Everyone to the lifeboats! Women, children and paying moviegoers first.

Let the screenwriters and director go down with the ship I say. As the sun sets slowly in the West, Speed 2: Cruise Control sinks without a trace. The sequel to 1995's surprise drive-a-bus hit has barely caused a ripple at the box office. The threadbare script is mostly to blame. It consists almost entirely of simplistic, exclamation-point dialogue like, "We're gonna crash!" "We're going too fast!" "Do something!" "This isn't happening!" "We gotta get him outta here!" "There's not much time left!" and the ever useful, "Oh, s**t!"

There is, indeed, not much time left for characterization or interpersonal drama. Speed 2 gets off to a winky-dinky start with Sandra Bullock taking yet another disastrous driving test. Bullock's natural charm can go only so far, however, and you keep wanting to throw her a life preserver or a new script. As people drop dead around her, she must continue to whine about the ruination of her vacation. Bullock doesn't get a lot of help from blandish co-star Jason Patric, who plays her cop boyfriend. The nasty, computer-literate villain, who likes to attach blood-sucking leeches to his body, is certainly quirky. Willem Dafoe, who's pretty quirky himself, does what he can with the overriding vagaries of his character's mad-bomber motivation. The action bits are fairly frequent, but seem anemic when compared to what else is available to fans of such. Director Jan De Bont fared much better in 1996 with the flying cows and funnel clouds of Twister. Speed 2 ends up with some highly anticipated destruction as the cruise ship plows into the island of St. Martin. No matter, as I hear the whole thing was computer-generated anyway. This cruise is no carnival, and could have used a cameo by Kathie Lee. Would loved to have seen Dafoe slap her around a bit.

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