If an elementary school teacher showed up on the Internet drunk and topless, there's no question that she would get fired, right? Regardless of whether or not she took part in a hardcore porno flick, the toplessness and drunken revelry would be enough.
Unfortunately, Reckless Behavior: Caught on Tape doesn't pose that question. It's too concerned with the aforementioned second grade teacher trying to prove she didn't bone on camera.
Emma is that teacher. She is great at her job. She has a long-distance firefighter boyfriend living in rural Minnesota. She wants him to move to Minneapolis. He wants her to move to the country. Neither will budge. Their relationship appears doomed.
Emma decides not to meet up with her boyfriend. Instead, it's a long weekend in San Diego with a couple of girlfriends. One of those girlfriend just got dumped by her betrothed and is all sorts of crazy. Life was supposed to be so easy, she says. A husband, a job, a family. It was all supposed to fall together. But life is hard! So let's pretend we're college students and get hammered and make out with boys! Yay!
One of those boys is a real skeeve. He and his young assistant walk along the beach all Joe Francis style and convince ladies to drink more. In my long history of Lifetime movies, I have never seen such broadly painted evil characters. They refer to women exclusively as "meat" and "dumb bitches."
These two Lotharios convince Emma to dance around topless and fake an orgasm on camera. She passes out and the dudes film her.
A few months later, a hardcore sex tape is on the Internet starring Emma. Some firefighters see it and tell the boyfriend. Relationship over. Some parents see it and tell the principal. Job over. A local creep sees it and stalks Emma, breaks into her house, touches her things, and then waits for Emma to have friends over before making his move and trying to rape her.
Wait, what?
Seriously, did that just happen? A dude watches a porno, realizes the lady lives in his town, stalks her, and then tries to rape her once she has guests to interfere? If that guy wants to rape a Internet lady so badly, why not move to the Valley?
Bonus points for Emma's spectacular women's intuition. She always knows when there's a rapist within 50 yards. Someone riding behind her on a bike trail? Rapist! Are your pillows rearranged ever just so? Rapist!
The townsfolk think that Emma deserves to be raped for the video, so she moves back to her hometown where her (ex?) boyfriend and family are waiting. Because pornography is treated ever so seriously in Minnesota, some arsonists try to burn down Emma's dad's place of business. Emma, tired of being persecuted for something she didn't do, decides to fight back! She's going straight to the chief of police!
He's of no help. Minnesota law doesn't really apply to shenanigans in California. So, off to some crime lab where a technician can prove that Emma was not the lady in the boning video. Yay! Then off to a college to talk to some legal expert type.
The legal expert type, a she, spouts all kind of anti-feminist crazy straight out of the Laura Sessions Stepp playbook. Women cant have fun and not expect it to come back to haunt them! A job, a family, the dream, are all beyong women's reach! After her crazy lecture, she refers Emma to a lawyer in California.
And that lawyer promptly refuses to take the case. Emma pleads her case to the porn producer who sympathizes, but can't help her. He offers a $10,000 check.
Uh, porn needs to keep very detailed records of who is in what videos and how old they are. There would have to be releases and proof of identification on file. Emma isnt very bright.
Finally, she heads to the residence of the creepy San Diegan who filmed her in the first place. He threatens to rape her because no one would believe some porno slut. So Emma freaks and destroys all of his computer and editing equipment. Emma doesn't get her job dignity back, but she learns that she doesnt have to be scared of dudes anymore.
Again, the city girl loses her job and needs to put her tail between her legs and move back in with her parents. Happy endings are great.
AWESOMENESS: 7
Did any of that make sense to you? I mean, what a convoluted mess.
HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 2
The evil dude is played by washed-up suermodel Antonio Sabato, Jr. That's it. Slim pickings.
LIFETIMENESS: 9
We've got women's intuition. We've got a man's world that refuses to help a women in need. We've got weird anti-feminism. We've got rape fears. A smashing success in this department.
GRAND TOTAL: 18
This movie was worse than an 18, but it could have been so much better. The Lifetime formula we all know and love was there, but even Lifetime needs some semblance of sense (or washed up actors from beloved television shows).
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
To Be Fat Like Me
This will be the worst review ever. Worst both in terms of the quality of the movie and the quality of the review. I watched To Be Fat Like Me a week ago and I hardly remember a thing. To tell you the truth, if I wrote a review immediately after the movie finished, I'd be facing the same problem.
All you need to know is that Alyson lost out on a softball scholarship because of a leg fracture. She and a classmate who's handy with a camera decide to film a documentary for some contest that pays off in scholarships. The angle? Alyson uses the services of her make-up artist neighbor and pretends to be a fat person. Cue the hidden cameras and voila, documentary.
It turns out fat people have it harder! Gap clerks are dismissive of fatties because they fugly up the store. People give you weird looks on the bus. People even moo at you in the middle of class and pour soda on you at the bowling alley.
The soda becomes problematic when Alyson's make-up starts dripping off in front of all her new fat friends that have opened up to her.
Somewhere in all of this there's a boy that Alyson and a rival softball player have puppy cruses on. Also, Alyson's mom used to be so obese that her medical bills are why Alyson can't afford college. And Alyson's pudgy brother has confidence issues but now that Alyson has been "fat" for three whole weeks, she can relate.
Finally there's a big party and there's a big reveal and the movie ends.
AWESOMENESS: 2
That one point is because the last scene of the movie is Alyson talking to the camera about being nice to fat people while she's in her fat suit. Then, just like that Michael Jackson video, she morphs into skinny Alyson. I enjoyed that. Everything else was terrible.
HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 1
Sorry, Caroline Rhea. Sabrina the Teenage Witch was awesome and all, but that is not worth Wow Points.
I was going to go with the full zero and then I realized that Rhea was in Now and Then. So, one point. I am feeling generous.
LIFETIMENESS: 4
Man, high school is absolute hell in Lifetime movies. Who the Hell moos at the new girl in class because she's overweight? And what teacher doesn't toss that asshole to the principal's office? And stealing a bowling lane and assaulting a group of people for being fat? What?
GRAND TOTAL: 7
A new low!
All you need to know is that Alyson lost out on a softball scholarship because of a leg fracture. She and a classmate who's handy with a camera decide to film a documentary for some contest that pays off in scholarships. The angle? Alyson uses the services of her make-up artist neighbor and pretends to be a fat person. Cue the hidden cameras and voila, documentary.
It turns out fat people have it harder! Gap clerks are dismissive of fatties because they fugly up the store. People give you weird looks on the bus. People even moo at you in the middle of class and pour soda on you at the bowling alley.
The soda becomes problematic when Alyson's make-up starts dripping off in front of all her new fat friends that have opened up to her.
Somewhere in all of this there's a boy that Alyson and a rival softball player have puppy cruses on. Also, Alyson's mom used to be so obese that her medical bills are why Alyson can't afford college. And Alyson's pudgy brother has confidence issues but now that Alyson has been "fat" for three whole weeks, she can relate.
Finally there's a big party and there's a big reveal and the movie ends.
AWESOMENESS: 2
That one point is because the last scene of the movie is Alyson talking to the camera about being nice to fat people while she's in her fat suit. Then, just like that Michael Jackson video, she morphs into skinny Alyson. I enjoyed that. Everything else was terrible.
HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 1
Sorry, Caroline Rhea. Sabrina the Teenage Witch was awesome and all, but that is not worth Wow Points.
I was going to go with the full zero and then I realized that Rhea was in Now and Then. So, one point. I am feeling generous.
LIFETIMENESS: 4
Man, high school is absolute hell in Lifetime movies. Who the Hell moos at the new girl in class because she's overweight? And what teacher doesn't toss that asshole to the principal's office? And stealing a bowling lane and assaulting a group of people for being fat? What?
GRAND TOTAL: 7
A new low!
Friday, January 2, 2009
The House Next Door
Happy New Year! How did you spend your holiday? I spent mine watching a made-for-TV horror movie on the Lifetime Movie Network. Jealous much?
The House Next Door opens with a narration from Cole, played by Lara Flynn Boyle. Apparently there is some kind of Desperate Housewives vibe going on here. Cole has the smallest house on the block and she thinks everyone judges her for it. She is also judged for being 34 and not having children. She's just happy as long as she can garden in her uneven cutoff jeans. (Terri claims any woman worth her salt would keep cutting and cutting, no matter how scandalously short, until the length of the legs matched.) The only thing that is interrupting her idyllic life is the house next door. You see, the house next door is haunted. So Cole and her husband, Walker, decide to destroy it.
Before going any further, let me just point out that this house is fugged. It's described as "modern." Modern fug. There are 27-foot ceilings, fireplaces in the middle of hallways, and it looks like an asylum from the outside. People keep talking about how wonderful the house is. No.
So we flash back 18 months when Cole finds out that her tranquil forest next to her plot is about to be turned into a design nightmare. She meets the young lawyer couple moving in as well as the architect. Their names are Buddy, Pie, and Kim. Kim is a guy. So we have Buddy, Pie, Kim, Cole, and Walker. Jesus Christ.
Kim has a mysterious air about him. And he refuses to let go of the house even after it's built and Buddy and Pie (now very pregnant) move in. He wants this house, his first project, to be perfect. Cole takes a liking to him. And she finds a dead eagle on their property. This is followed by Pie's dead puppy having its throat ripped out. So, obviously, something is wrong with the house.
Lifetime then sets a land speed record for women's intuition when Cole wakes up at 11:59pm and as the clock strikes midnight, she hears an owl. "Someone is going to die," she sleepily predicts.
At the housewarming party, Buddy pushes Pie down some cellar stairs and she loses the baby. The young couple moves out and Kim is still babbling on and on about the house not being right.
So, now we have another couple moving in. Buck and Anita are an older couple. Buck is a physically fit teetotaler. Anita is a smiley lady who clearly has some crazy behind her eyeballs. They have a son in Iraq that Anita doesn't like to talk about.
We find out why when the couple has the neighbors over for pizza and wine. When the pizza delivery guy rings the doorbell, Anita hallucinates that her son, Toby, has come home from Iraq. Of course Toby is very much dead. When Buck reminds her of this, Anita collapses and lets loose a blood curdling scream.
The neighbors are all nosy and such, but they let this display of craziness pass. None of them knows what it's like to lose a son, so they cut Anita some slack. Anita invites Cole over a few days later to hire Cole as an interior designer. In the background, a technician is setting up a big HDTV. When he's finished, Anita turns the television on. She hears static followed by her son begging for help. His son appears on the screen before his helicopter explodes. Anita freaks out again. But this hallucination is different. Cole can see this with her own two Botoxed eyes.
Anita breaks down and switches back and forth between different channels of static. Cole goes upstairs and finds Buck making out with one of the neighbors, Virgina. It's been established that Virginia has only known one man, her husband. When Virginia sees Cole she realizes what she's doing and flees downstairs. She discovers Anita hanging from the 27-foot ceiling (how did she do that?).
Cole is now super-convinced that this house is haunted. It makes people do things they would never do in a regular house. She hypothesizes that perhaps the house gives you courage to hurt the ones you love or some mularkey like that.
I'm not quite clear on why Kim returns, but he does. He agrees with Cole that the house is haunted. So, they decide to check it out. Once inside the abandoned house, the making out begins. In earnest! Walker walks in on them and starts beating the crap out of Cole. He has a butcher knife and attempts a couple of stabbings. Cole runs out of the house and they both realize what they've done. It's the house!
Walker and Cole go on vacation. When they get back home, a nosy neighbor is waiting for them. Virginia and her husband have disappeared. The neighbor, Claire, even went as far to call the couple at their places of work. Claire suspects that Cole knows something, but when Cole won't squeal, Claire treats that as an affront to her womanhood and a betrayal of trust. After this fight, every time we see Claire, the camera angle is canted.
The next couple to move in to the haunted house is Norman and Suzannah Greene. When their daughter, Belinda (ugh), introduces herself as "Greene, with an 'E'," Cole offers a horrible response. "My name is Cole, with no 'E'." Oh, Christ. Her name is Col!? No. I will not go along with this. Cole, Cole, COLE!
Cole wants to tell the family about how the house ruins people, but Walker won't let her because that sounds crazy. Claire tells Cole that if she chases away a normal family from that house that she'll tell of the neighbors that Cole is a vindictive person. That'll show her!
From the looks of it, Norman doesn't need a lot of help going crazy. He browbeats his wife for putting the spices in non-alphabetical order and freaks out when the invitations to the housewarming party are printed and not embossed (he has a point). When no one shows up at the housewarming except the neighbors because Suzannah forgot to mail the invitations, Norman loses it. (Again, he has a point.) He yells at Suzannah in front of everyone until Belinda, awesomely, pisses herself.
The guests flee. When everyone is gone, Norman accuses Suzannah of trying to kill him. She put raw chicken in the vegetable crisper. Holy shit is Suzannah a bad housewife or what? Anyways, Suzannah shoots Norman when he isn't looking and it's implied that she kills herself as well. Belinda is OK though.
Claire admits to Cole that the house is obviously haunted and that there's nothing anyone can do about it. One person who can do something is Kim. Kim shows up again. But this time, Kim is evil. You can tell because he wears sunglasses and a blazer now. Kim is moving into the house he designed with his new trophy girlfriend.
He must be stopped.
Cole and Walker break into the house and turn on all the gas burners. Kim confronts Cole and they start making out again. Then Kim smells the gas. The security lights go on and that triggers a gigantic explosion. The gas was only on for 30 seconds and the house explodes?
We flash forward to the beach. Apparently the house burnt to the ground and can not be rebuilt. Even crazier, Cole and Walker escape any injury and Kim dies. They were all standing within two yards of each other! How does that happen!?
The conclusion takes another leap of implausibility when we find out that Cole and Walker have adopted Belinda. That's supposed to be a happy ending? Belinda is orphaned and left in the charge of two murderers?
AWESOMENESS: 16
The movie makes no sense. The heroes are felons who spend the entire film breaking into a house, and a girl pisses herself. So, pretty awesome.
I guess the film deserves some credit for handling the Buck and Anita plot pretty well. That was at least disconcerting.
Also, I love it when a director goes out of his way to let us know that he is DIRECTING. You know that shot in Goodfellas where it looks like the background is moving at you while the foreground retreats? This movie has one of those. And so many canted shots! These distracting techniques made the movie much sillier than it needed to be. Which is my gain, I suppose.
Another good thing about a film like this is that you can spend the boring parts wondering how Lara Flynn Boyle's face looks like that.
HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 5
Lara Flynn Boyle was in Wayne's World, so some form of gratitude is in order. Walker was played by the dude from Eureka. But I remember him best from another Lifetime movie, Mom at Sixteen.
Other than that, there was no one here that I recognized. So I was shocked to see that Kim was played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar. You know. That guy from Dead Man on Campus.
LIFETIMENESS: 7
That women's intuition thing killed me. An owl hoots at midnight! Murder is in the air! And props go out to Norman Greene. The way he verbally abused his wife is the stuff that put Lifetime on the map. This would have been a full 10 if Walker were somehow responsible for the house being haunted.
GRAND TOTAL: 28
Very, very good and very, very stupid. Definitely worth your time next time it's on.
The House Next Door opens with a narration from Cole, played by Lara Flynn Boyle. Apparently there is some kind of Desperate Housewives vibe going on here. Cole has the smallest house on the block and she thinks everyone judges her for it. She is also judged for being 34 and not having children. She's just happy as long as she can garden in her uneven cutoff jeans. (Terri claims any woman worth her salt would keep cutting and cutting, no matter how scandalously short, until the length of the legs matched.) The only thing that is interrupting her idyllic life is the house next door. You see, the house next door is haunted. So Cole and her husband, Walker, decide to destroy it.
Before going any further, let me just point out that this house is fugged. It's described as "modern." Modern fug. There are 27-foot ceilings, fireplaces in the middle of hallways, and it looks like an asylum from the outside. People keep talking about how wonderful the house is. No.
So we flash back 18 months when Cole finds out that her tranquil forest next to her plot is about to be turned into a design nightmare. She meets the young lawyer couple moving in as well as the architect. Their names are Buddy, Pie, and Kim. Kim is a guy. So we have Buddy, Pie, Kim, Cole, and Walker. Jesus Christ.
Kim has a mysterious air about him. And he refuses to let go of the house even after it's built and Buddy and Pie (now very pregnant) move in. He wants this house, his first project, to be perfect. Cole takes a liking to him. And she finds a dead eagle on their property. This is followed by Pie's dead puppy having its throat ripped out. So, obviously, something is wrong with the house.
Lifetime then sets a land speed record for women's intuition when Cole wakes up at 11:59pm and as the clock strikes midnight, she hears an owl. "Someone is going to die," she sleepily predicts.
At the housewarming party, Buddy pushes Pie down some cellar stairs and she loses the baby. The young couple moves out and Kim is still babbling on and on about the house not being right.
So, now we have another couple moving in. Buck and Anita are an older couple. Buck is a physically fit teetotaler. Anita is a smiley lady who clearly has some crazy behind her eyeballs. They have a son in Iraq that Anita doesn't like to talk about.
We find out why when the couple has the neighbors over for pizza and wine. When the pizza delivery guy rings the doorbell, Anita hallucinates that her son, Toby, has come home from Iraq. Of course Toby is very much dead. When Buck reminds her of this, Anita collapses and lets loose a blood curdling scream.
The neighbors are all nosy and such, but they let this display of craziness pass. None of them knows what it's like to lose a son, so they cut Anita some slack. Anita invites Cole over a few days later to hire Cole as an interior designer. In the background, a technician is setting up a big HDTV. When he's finished, Anita turns the television on. She hears static followed by her son begging for help. His son appears on the screen before his helicopter explodes. Anita freaks out again. But this hallucination is different. Cole can see this with her own two Botoxed eyes.
Anita breaks down and switches back and forth between different channels of static. Cole goes upstairs and finds Buck making out with one of the neighbors, Virgina. It's been established that Virginia has only known one man, her husband. When Virginia sees Cole she realizes what she's doing and flees downstairs. She discovers Anita hanging from the 27-foot ceiling (how did she do that?).
Cole is now super-convinced that this house is haunted. It makes people do things they would never do in a regular house. She hypothesizes that perhaps the house gives you courage to hurt the ones you love or some mularkey like that.
I'm not quite clear on why Kim returns, but he does. He agrees with Cole that the house is haunted. So, they decide to check it out. Once inside the abandoned house, the making out begins. In earnest! Walker walks in on them and starts beating the crap out of Cole. He has a butcher knife and attempts a couple of stabbings. Cole runs out of the house and they both realize what they've done. It's the house!
Walker and Cole go on vacation. When they get back home, a nosy neighbor is waiting for them. Virginia and her husband have disappeared. The neighbor, Claire, even went as far to call the couple at their places of work. Claire suspects that Cole knows something, but when Cole won't squeal, Claire treats that as an affront to her womanhood and a betrayal of trust. After this fight, every time we see Claire, the camera angle is canted.
The next couple to move in to the haunted house is Norman and Suzannah Greene. When their daughter, Belinda (ugh), introduces herself as "Greene, with an 'E'," Cole offers a horrible response. "My name is Cole, with no 'E'." Oh, Christ. Her name is Col!? No. I will not go along with this. Cole, Cole, COLE!
Cole wants to tell the family about how the house ruins people, but Walker won't let her because that sounds crazy. Claire tells Cole that if she chases away a normal family from that house that she'll tell of the neighbors that Cole is a vindictive person. That'll show her!
From the looks of it, Norman doesn't need a lot of help going crazy. He browbeats his wife for putting the spices in non-alphabetical order and freaks out when the invitations to the housewarming party are printed and not embossed (he has a point). When no one shows up at the housewarming except the neighbors because Suzannah forgot to mail the invitations, Norman loses it. (Again, he has a point.) He yells at Suzannah in front of everyone until Belinda, awesomely, pisses herself.
The guests flee. When everyone is gone, Norman accuses Suzannah of trying to kill him. She put raw chicken in the vegetable crisper. Holy shit is Suzannah a bad housewife or what? Anyways, Suzannah shoots Norman when he isn't looking and it's implied that she kills herself as well. Belinda is OK though.
Claire admits to Cole that the house is obviously haunted and that there's nothing anyone can do about it. One person who can do something is Kim. Kim shows up again. But this time, Kim is evil. You can tell because he wears sunglasses and a blazer now. Kim is moving into the house he designed with his new trophy girlfriend.
He must be stopped.
Cole and Walker break into the house and turn on all the gas burners. Kim confronts Cole and they start making out again. Then Kim smells the gas. The security lights go on and that triggers a gigantic explosion. The gas was only on for 30 seconds and the house explodes?
We flash forward to the beach. Apparently the house burnt to the ground and can not be rebuilt. Even crazier, Cole and Walker escape any injury and Kim dies. They were all standing within two yards of each other! How does that happen!?
The conclusion takes another leap of implausibility when we find out that Cole and Walker have adopted Belinda. That's supposed to be a happy ending? Belinda is orphaned and left in the charge of two murderers?
AWESOMENESS: 16
The movie makes no sense. The heroes are felons who spend the entire film breaking into a house, and a girl pisses herself. So, pretty awesome.
I guess the film deserves some credit for handling the Buck and Anita plot pretty well. That was at least disconcerting.
Also, I love it when a director goes out of his way to let us know that he is DIRECTING. You know that shot in Goodfellas where it looks like the background is moving at you while the foreground retreats? This movie has one of those. And so many canted shots! These distracting techniques made the movie much sillier than it needed to be. Which is my gain, I suppose.
Another good thing about a film like this is that you can spend the boring parts wondering how Lara Flynn Boyle's face looks like that.
HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 5
Lara Flynn Boyle was in Wayne's World, so some form of gratitude is in order. Walker was played by the dude from Eureka. But I remember him best from another Lifetime movie, Mom at Sixteen.
Other than that, there was no one here that I recognized. So I was shocked to see that Kim was played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar. You know. That guy from Dead Man on Campus.
LIFETIMENESS: 7
That women's intuition thing killed me. An owl hoots at midnight! Murder is in the air! And props go out to Norman Greene. The way he verbally abused his wife is the stuff that put Lifetime on the map. This would have been a full 10 if Walker were somehow responsible for the house being haunted.
GRAND TOTAL: 28
Very, very good and very, very stupid. Definitely worth your time next time it's on.
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