Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby

* * (out of 4)

A bulimic blonde trailer trash with a chip on her shoulder, White Girl (Natasha Lyonne,) escapes from a women's prison with the hyperactive, perpetually jumpy, cold blooded serial killer with a girlish grin, Cyclona (Maria Celedonio.) Together, they make like Butch and Sundance or a lesbian Bonnie and Clyde en route to Tiajuana by car, train and foot, sniffing glue and killing off potential rapists and little old couples as they go. Of course, this detestable duo falls in love and learn how to cope with life along the way - well, learn as much as two ignorant killers are capable of learning on the road.

A sequel in name only to writer/director Matthew Bright's 1996 Freeway, we follows the same modern Samuel Fuller sensibility in this adaptation of a Brothers Grimm faerie tale. The original had Reese Witherspoon as a Little Red Riding Hood escaping her brutal family along the freeway, picked up by a big bad wolf in the form of Kiefer Sutherland's nebbishy psycho killer. It was a wild ride, tackling numerous genre pics (the hood film, the serial killer film, the girls in prison film, the courtroom drama, and even 70's TV shows with the freeze frame final image) bringing to them a taste for raw sleaze, wall to wall entertainment, sex and violence, and a dab of Roger Corman.

Bright is less adventurous this time in his postmodern genre hopping, sticking to the girl's prison film for the first forty five minutes, then becoming a traditional road movie until the final section involving the wicked witch of the story, Sister Gomez (Vincent Gallo,) a vicious pervert and cannibalistic Mexican transvestite nun - ho ho! This section comes out of left field and is, I suppose, inspired by nasty "sleazy Mexican" stereotypes from 50's and 60's cinema.

It also doesn't stretch the fresh angle on faerie tales too much, unlike the first film which delighted in its retelling of Red Riding Hood from the opening credits on. This time, he's taking on Hansel and Gretel, and the few fun touches include the trail of cocaine the girls leave in the woods to find their way back to their safe haven and the diabolical cooking habits of Sister Gomez, including her sweet cakes to get "zee demon" out of the girls' bodies. Freak.

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