Absurd? Asinine? No, ridiculouposterous!

XXX: State of the Union; 1:41; PG-13, for intense action violence, and some language; Grade: C-

I’d like to call the new XXX an absurd, over-the-top, in-your-face action movie, but that would be an understatement. Outrageous, outlandish, asinine—I’m searching for the best word here, but none of them are strong enough, so I’ll just make up my own. XXX: State of the Union is ridiculouposterous! That being said, I still had a little fun watching it, so I guess as far as stupid action movies are concerned, this one’s not too bad. It IS pretty stupid, though.

In XXX 2, Vin Diesel’s character, Xander Cage, is dead, so Sam Jackson turns to former Navy SEAL Darius Jones (Ice Cube) to be the next deep-cover NSA agent. But first, he has to break him out of a high-security jail, the ease with which he does so is the first of many ridiculousposterousities. Once freed from his cell, Darius enlists the help of Xzibit to pimp his ride, and foil an attempted assassination on the president of the United States.

Problem #1 – Ice Cube is no Vin Diesel. Reportedly, Revolution Studios was primed to offer Diesel the big bucks to come back for the sequel to the first XXX, but he turned it down because he didn’t want to make too many sequels. While Diesel has a suave 007-type charm to complement his super-macho tough guy demeanor, Cube pulls out his gangsta rapper face, to show us exactly one emotion in XXX 2—angry. That’s really a shame, because Cube proved, in the Barbershop movies, that he actually possesses a little more range than that.

Furthermore, I actually thought the first XXX was pretty cool, with its slant toward extreme sports. The avalanche scene, in particular, I think is one of the better action sequences in recent memory. With Diesel’s character killed off, the whole thing with the skydiving, snowboarding and whatnot is out the window. And what is it replaced with, in XXX 2? More explosions.

Every couple minutes or so, Darius takes a break from snarling at the camera to blow something up. Everything explodes in State of the Union. Everything. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that XXX 2 has more explosions per minute than any other movie this year, perhaps even the decade.

I don’t mind explosions, though. Actually, I think there’s a Beavis inside each one of us, crying out for “fire” and mass destruction. Can anyone honestly say that they never built a sandcastle as a child, only to stomp it to smithereens a la Godzilla? I can’t. It’s that primal blow-stuff-up craving that makes movies like XXX 2 okay. We can’t blow stuff up in real life, but we can watch other people do it in the movies.

Here’s what’s really wrong with XXX 2, though. An action movie, no matter how ridiculouposterous it might be, can be a worthy diversion, but it can’t stand up on explosions alone. A movie like this needs humor, and unfortunately, the only times I found myself laughing were at moments that aren’t intended to be funny (like when Darius jumps his boat from a river onto a bridge 50 feet in the air).

Okay, so the sequel isn’t as good as the original. No big surprise there. Nevertheless, it does deliver some pretty cool action, every now and then, so I guess if that’s all you’re looking for, you won’t feel like your price of admission is money wasted.

The target audience of teenage boys should at least get minimal enjoyment from XXX 2, since they tend to take pleasure in pyrotechnics, fast cars, and big-boobed women (all of which are plentiful in this movie). Personally, I had some fun watching it, not so much because of the action, but because of the aforementioned unintentionally funny moments, when XXX: State of the Union crosses the lines of absurdity, fashioning itself into a cheesy B-movie. Sometimes, a movie is so bad that it’s actually good.