Oh boy, this is the sort of film that makes you feel sorry for Hollywood screenwriters. I mean, everybody's got to pay bills, so you figure you'll take a job writing the direct-to-DVD sequel of Jessica Alba movie. How bad can it be? And then your producer says you've got to write a part for an MTV reality star, create an entire second set of characters because the leading lady won't take her top off, inject an Iraq/Afghanistan war theme into the movie because somebody wants to pretend they're relevant and to top it off, you've got to jerry rig an ending out of spit and bailing wire when the production runs out of money. No wonder writers drink
and so many of them commit suicide.
Sebastian and Dani (Chris Carmack and Laura Vandervoort) are a young, impossibly good looking pair of lovers who run a diving business in Hawaii. They've spent years looking for a famed shipwreck, with only a single doubloon to show for it. Then one day, they're hired by an international couple who say they're looking for the same ship wreck. Carlton and Azra (David Anders and Marsha Thomason) are wealthy and mysterious and turn out to have a hidden agenda. And then they have another agenda hidden under that which gets explained in a scene that is literally jaw droppingly stupid.
In the midst of all that, a few girls show their breasts, there's some nicely filmed underwater scenes and the movie rolls out a total of 8 montages to kill time. Yes, I said 8 montages. The rule in cinema is generally that more than 2 montages means your film sucks, but 8 takes it to a completely different level. 8 montages moves beyond considerations of good and bad and almost turns this motion picture into a force of nature, like an earthquake or Galactus.
Now, this is a talented enough cast, director Stephen Herek looks like he knows what he's doing and the dialog isn't atrocious, but this script is dragged to the bottom of the sea by way too many creative requirements. Here's the most obvious one. The folks who made Into The Blue 2: The Reef wanted there to be nudity, and naked breasts do show up at regular intervals. Usually the lead actress is a big part of that, but these guys gave that part to Laura Vandervoort, who refused to get nude. She's beautiful and a decent actress and all that, but not being willing to take your clothes off should be a deal breaker for this kind of role. So, writer Mitchell Kapner was tasked with inserting a secondary female character into the story to do the nudity that Vandervoort wouldn't, which also required the insertion of a secondary male character so she'd have someone to do a sex scene with.
To his credit, Kapner tries to give those secondary characters their own storyline but it detracts from both the two leads and the villainous couple they face off with. It's this obtrusive third wheel that boggles up the plot, takes away characterization time from the stars of the show and it's blazingly obvious that it's only in the film because Vandervoort wouldn't show her glorious ta-ta's.
The screenplay is burdened with too many other things like that, from two painfully bad scenes with Audrina Patridge from MTV's The Hills to a treasure hunting movie ludicrously morphing into an espionage flick with an anti-war message to an ending so cheaply pulled off it can't possibly have been the original idea. This production spent a good chunk of money shooting a lot of expensive underwater footage and then it's big, explosive conclusion is almost Ed Woodian in its staging and execution.
I haven't seen Into The Blue, though I'm fairly certain Jessica Alba doesn't take her clothes off in it. Maybe if she had, these producers would have felt compelled to get an actress who would do the same, which would probably have made Into The Blue 2: The Reef significantly better. She didn't, so they didn't, so it's not.
Sebastian and Dani (Chris Carmack and Laura Vandervoort) are a young, impossibly good looking pair of lovers who run a diving business in Hawaii. They've spent years looking for a famed shipwreck, with only a single doubloon to show for it. Then one day, they're hired by an international couple who say they're looking for the same ship wreck. Carlton and Azra (David Anders and Marsha Thomason) are wealthy and mysterious and turn out to have a hidden agenda. And then they have another agenda hidden under that which gets explained in a scene that is literally jaw droppingly stupid.
In the midst of all that, a few girls show their breasts, there's some nicely filmed underwater scenes and the movie rolls out a total of 8 montages to kill time. Yes, I said 8 montages. The rule in cinema is generally that more than 2 montages means your film sucks, but 8 takes it to a completely different level. 8 montages moves beyond considerations of good and bad and almost turns this motion picture into a force of nature, like an earthquake or Galactus.
Now, this is a talented enough cast, director Stephen Herek looks like he knows what he's doing and the dialog isn't atrocious, but this script is dragged to the bottom of the sea by way too many creative requirements. Here's the most obvious one. The folks who made Into The Blue 2: The Reef wanted there to be nudity, and naked breasts do show up at regular intervals. Usually the lead actress is a big part of that, but these guys gave that part to Laura Vandervoort, who refused to get nude. She's beautiful and a decent actress and all that, but not being willing to take your clothes off should be a deal breaker for this kind of role. So, writer Mitchell Kapner was tasked with inserting a secondary female character into the story to do the nudity that Vandervoort wouldn't, which also required the insertion of a secondary male character so she'd have someone to do a sex scene with.
To his credit, Kapner tries to give those secondary characters their own storyline but it detracts from both the two leads and the villainous couple they face off with. It's this obtrusive third wheel that boggles up the plot, takes away characterization time from the stars of the show and it's blazingly obvious that it's only in the film because Vandervoort wouldn't show her glorious ta-ta's.
The screenplay is burdened with too many other things like that, from two painfully bad scenes with Audrina Patridge from MTV's The Hills to a treasure hunting movie ludicrously morphing into an espionage flick with an anti-war message to an ending so cheaply pulled off it can't possibly have been the original idea. This production spent a good chunk of money shooting a lot of expensive underwater footage and then it's big, explosive conclusion is almost Ed Woodian in its staging and execution.
I haven't seen Into The Blue, though I'm fairly certain Jessica Alba doesn't take her clothes off in it. Maybe if she had, these producers would have felt compelled to get an actress who would do the same, which would probably have made Into The Blue 2: The Reef significantly better. She didn't, so they didn't, so it's not.