The Two Jakes, as most probably know already, is the Jack-Nicholson-directed and Robert-Towne-written sequel to Chinatown. The plot has a lot of similarities to its predecessor and continues the thread by asking what happened to Evelyn Mulwray's surviving daughter from Chinatown.
I was expecting the movie to be the typical inherently disastrous sequel, but I found myself enjoying the movie a lot. It's not the classic that Chinatown is, but still a very entertaining follow-up. I think I would have preferred a sequel that follows the character of JJ Gittes in a completely separate case from the Mulwray affair, something along the lines of The Color of Money in which we revisit Eddie Felson but without mention of the events of The Hustler. I think doing that would help differentiate the sequel rather than having it use the previous film as a crutch, and if the character is strong enough and interesting enough, then he is all of the linkage that is needed between the two films. In any case, I liked The Two Jakes.
One aspect where the film gets tripped up is the voiceover effect used. Voiceover is tough to get right in detective movies, and in The Two Jakes it feels weightless. The working script doesn't commit to using voiceover.
Another weakness was the flashbacks. They just seemed to beat it over the head too much. Like when Gittes first drives through the orange groves and then there is the flashback shot from a similar scene in Chinatown. The connection can be made more subtly, and should be rather obvious if you're familiar with the first film.
I was expecting the movie to be the typical inherently disastrous sequel, but I found myself enjoying the movie a lot. It's not the classic that Chinatown is, but still a very entertaining follow-up. I think I would have preferred a sequel that follows the character of JJ Gittes in a completely separate case from the Mulwray affair, something along the lines of The Color of Money in which we revisit Eddie Felson but without mention of the events of The Hustler. I think doing that would help differentiate the sequel rather than having it use the previous film as a crutch, and if the character is strong enough and interesting enough, then he is all of the linkage that is needed between the two films. In any case, I liked The Two Jakes.
One aspect where the film gets tripped up is the voiceover effect used. Voiceover is tough to get right in detective movies, and in The Two Jakes it feels weightless. The working script doesn't commit to using voiceover.
Another weakness was the flashbacks. They just seemed to beat it over the head too much. Like when Gittes first drives through the orange groves and then there is the flashback shot from a similar scene in Chinatown. The connection can be made more subtly, and should be rather obvious if you're familiar with the first film.
