The cinematic equivalent of a disastrous Friends Reunited date, watching Basic Instinct again, after all these years, is rather like hooking up with that temptress from class 3B and discovering that, for all your sweaty memories of pigtails and putting out behind the bike sheds, she's now laden with a moustache and eight kids.
There's still a guilty pleasure to be had in the ludicrous sex scenes (either we're doing it very wrong, or Sharon Stone suffers from the most melodramatic orgasms known to womankind) and in Michael Douglas' spectacular tank tops, of course. But, free from the trappings of adolescence, Paul Verhoeven's soft-core thriller is just solid hooey. Some things, quite clearly, are best left in the past.
