SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL boasts a reasonably clever title, as this 1997 sequel to the 1994 hit Speed sets its action plot not on a homely city bus coursing through the freeways of Los Angeles but aboard a luxurious cruise ship plying the seaways of the Caribbean. Catapulted into stardom by the runaway success of the first film, 32-year-old Sandra Bullock returned (buoyed by a healthy paycheck 18 times bigger than the originals) but co-star Keanu Reeves begged off, with an intense but less-known brooder, Jason Patric, taking the stud reins. Ramping up the nutty villain juice from Dennis Hopper’s bus-bombing madman is computer system hacker Willem Dafoe, taking revenge on the cruise line by setting the ship on a course to plow into an oil tanker. Directing was in the hands of Jan de Bont, who’d steered the first film and in the interim spun a smash with Twister.

This cruiser is a loser, wallowing in waves of hard-to-swallow situations, little chemistry between the leads, jokes that sink like anchors and a seasick cost of as much as $160,000,000, a launch five times what it took to hurtle Speed. Accepted accounting says that with prints, insurance and advertising the movie needed to make about $400,000,000 to break even. It keelhauled with a worldwide take of $164,500,000, docking 39th place for its year.

Even the massive-sized climactic stunt,which alone cost $25,000,000 to arrange, doesn’t salvage it by plowing the Seabourn Legend and two large-scale mockups into dozens of purpose-built structures in the city of Marigot on the island of Saint Martin. A whopper, but too little/too late to save the movie.

With Temuera Morrison, Brian McCardle, Mike Hagerty, Colleen Camp, Lois Chiles, Bo Svenson and Tim Conway. 121 minutes.