One need only reference Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, Addams Family Values, or The Two Jakes to express the idea that sequels don’t always measure up to the original. Sometimes, the quality is so poor that enjoyment of the original movie is retroactively diminished. Fortunately, Hannibal is not this kind of movie. It is so awful, so exploitative, so obviously made to cash in on the commercial, critical, and Oscar-related success of The Silence of the Lambs, that there is not even a family resemblance between the two movies.

Agent Clarice Starling, here played by Julianne Moore doing her best Jodie Foster imitation (which is, unfortunately, not very good), is, ten years after her triumphant capture of Buffalo Bill, in hot water as the result of a drug bust gone horribly wrong and…a conspiracy that involves the entire FBI arrayed against her? Because she wouldn’t sleep with Ray Liotta? Her position as whipping girl for the FBI assigns her a status the original Clarice never had: victim. In the meantime, Hannibal Lecter has been hanging out in Florence all this time, giving academic lectures and generally being quite conspicuous, but making sure to wipe his fingerprints from wineglasses and wear gloves when handing a crate of his predecessor’s personal effects (as in, his predecessor, who has mysteriously disappeared without a trace–nobody in the film seems to be concerned in the least over whether Hannibal might have killed and eaten him) to an Italian police inspector. Also In the meantime, millionaire Mason Verger, the only of Lecter’s victims ever to survive, and a pedophile to boot, pulls some strings to get Agent Starling assigned to the Lecter case. As soon as Lecter enters the country, apparently, he’ll fall victim to Verger’s vengeful trap, which involves hogs hungry for human flesh. (On a related note, I find the new trope of man-eating swine a disturbing cinematic trend, not to mention too repulsive to watch.)

Sir Anthony Hopkins plays up the peculiar charm of Hannibal Lecter we all know and love from Silence, but everyone else seems to be acting in their own movies. Gary Oldman, who must be trying to win a bet on whether he can make himself less attractive with each successive movie, gasps his way through several layers of grotesque movie makeup. No wonder he didn’t want to be credited. The reserve of Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling comes off as emptiness in Julianne Moore–nothing underneath her dutiful exterior, she’s a cardboard cutout to the end. As the Italian police inspector, Giancarlo Giannini seems to think he’s actually in a quality film, at least until he gets gruesomely dispatched by our hero.

Is this movie supposed to be a meditation on evil? Are Agent Starling and Hannibal Lecter the Maria and Tony of our generation? "Guts in or out?" seems to be the question Hannibal is most interested in asking, and the answer is definitely "out." Besides the long shot of intestines dangling in the breeze, the audience is also treated to shots of the aforementioned man-hungry hogs, a culinary lobotomy, and a man cutting off his own face. The camera lingers so lovingly on the mutilated scar tissue that it feels like an act of aggression against the viewer. By contrast, the emasculation of a pickpocket is done almost tastefully.

The real problem is not so much the constant, stomach-turning gore as much as the way the script treats it. Guess what? Despite the beautiful cinematography, this is not an artistically inclined movie. This is a movie that wants to show you somebody else’s insides. The script is opposed to what everyone else related to Hannibal wants to do: produce something of quality. How many sly references must Hannibal Lecter be forced to make to cannibalism? How many holes in the plot and loose ends must we be forced to endure? How many sequels must trade on the quality of their originals to get people into the theater? Apparently, quite a few.