 Vin Diesel is being pummeled by a number of critics for his performance in The Chronicles of Riddick, the sequel to Pitch Black. They're also hammering the movie. "Riddick-ulous," harrumphs Megan Lehmann in the New York Post. Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer calls it "an overblown hodgepodge of volcano-baked desertscapes, Egyptoid-gone-baroque architecture, and gladiator-geared storm troopers with goofy headpieces." Most critics agree that the sequel is a shadow of the original. Writes Manohla Dargis in the Los Angeles Times: "Weighted down with money, pretension and Diesel's tenuous importance ... the follow-up to Pitch Black inverts nearly everything that made the first film an effective-enough shocker." And Eleanor Ringel Gillespie in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution announces: "We have our first serious contender for Worst Movie of 2004." But Ty Burr in the Boston Globe observes: "Fans of muscular sci-fi and teenage boys of all ages will probably kick my rating up by at least a star, because, really, Chronicles of Riddick is a perfectly acceptable entry in the summer-behemoth genre." |
