It’s robo-vamp

WITH “Basic Instinct 2,” the “Basic Instinct” franchise (who saw it coming?) enters its unhinged rococo phase. Set in a carefully curated London, abstracted and glamorized to a fare-thee-well, the new movie makes the original Verhoeven-Eszterhas collaboration look positively Hellenic. It’s just that fancy. Every surface is buffed, shiny, unbelievably expensive -- including Sharon Stone herself, who, should the situation arise, could double as her own limited edition action figure. One thing’s for sure, director Michael Caton-Jones has no interest in replicating what by contrast now looks like the verite grittiness of the first movie, in which the occasional character might have possessed a small apartment, bad clothes or a big butt. His London -- a glass-and-steel backdrop for the couture collections of the superrich -- makes the San Francisco of the first movie look positively poky.

Come to think of it, it makes the whole 1992 notion of superrich look poky, which actually is the most interesting thing about the movie. Were future generations to unearth both DVDs, they’d get a neat lesson in the direction the culture has moved within the interval. Remember when obscene wealth was presented as something to gawk and marvel at? In the first movie, someone tells Michael Douglas’ character that Stone’s character is worth $100 million and he whistles. It seems so long ago. These days, we’re supposed to witness exponential levels of affluence and take them in stride. We’re cool. In “B.I. 2,” psychiatrists and magazine writers kick back and learn Hungarian in multimillion-dollar digs, and nobody bats an eye. That’s because “Basic Instinct 2,” for all intents and purposes, is a luxury goods and services commercial aimed at the top 1 percentile, turbo-charged by generous injections of too-graphic-for-network-TV sex and violence. It’s so 2006.

If the old Catherine Tramell, footloose and panty-free crime novelist and ice-pick murderess, was a femme fatale with a soft spot, the new Catherine Tramell is a robo-vamp who has apparently spent the last decade and a half channeling “Sex and the City.” (Guess which character was her favorite.) We first encounter her as she charges through a tunnel in her Spyker Laviolette at 100 mph, a wasted soccer star gurgling and cooing in the passenger seat. This time, writers Leora Barish and Henry Bean waste no time introducing us to Stone’s privates, so it’s racy in every sense. The car goes off a bridge, and Catherine leaves the immobilized footballer to sink as she floats to the surface of the river like an exterminating angel.

Once again, the soccer star’s death mirrors the plot of one of Catherine’s novels, and soon she is being hauled in by the police for questioning. The detective, this time, is no leonine tough guy with a thing for rough sex. He’s a wry, cynical and possibly crooked Det. Roy Washburn, played by a comically mustachioed David Thewlis, who appears to be the only cast member in on the joke. But Catherine has written a book about a cop, as we know. This time, it’s the handsome evaluating shrink who catches her eye.

Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey) glides along the glossy surfaces of the movie with a lightly concerned look on his face, and, naturally, he has reason to worry. Like Catherine’s last subject, he has a troubled past he’s working hard to move beyond -- a patient he vouched for went on to kill his girlfriend. The strain resulted in a breakdown that ended the doctor’s marriage and jeopardized his career. When the production notes describe him as “physically drawn to Tramell and mentally intrigued by her,” they’re not kidding about the mental part.

In another sign of the times, the diabolical Catherine’s psychopathic behavior is reduced to a syndrome. She’s a risk addict, you see, and soon she’s going to ask Glass for professional help. (The professional impropriety of treating a patient he has evaluated in court is no match for her scissor-like legs.) When she abruptly terminates therapy, the hangdog stalking begins, as do the mind games -- no small feat in a mindless universe.

Skulking around her bat lair, and popping up in the most unexpected places modeling backless cat-suits and see-through shirts, Stone plays Catherine as an updated Cruella De Vil with a total disregard for smoking ordinances (anything for art, I guess), slinking and stalking her way through a Byzantine web of plots and couplings involving Glass, his mentor and mother-figure Dr. Milena Gardosh (Charlotte Rampling), his ex-wife Denise (Indira Varma), Washburn and the sleazy magazine writer Adam Towers (Hugh Dancy), who happens to be in possession of some damaging goods on either Washburn or Glass or both.

Watching Stone slink along with a diabolical smirk frozen on her face, trailing bodies and cliches, is not, however, without its pleasures. What we may very well be looking at here is another “Showgirls,” a drag camp-fest for the “Baby Jane” crowd, fabulous fodder for future cabaret acts, and a pleasure probably best enjoyed in a crowd -- preferably a vocal one. Dead serious and stone idiotic, the only basic instinct in evidence here is desperation.

*

‘Basic Instinct 2’

MPAA rating: R for strong sexuality, nudity, violence, language and some drug content

A Sony/MGM release. Director Michael Caton-Jones. Screenplay by Leora Barish & Henry Bean, based on characters created by Joe Eszterhas. Producers Mario F. Kassar, Andrew G. Vajna, Joel B. Michaels. Director of photography Gyula Pados. Editors John Scott, Istvan Kiraly. Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes.

In general release.