FLOP REFLECTS SHIFT IN BASIC VALUES.

Byline: Chris Weinkopf

When the first "Basic Instinct" came out in 1992, I perfectly fit the target-audience profile - 18 years old, male, immature and sex-obsessed. Naturally, my friends and I went to go see it. Fourteen years later, I have no interest in catching the sequel. Nor, if ticket sales are any indication, does anyone else.

Despite offering the same salacious ingredients as the original, "Basic Instinct 2" has been a box-office disaster. Opening weekend grossed just $3.2 million, about one-fifth of what the original made back in 1992. This, even though star Sharon Stone spent the last several months promoting the movie by telling all who would listen that, yes, she would be taking off her clothes, yet again.

Paul Verhoeven, director of the first "Basic Instinct," chalks up the utter failure of the sequel to - what else? - the puritanical repression of the Bush Administration. "Anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States," Verhoeven told Reuters. "Look at the people at the top (of the government). We are living under a government that is constantly hammering out Christian values. And Christianity and sex have never been good friends."

Get past Verhoeven's reflexive Bush-bashing and Christianity-loathing, and there's a kernel of truth to what he's saying. No, "BI2" hasn't been "banned," at least not by anyone but discriminating viewers, but recent political trends do follow long-forming cultural ones. It was "values voters," after all, who helped elect George W. Bush to office. And while values voters have no aversion to sex - they're having more babies than anyone - they tend to be unfriendly to the shallow, sleazy kind that once made "Basic Instinct" a hit.

But this isn't simply a matter of red America versus blue. "Basic Instinct 2" has failed everywhere. The greater reality is that the "erotic thriller" has simply ceased to be all that thrilling. What was once edgy, risque, even bold, long ago became banal. Moreover, because cinematic raunch usually exists to conceal a vapid plot or inane dialogue, once the shock value wore off, such films had little left to offer.

The sex on display in Hollywood's racier movies is the kind most celebrated by the sexual revolution, the kind without consequence, meaning or commitment. In other words, sex without love - and loveless sex, like loveless people, quickly grows tiresome.

Take "Basic Instinct." In the original movie and, the reviews report, in the sequel, Stone's character, Catherine Tramell, is a loveless seductress/serial killer. Tramell is so loveless, in fact, that she happily uses her romantic partners - men and women - as tools for both her sexual gratification and her murderous desires. Kill people or bed them, it doesn't make much difference, as she has no real concern for them anyway.

Yet this pathology isn't Tramell's alone. The film sets out to make her depravity attractive - murderous lust is sexy! - while never asking us to think of, let alone mourn, her victims. The appeal is in letting the viewer live vicariously through Tramell, to partake in the sort of exploitation from which our inhibitions otherwise restrain us. We're invited to join in the destructive narcissism, if only for two hours.

The problem with destructive narcissism, though, is that after a while, it leaves all but the most hardened viewers feeling sickened or ashamed. Even at 18, it was hard not to leave "Basic Instinct" feeling icky.

No wonder, then, that audiences have cooled off to these smutty flicks. Besides, if you want vulgar, dehumanizing sex, there's no reason to seek it in the movie theater any more. The Internet has it in spades.

But mass-market movies - or at least the ones that succeed - are an approximate measure of what animates our society overall, what constitutes our shared values and collective attitudes. It's noteworthy, then, that not only is "BI2" a flop, but of the 10 domestically top-grossing films of last year, only one was R-rated ("Wedding Crashers"). The list of movies that made the big money - which includes titles like "Star Wars," "Harry Potter," "King Kong," "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "Madagascar" - strongly suggest that what audiences really want from Hollywood is more wholesome productions.

All of which seems to reflect a healthy, if small, cultural shift in our attitudes toward both sex and cinema. Apparently I'm not the only one who's grown up since 1992.

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) David Morrissey and Sharon Stone in ``Basic Instinct 2.''

(2 -- color) Sharon Stone in ``Basic Instinct 2.''