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I may have a reputation as being something of a film snob, but I am not above the lighter pleasures cinema has to offer. Movies are not absolutely required to be complex, emotionally engaging entities. Sometimes a movie just wants to offer us a bit of fun, or a wild ride, and there's nothing wrong with that. Nevertheless. ***

'2 Fast 2 Furious' takes us to a heretofore virtually unexplored level of uselessness. Even the original was vastly superior to this, and that's saying something. '2 Fast 2 Furious' not only leaves aside any hope of a worthwhile plot (which is half-expected), and the slightest attempt at providing characterization, but it doesn't even come across with its action, and it has delusions of grandeur to boot. **

In our story, Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), the only returning character from the first movie, having been stripped of his badge, is making his living on the drag scene of Miami. He's picked up by police and 'forced' to work for them to bring down the comic-book villain de jour. He insists on being partnered with Roman Pearce (Tyrese), apparently because it says so in the script. Odd though it may seem, there's really nothing else to say about the plot. We have our excuse for watching lots of flash cars drive really fast, and from there out the plot spins around on the most ludicrous (ha) levels imaginable, and only for the sake of trying to make it to feature length. Everything that happens is utterly cliche mindlessness, and every new addition to the film is miraculously one more 'need for speed'. ***

All of this, is not necessarily the kiss of death. The first movie was not nearly so bad as this, despite the fact that in some sense it's the exact same movie all over again. In the first movie, however, there was at least some slight depth to the characters, or more precisely to where they fit the overall plot, and whatever else you might say about the first movie, at least it didn't think it was 'good'. ***

John Singleton, now sitting a long way from 'Boyz N the Hood', and not at all far from the hopelessly silly 'Baby Boy' (with not much in between frankly), is at best a very odd choice for the film. Though it's an exercise in futility to try and place blame for this film, there are two aspects of its failure that clearly fall squarely on his shoulders. One, there is no 'fast' in this movie. He is determined to give us close-ups of the characters in their cars, in order, I suppose, to lend some credibility to the whole thing, and in exchange what we never really see are any cars going fast. Oh, occasionally we do, but even when we do we never really get any sort of feel for the speed. We're constantly inside the car, which isn't too terrible in itself, but we're also constantly looking at the driver. Imagine watching a NASCAR race where the onboard camera points at the driver. Why on earth would we do that? I have no idea. ***

The second area in which Singleton harpoons the movie is in the ultra-bizarre dialogue, and (being to some degree the same problem) the amount of time spent attempting to relay depth, not to the characters, or the plot, but sort of just... in general. It's as if Singleton cannot fathom telling story without trying to deliver some grand importance to that which is being discussed. If we look at 'Boyz N the Hood', or even 'Rosewood', we see the sense in trying to deliver not only the depth and seriousness of the particular story, but the overall air of 'the bigger picture'. It's an obvious necessity. But, Singleton is on the same track here, somehow, as though there were some grand statement to be made about idiots racing their insanely tricked out cars that might be on some similar level to a movie that touches on racism or war. It's one thing to make a movie about illegal car racing while trying to be slightly more serious than say 'The Cannonbal Run', but when you start believing the whole business is actually interesting, that's something else altogether. ***

Even fans of the first movie will scratch their heads at this one. It delivers none of the few positives we found there, and has a whole host of new minuses. The first movie, bad as it was, at least had a clear market, was a bit of wild fun, and knew what it was. There's no telling who this one is for at all. For anyone with even the remotest of film sensibilities, this is not even '2 Fast 2 Furious' at all, it's just 'The Fast and the Furious' redux, and badly managed at that. Anyone who truly enjoyed the first movie is better served by watching it again, and anyone who might actually like this one itself is already at some real dragrace with their "I couldn't be more stupid" tricked out car, and doesn't need this movie anyway.

We get '2 Fast 2 Furious' in 2.35:1, but it's largely wasted. The transfer looks great, as you'd of course expect, because looking as flash as possible is where we've put most of our energy. The colors look very solid and rich, and they need to, because our cars and their 'glows' are what we want to see. Even a few scenes which have rather tricky lighting make it through the transfer very well, much to the DVDs credit. There are a few slight flaws here and there, but none that are really worth mentioning. ***

The sound is excellent here, though what is done with the sound does not entirely live up to expectations. This is a hard, 'in your face' soundtrack, just as you'd expect, and it comes through very well, delivering a lot of surround play. This is mostly a low-end soundtrack, bass, naturally, being key, but a full range is delivered. Generally, though the sound we actually get is delivered superbly in the DVD, it doesn't seem that a lot of attention was paid to it. -

'2 Fast 2 Furious' is certainly loaded with extras, and extras that seem uniquely suited to fans, though ultimately few of them are very interesting. *** The first thing you'll notice is the option to play the movie with the "Turbo Charged Prelude". This is a 6 minute feature which very quickly moves us from the end of the first movie to the beginning of this one. It runs like a music video of sorts, delivers very little information and certainly none that we actually need, and has a production value that borders on porn. ***

When we first arrive at the DVD menu (after watching some five minutes of trailers that cannot be skipped), we can choose from three versions of the menu, each corresponding to one of the main characters' cars. Each menu has one set of special features that can only be viewed through that menu. Strange, I know. From each character menu, we can see a 'Spotlight' on that character, a spotlight on their car, and a very short featurette on their time at driving school. ***

For example, from the "Brian's car" menu, we can see a two-minute spotlight on Paul Walker, a four-minute spotlight on his car, and three-minutes on his experience at driving school. Similar features exist for "Roman's car", and "Suki's car". They are all similarly interesting, which is to say they are not at all. The spotlight features are hopelessly trivial, and consist of almost nothing beyond each star stating how great it was to work on the film. The car features may interest some, but the only one of any worth is the one for Brian's car, which goes into the production aspects of shooting stunts, etc. The other two are brief showcases of the car that don't actually deliver much information. The driving school features do not show us much of anything apart from a very brief montage of clips. ***

"Inside 2 Fast 2 Furious" is a ten-minute, sub-standard Behind the Scenes effort which shows some slightly interesting footage, but is comprised mainly of director Singleton and the cast talking about how great it was working on the project. There is almost nothing I could imagine as actually being 'inside' of anything. We see clips of life off camera, but we don't really get anywhere. ***

There are several deleted scenes, but they are oddly given to us on a reel. There is no option for selecting particular scenes, nor is their an option for having the director commentary on or off. It's a one-shot deal, with Singleton introducing the scenes, and giving us 'insight' as to why the scenes were cut. This insight is invariably, though often explained in great detail, that the scene was cut for time. Nothing, apparently, was cut from this movie for any artistic reason, though what might that mean anyway? The scenes are not particularly interesting, and there is nothing really added to the movie by including them. *** There is also an outtake reel which is less of an actual outtake/blooper reel than we may have grown accustomed to, and somewhat more of a video archive of what it's like to work with the sort of people we're working with here. ***

"Tricking Out a Hot Sports Car" is a three-minute featurette which explores how the cars were tricked out, and how such cars are tricked out in general. This is the most cursory of glances at the idea, as you can guess from its length, and I can't imagine that anyone who is interested in the idea won't already know anything they find within. We look at painting, decals, tires, engine enhancements, stereos, and on and on, but almost everything we see just flies by as we move onto the next idea. ***

"Supercharged Stunts" is a five-minute featurette on how the stunts come into existence, and it's actually fairly interesting, but like everything else it doesn't go very far. Almost the entire time is devoted to the 'Boat Jump' sequence, and though we see various aspects of how this stunt was put together, it's obvious that this was very different to the special effects workings of the majority of the film. ***

"Making music with Ludacris" is a five-minute 'Behind the Scenes' style feature that is hard to describe. Part of it is a 'Making of' montage for the video of his song which is featured in the film, and the other part is a piecing together of clips of Ludacris talking with John Singleton and Paul Walker. There doesn't seem to be any guiding direction to the piece itself, and clips are strung together with little rhyme or reason. ***

"Animated Anecdotes" is a feature whereby the film can be viewed with bits of trivia popping up on the screen. This now more and more common DVD feature rises to new lows with this film, providing the viewer with the most bizarrely uninteresting facts about the stars, and the film's production. Still, some of them are rather humorous. ***

Detailed biographies are included for: Paul Walker, Tyrese, Eva Mendes, Cole Hauser, Ludacris, James Remar, Devon Aoki, Director John Singleton, Screenwriters Michael Brandt & Derek Haas, Gary Scott Thompson (story by), Producer Neal H. Moritz, Executive Producers Lee R. Mayes & Michael Fottrell. These biographies are not much to speak of, most of them consisting of two 'pages'. Then again, there isn't that much to say about most of these people, few of them having been around long. ***

Finally, there is a preview for the video game, "The Fast and the Furious" which frankly looks far more interesting than either movie.

The feature commentary by John Singleton is largely an entertaining, if not particularly informative, one. He talks far too much about what is going on in the story, as though someone might possibly be lost by the thing, but he also gives us a few technical notes. He sets up scenes and dialogue largely betraying his belief that somehow any of this is interesting, but for a single-person commentary he holds our interest about as well as is possible. ***

Given that he focuses so much on detailing plot and character for a movie that itself pays so little attention to either, I wonder if anyone can make it through the entire run with the commentary on, but it is not too trying a listen. He also manages not to come across as too serious, even while presenting ideas that are far more serious than they ought to be. Overall, a commentary that is about as interesting as one might be able to imagine, and certainly one that isn't boring.