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Movieguide's critic claims that the film's theme "is pagan" and condemns the film for portrayals of "lying, broken families, and misplaced values, interests, and attitudes." (Weren't all of these things also portrayed in About Schmidt, which Movieguide called "a Christian movie" and "the best film ever about made about being born-again"?)

Steven Isaac (Focus on the Family) writes, "Biker Boyz isn't about men and their bikes. It's about speed-addicted boys who refuse to grow up." Shaun Daugherty (Preview) says, "The unfortunate reality of Biker Boyz is poor acting, thin characters and a yawn-worthy plot."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) takes issue with its style: "The slick, stylized editing and glossy veneer reveal the movie industry's all-too-familiar pandering to an MTV-mentality rather than any effort to create intelligent entertainment, let alone compelling drama. Parents should be warned that many race sequences involve potentially dangerous stunts that kids on bikes or adolescents might want to imitate."

Mainstream reviewers classify the film as a wipe-out. Ebert says, "We need a stronger conflict … and better and more special effects." But Owen Gleiberman (Entertainment Weekly) prefers Biker Boyz to Fast and Furious: "Bythewood … knows how to shoot the works, but for all of the routine gear shifts … he gets the drama working, too, so that there's something at stake in each of the races."

Final Destination 2 (New Line Cinema) is earning derision and dismay from critics. Director David R. Ellis serves up more of the same in this sequel: gory deaths and a story that depends on outrageous superstitions.

A critic at Movieguide makes the rather alarming claim that "Final Destination 2 … contains an allegorical Christian worldview." But the reviewer goes on to admit that the film's harsher elements exist "simply to titillate the beastly bloodlust of its intended teenage and young adult audience."

Loren Eaton (Focus on the Family) writes that the film's ideas are far from Christian insight: "Whereas Signs posits an exhaustive providence that actively works all things … to good, Final Destination 2 features a malicious sovereignty that manipulates events so that its subjects will die in the most painful, terrifying and messy ways possible. Those extreme portrayals, plus rampant vulgarity, nudity, and spiritual counterfeits murder this movie."

Bob Nusser (Preview) says the flick "picks up where Final Destination left off, and the gruesome, graphic violence continues with impalings, decapitations and the like." Gerri Pare (Catholic News Service) is equally disgusted: "The characters in the story only exist to be mutilated into nonexistence. There is not so much suspense as there is a bored sense of dread: OK, who's next?"

Mainstream critics were similarly unimpressed, even those who occasionally enjoy a "good bad movie." Bruce Fetts (Entertainment Weekly) says, "The only pleasure to be derived from the resulting carnage comes from the Rube Goldbergesque chain reactions that precede each fatality. Sadly, everything else about the film is also deadly."

Next week: Gods and Generals, coming to a Bible study near you?

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February (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47