hyped garbage

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I was really disappointed with the boring start to the movie to the boring end of it too. I was expecting a better cast too, like the original cast from the first movie. Despite loving Drew Barrymore's acting in the first FireStarrer I thought I would give this a shot. The storyline made NO sense, going back to the first movie and not exactly being accurate left me very annoyed as it could have been done heaps better. The special effects are pitiful, cheap and nasty just like the acting. 2/10- one of the worst "Stephen King inspired" movies. He would be rolling in his grave if he knew his novel would be such a terrible film.

Firestarter 2 (2002) *** (out of 4) Charlie (Marguerite Moreau) is now all grown up and in hiding when an agent (Danny Nucci) finally tracks her down. The agents quickly connects with the troubled girl and gets her to agree to go back to the lab with him but Dr. (Malcolm McDowell) is still evil and wanting to use her for her power. I was rather nervous walking into this nearly three hour sequel especially since I didn't care too much for the first film but I was pleasantly surprised at how much this kept me caught up in the story. However, let's get it straight that this here is in no way, shape or form a sequel. Events from the first movie are shown here but they're being done by different actors and even different things happen here. Many major plot points from the first film are changed and altered here so this is basically just a remake but with much more detail. I thought the story itself was very well done here and it's certainly explained much better than in the first film. The thoughts behind the experiment are better detailed and I thought the film also did a very good job at showing the bad side of being Charlie and on the run her entire life. I really thought the personal drama between the characters were believable and it certainly helped keep you invested in such a long movie. The performances were also extremely good with Moreau doing a nice job in the main role. She was very believable in the part and certainly made you care about what happened to her. McDowell plays crazy without a problem and makes for a great villain and we've also got Dennis Hopper playing a psychic and we all know that he always adds some good entertainment value. Nucci was also good and managed to have some nice chemistry with Moreau. The film still has some pretty big flaws including the horrid CGI effects and especially all of the stuff dealing with fire. The ending is also rather weak and should have been done in a much better way. With that said, for the most part this is a good little film and certainly much better than the original. Just don't go into it expecting a sequel.

Originally airing as a Sci-Fi Channel original movie/mini-series, "Firestarter 2: Rekindled" is the only sequel to "Firestarter," a little horror movie from 1984 that was based on a Stephen King novel and starred a very young Drew Barrymore as the title character. Arriving 18 years later and stretched out to nearly three hours, "Rekindled," re-writes history, re-making the previous film through flashbacks as it goes along. To say it takes liberties with its source material would be an understatement.Since this is 2002, and Drew Barrymore has better things to do, the role of Charlie McGee has been re-casted with Marguerite Moreau, who will certainly ring a bell to fans of "The Mighty Ducks." Malcolm McDowell of "A Clockwork Orange" fame steps into the shoes of George C. Scott and looks even less Native American as John Rainbird, the manipulative megalomaniacal psychopath who exploited Charlie in the past and who, like Sam Loomis in "Halloween," can't shake his past obsessions, no matter what cost it comes at. Aside from spending the first half catching you up in case you didn't see the first movie (and offending you by assuming you are stupid if you have), "Rekindled" finds there to be more survivors of the "Lot 6" program, which used human beings to test mind-expanding drugs, which had an adverse effect on their psychological well-being. It's the job of Vincent Sforza (Danny Nucci) to track these people down so they can receive the rewards of a class action lawsuit (a.k.a. a brutal and swift cover-up death) and once he realizes something is awry, helps Charlie once again escape the clutches of Rainbird and his cronies, as well as fending off a group of genetically engineered "Super-Kids," who serve merely as plot devices and filler. Also, there's Dennis Hopper as a tortured psychic who was obviously only written into the script so that his name could appear in the credits, possibly lending credibility to this sequel.All these little sub-plots do well enough to pad out the length of the "film," but for the most part, it follows the same "fox on the run" formula of the first. The flashbacks which serve to remake the first movie tend to bog things down and, in the end, are unnecessary and unfortunate. The fact of the matter is, for this movie to exist, nothing in the first movie needed to be re-written. The flashbacks were unnecessary because not only did they not add to the narrative at hand, but also because anyone watching a TV-movie/sequel should have at least seen the first movie or read the book. Thankfully, though, for a TV-movie, it's actually quite entertaining, despite some cheesy moments and obvious padding. There's a good hour that probably could have been cut from the flick, and it would have been all the better for it. On the upside, Marguerite Moreau is a nice replacement for Barrymore, even if she looks and acts nothing like her. Malcolm McDowell hams it up a bit, but at least gets into his role enough so that you believe he is truly insane. Dennis Hopper shows up, reads his lines and drives off, but his presence is still noteworthy. For a fan of the original "Firestarter" who doesn't mind seeing it violated just a bit, "Firestarter 2: Rekindled" serves as a nice way to kill a rainy afternoon. View it with a grain of salt, and you will find that despite its limitations and short-comings, it's actually not all that bad for a TV-movie. Truth be told, if they had billed the movie simply as "Firestarter: Rekindled," dropping the "2," the results would have been less offensive and it would be suitable as more of a remake than it is a sequel. Think of it as an overblown piece of fan-fiction on the small-screen, and it has its merits.

OK lets get one thing straight. The is a really huge stretch for the entertainment industry. It is one thing for a show to talk about or make reference to something that was made from a really good book but it is a completely different matter when the book is still in print and clearly not used.One of the first things that I have a serious problem with is the fact that John Rainbird is NOT nor has he every been a man of science. He is an man that kills for a living. Come on people am I the only one that caught that. He did not what to use Charlie for world domination, that was just stupid. The reason that Charlie had to die according to John was that she held a power that had to be taken to the other side with him when he killed her.Secondly there was the issue of the fact that EVERYONE who has seen the original movie will tell you that John Rainbird only had one eye. What did he grow a new on over year when he was being bent on taking over the world? We know this because from the book and from the narrative in the movie there is a mention that he was in Vietnam and a claymore took half of his face.Thirdly, the reason that Charlie was being sought after was because she was the product of the marriage of 2 Lot Six participants. The ONLY lot six participants that survived the testing. It was the dosage that her mother and father received that gave her the ability to start the fires in the first place. To take that and say that now we have a way of putting these gifts in to other children is so outrageous that it makes a joke of the entire production. It would have stayed truer to the story that someone, anyone from Washington DC rebuilt the project and it was discovered that she was still alive. Just that alone is enough material to have a completely true to the story remake of fire starter on a television series.Finally and this where the biggest heartache lies, Charlie never had any physical reaction to her ability. When she started fires she was only fighting the complex that her parents instilled in her about starting the fires. Other then that the whole idea that she needed to get away or get something in her to control what she had was just a crock.On a 1 to 10 scale I give this movie a waste of time.