption that a made-for-television movie will not be as good as a major studio release. Lake Placid 2 is no exception.

But that didn’t keep the actors and the director from trying like crazy to be funny and original.

Things start heating up right away when two dope-smoking scientists find out (literally) first hand that the stories of crocodiles in Lake Placid are true.

Unlike the original film which starred Bill Pullman and Bridget Fonda, Lake Placid 2 has no box office stars. You may not even recognize most of the actors who are hanging around the pretty little lakeside town this time around.

An exception is former Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider who plays amiable law-enforcement officer Sheriff Riley. But something about Schneider’s Riley is disconcerting. Watching Riley policing Lake Placid is kind of like seeing Bo Duke running around Hazzard County in some of Sheriff Roscoe’s old duds. It just seems wrong.

Riley is actually a pretty good guy who looks out for his son, likes a good dart game down at the station and takes reports of unexplained deaths seriously enough to jump into an inflatable (non-puncture resistant) boat and head out on the lake.

Oddly, most of the residents seem oblivious to the lake’s grisly past as the site of giant crocodile attacks several years earlier.

Riley’s angst-filled son, Scott, is up from Boston to spend the summer “in the sticks.” He pouts and complains a bit at first and then becomes smitten after spying a cute local girl and her German shepherd cavorting on the beach.

Before long, Scott and the neighbor girl are close friends and partners in croc fighting.

Like most horror movies, Lake Placid 2 has the inevitable body shots of topless young women, instances of stupid, clueless heroism (Wildlife conservationist Emily dives in to see what’s in the lake and comes up with a human head) and what’ll-we-do-next-moments when the characters are at odds with one another. No one ever seems to know or do what’s good for them.

Mrs. Bickerman is back, sort of. Viewers learn that Betty White’s tart-tongued character, Delores Bickerman has met with an unfortunate croc-related accident. But she’s left her equally-ornery sister, Sadie behind. Sadie, it seems, also shares her sister’s strange proclivity for nurturing crocodiles.

But viewers will not object when Sadie feeds the crocs a nosey reporter and tries to lure other visitors to the edge of her pier at mealtime.

Some of the character’s motivations are harder to swallow.

Idealist Emily is so bent on saving the prehistoric creatures that she gathers their eggs and brings them with her even after watching one of the crocodiles devour a deputy and seeing their handiwork in the morgue. In one of the movie’s final scenes, she cradles the chirping eggs in her shirt as she and the sheriff head for an animal sanctuary.

That kind of single-minded fanaticism is hard to understand.

The computer-generated crocodiles don’t seem real as they chase, dismember and ingest their victims, but who cares? They didn’t look real the first time around.

Sometimes it’s just fun to watch people in trouble.

Lake Placid was a surprisingly funny film with characters whose conflicts, silly, petty banter and emotional pain were sometimes engaging.

I really sympathized with Bridget Fonda when she found out her supervisor and boyfriend was sending her to Lake Placid so he could carry on a relationship with a sexy colleague whom Fonda had considered a friend. I was glad when she finally caught the eye of handsome Bill Pullman.

The second installment in the series is somewhat like peering at a reflection in water: it resembles the real thing but lacks the depth and color of its predecessor.

Cast: John Schneider, Cloris Leachman, Sam McMurray, Sarah Lafleur, Chad Collins, Alicia Ziegler and Joe Holt

Lake Placid 2 had me yawning and yearning for the original.



* out of *****

Synopsis: (Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Home Enertainment) Prepare for gory, gruesome action as four 30-foot, bloodthirsty, prehistoric crocodiles terrorize residents of a remote lakefront town in the sequel Lake Placid 2, debuting on DVD Tuesday, Jan. 29, from Fox Home Entertainment.

In an all out battle between man and beast, a local sheriff teams up with a wildlife agent and a big game hunter to kill four bloodthirsty offspring from the first fearsome creatures of the original campy-horror film. John Schneider, Sam McMurray and Sarah Lafleur star as the trio on a mission to save the town from the gigantic reptiles.

The film also features Academy Award? winner Cloris Leachman as a croc-lover bent on saving the creatures.

Years after two 30 foot prehistoric crocodiles are captured and killed in Maine, the local sheriff teams up with an EPA agent, a female Fish and Wildlife agent and a big game hunter, to kill four blood-thirsty offspring of the original killer crocs.

Cold-blooded terror awaits just below the surface of this fast-paced and funny action thriller that delivers twice the jolts, scares and bite of the original! Suspecting that another giant croc has begun to wreak havoc on the populace,

Lake Placid’s easygoing Sheriff, James Riley (Schneider) and a beautiful Fish and Wildlife agent Emma Warner (LaFleur), must form an uneasy alliance with a cocky big-game hunter (McMurray) and his guide (Joe Holt) to capture the beast. Meanwhile Riley’s rebellious young son Scott (Chad Collins) sets out on a lake-side camping trip with the locals including a hottie named Kerrie (Alicia Ziegler) and finds he has to fight for his life or become the crocodile’s next meal.

But only crazy, croc-loving Sadie Bickerman (Leachman) knows that these predators have multiplied and are determined to consume the whole town — one bite at a time!

Special Features

• Sex, Guns, and Croc-n-Roll

• Surviving A Crocodile Attack

• Lake Placid 2: The "Gnawed Up" Version