Fridae

When the first Tomb Raider movie was released in 2001, it was critically roasted for its inane plot which serves only to foreground Angelina Jolie as the video-vixen with Tomahawk cruise missiles for breasts trying her best to keep herself from toppling over while saving the world.

Marginally more exciting and more coherent than the original, the sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life unfortunately still unfolds like a travelogue cum fashion shoot interspersed with scenes from Discovery Channel featuring an African tribe, panicked ostriches and screeching baboons.

The movie begins well with an earthquake uncovering the long-lost Luna Temple of Alexander the Great off the island of Santorini, Greece. Enter ace archaeologist and adventurer Lara Croft on a jet ski wearing a soaking wet swimsuit with an Anaconda-sized ponytail flapping after her.

After changing into a molten silver diving suit which showcases the actress's temperature rising nipples, Lady Croft proceeds to find an ancient orb in the temple which actually holds the map to the legendary Pandora's Box.

Following an underwater battle, she loses the orb to Chinese gangsters led by Chen Lo (played by popular Hong Kong actor Simon Yam), and is press-ganged by MI6 to retrieve the orb before it falls into the hands of a Dr. Jonathan Reiss who intends to use it to find and then sell Pandora's Box to the highest bidder.

Played by Ciaran Hinds whose idea of menace is to squint his eyes and speak through clenched teeth, the former Nobel Prize winner turned bio-terrorist is about as intimidating as Ronald McDonald with a paunch.

Racing against time to save the world from an impending viral apocalypse, our lovely Lara drags along former lover and disgraced MI6 agent turned mercenary Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler) in a globe-trotting Amazing Race effort which takes her from Hong Kong to rural China and finally to Africa.

Armed with crisp Cambridge elocution, Angelina Jolie is picture perfect as Lara Croft with her always-in-place make-up, sculpted and perpetually raised eyebrows, and her signature made-for-blowing lips.

Whether she is cat-walking into a prison in a cool white fur ensemble, ridding sidesaddle in leather cloak and boots, engaging in foreplay in a Sarong Party Girl (a Singaporean term to describe local girls who only date Caucasian men) getup, tracking across the savannah in oh-so-tight safari attire or motor-crossing in a gold bomber jacket, Angelina Jolie is a fashionista's dream come true. (And this despite donning two appalling outfits which made her appear like an extra from an old kungfu movie and a Vietnamese refugee!)

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Unfortunately, despite the screen charisma of Angelina Jolie, The Cradle of Life, directed by Jan De Bont (Speed 1 and 2 and Twister), suffers from sub-par action sequences which includes repetitive parachuting stunts, bullet dodging, elementary gymnastics and even pole-vaulting. There is even an unintentionally hilarious scene where our dear Lady Croft defeats Chen Lo using a military police drill sequence last seen in Singapore's National Day Parade circa 1990s.

Yawn-inducing action sequences notwithstanding, the movie is also filled with logic-defying scenes involving our heroine doing a Flying Squirrel and jumping off a Hong Kong skyscraper before landing on a ship three miles away; punching a computer-generated shark on the nose before catching a ride on its dorsal fin to the surface; and losing all her vaunted martial arts prowess during the climatic face-off with arch nemesis Dr. Reiss.

To make matters worse, screenwriter Dean Georgaris appears to have perfected the art of inserting redundant dialogue here, there and everywhere. For instance, when Lara is nearing the site where Pandora's Box is located, she helpfully announces "We're getting closer!"; when a band of second-rate special effects monsters suddenly vanishes, another character astutely points out "They're gone!"; and when the camera pans to reveal an empty crate, the obviously not-in-his-right-mind Dr. Reiss informs us that "The orb isn't here" etc.

In the final analysis, not even the best efforts of Angelina Jolie can save Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life from being an uninspired Indiana Jones copy which like Pandora's Box, should never have been allowed to open - at the theatres that is.