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 espite everything you may have heard, "Anatomy
2" is not a Teen Slasher film -- and in this case, that's a bad thing. Not
having seen the original, I can't tell if the whole point of the
"Anatomy" series is to be goofy and not to be taken seriously. The
biggest problem with this sequel is the screenplay by writer/director Stefan
Ruzowitzky, who also helmed the 2000 original. The sequel is a funny film, in
that its parts ludicrous and parts stupid, but all laughable.
Our medical thriller stars Barnaby Metschurat as Jo, a
studly intern from (from what I can gather) the boondocks of Germany. Jo arrives
in Berlin to work at its central hospital, where he enviously eyes a position
with Professor Muller-LaRousse (Herbert Knaup), a genius doing experiments that
are not altogether legal. But Larousse is very selective, and Jo is left on the
outside looking in. That is, until an unscheduled late-night surgery brings Jo
to Larousse's attention, and soon Jo is inducted into a secret organization
called "The Lodge", whose members have decided to do anything and
everything to achieve medical success, the rules be damned. Think Tom Cruise's
"The Firm", but with doctors.
As soon as Jo gets accepted into Larousse's super secret
project, all of his dreams come true. He becomes one of the cool doctors,
strolling through the hospital corridors with Larousse like a posse instead of
doctors; and he gets to have wild sex with Viktoria (Heike Makatsch), who
literally oozes skankiness from every pore. But all that quickly becomes moot,
because LaRousse turns out to be the ultimate Mad Scientist. And like all mad
scientists, he's imbued with greatness -- not because we see him doing anything
particularly great, but because the script keeps telling us how great he is.
"Anatomy 2" is one of those movies that is more
ordinary than it is bad. It's not bad in the sense that every minute of it is
excruciating pain. In fact, the film is actually quite good -- that is, if it
was only about Jo, a young studly hospital intern with dreams of greatness, who
struggles to find a cure for his crippled brother. Jo, who has to cope with
60-hour work weeks for little to no pay, but gets to flirt with the attractive
Filipino nurse played by Rosie Alvarez. Jo, who live in a building full of
charming Filipino nurses who takes care of their own because it's the right
thing to do, and how Jo helps them.
Instead, "Anatomy 2" is cartoonish and bad in the
sense that it keeps trying to convince us that what LaRousse and his gang of
adoring geeks are doing is anything other than comic book science. To wit: the
group is replacing their own body parts with what looks like plastic springs
that gives them super strength and speed. One intern/geek even puts the plastic
spring in his penis to give it that extra, er, lift. It's all very silly and not
grounded in any inch of reality. But apparently the script has no idea, so the
entire scenario is executed as if it makes absolute sense. And this is the plot
we have to deal with. No human drama. Just comic book science.
Which brings me to this point: "Anatomy 2" would
have been much better had it gone the Teen Slasher route. As it stands, there's
nothing here that would satisfy anyone; with the exception of the opening
sequence, which has a man mutilating himself with a scalpel. Too bad the rest of
the film can't hope to match that scene's rawness. The rest of the movie is one
big joke, made even more hilarious because Stefan Ruzowitzky apparently isn't in
on it. If the silly first hour wasn't bad enough, we get a Third Act that is
completely out of the realm of reason. (Yes, even taking into account the whole
plastic springs for bodyparts gag.) The movie loses what little brain cells it
had left for clichéd Teen Slasher-like sequences, but neglects to include all
the Teen Slasher fun.
Aside from the opening scene, which made me wince,
"Anatomy 2" is surprisingly short on the bodycount. The notion of
doctors experimenting on themselves, literally giving themselves horrendous
scars in the name of science and ego, may have seemed interesting in theory. The
execution, alas, is lacking. The movie is simply not scary, or even mildly
uncomfortable. Which is a shame because the movie has a very polished and slick
look. But it's all for naught, especially whenever Herbert Knaup shows up.
Knaup, incidentally, should be given the Worst Mad Scientist Impression In the
World Award. He's so cartoonishly evil that I kept expecting him to hit himself
in the head with a mallet and for his body to collapse into an accordion.
"Anatomy 2" is all camp, made even more priceless
because no one involved in the production seems to be "in" on the
joke. I can only hope the original was better. Speaking of which, Franka Potente
("Try Seventeen"),
the star of the original, shows up in an unnecessary cameo as a cop
investigating the Mad Scientist. She should have stayed away.
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