Friday, April 23, 2010

Cheaters' Club

As mentioned in the last post, Cheaters' Club is the third Lifetime movie I've ever seen. And the first movie I ever saw on the Lifetime Movie Network. This is historic. It might not be the greatest, but it is the inspiration.

Cheaters' Club's opening credits are a direct rip-off of Seven's. The film is all scratchy and the Mexican non-union equivalent of Nine Inch Nails is screeching in the background. All of this just to show us that a psycho has some photos of our unintroduced protagonist.

We start with a call-in radio psychologist chain smoking cigarettes and getting yelled at by angry callers. It seems that she is advising listeners and clients to cheat on their spouses in order to get the spark in their sex life back. These callers are great because they don't make sense. "My 18-year-old daughter is pregnant because of you!" Who wants to bet that nonexistent dude is a Teabagger now?

Finally we get to the titular Cheater Club. The psychologist, who I will refer to as Slutty Frasier, is counseling three clients to cheat up a storm. Well, two clients are already all over it. The third, our protagonist Linda, thinks that adultery might be a violation of her marriage vows. Everyone has a good laugh at the prude and that's that.

That night, Linda tries making the sex with her hubby but he's tired from work and wants to watch sports and sleep.

so sleepy

From there, the cheating begins in earnest.

We next see Slutty Frasier slutty cheating with a shirtless young man. This shirtless young man can not get enough of Frasier. He is going all out. Ropes, chains, and raw oysters. They have sex at least twice. Twice!

Then they get murdered. By a mystery assailant.

The Cheaters' Club meets up because the murder of an adulterous woman with a ton of enemies immediately becomes all about them.

The club consists of three women. Our hero, the aforementioned Linda, is the good gal since she is less eager to sleep with other men. The other two women are pretty weird. Meredith is a controlling lawyer who sleeps with a "pro" escort. She cheats because her husband is a stay-at-home dad and real men work. She also browbeats her secretary and becomes de facto leader once Frasier is stabbed to death.

The third woman, Cindy, is a stranger bird. She is sleeping with her high school flame and seems to like chasing the thrills of her youth. She's more timid, but is clearly capable of stabbing people. She looks generally stabby.

stab stab stab

Anyways, they all agree to keep quiet about the cheating because they don't want to get caught cheating. Um, if your psychologist is FAMOUS for telling women to cheat, isn't that cat out of the bag?

Linda gets paid a visit by a crazy detective who also concludes that this murder is all about the Cheaters' Club. The lady detective demands to know what Linda was in therapy for. When Linda refuses citing doctor-patient privilege, the detective basically tells her there's no such thing and that she is going to subpoena all of her medical information. Right. Because this is a thing that happens.

Linda then somehow gets access to all of Slutty Frasier's patient information. I admit I wasn't paying great attention because a playoff hockey game was in double overtime during the movie (Go Bruins!). In the patient file, Meredith is described as a woman with extreme anger issues. Therefore, Meredith must be the killer! Linda tells the detective that she knows Meredith is a murderer.

Well, good one, Linda, 'cause it isn't Meredith. The killer pays Meredith's escort to record a lovemaking session and when the killer goes to pick up the video, he/she (Who am I kidding? She.) throws in a few stabs for good measure.

The killer sends the video to Meredith's firm and it goes viral. She gets fired. That's it for Meredith.

Linda goes back to her files and, lo and behold, Cindy's file is pretty interesting too. Cindy isn't even really cheating. She's delusional and vindictive and batshit nuts and WHY DIDN'T YOU READ THIS WHILE YOU WERE LOOKING OVER MEREDITH'S FILE WHICH IS ON THE SAME WORD FILE!?!?

Well, too late for Linda since Cindy has already stolen your five-year-old son. Linda goes to Cindy's and realizes that, whoops, she's been sleeping with Cindy's husband.

Now, I know pointing out massive plot holes in Lifetime movies is going after real low hanging fruit, but, Jesus Christ. Cindy and Linda were in group together before Linda had slept with anyone besides her husband. And Linda slept with Cindy's husband the same time Cindy was stabbing Slutty Frasier. And Cindy was supposed to be avenging people sleeping with her husband? She was targeting people before there was any cheating. What? I mean, maybe, if Cindy's husband was sleeping with Meredith and Slutty Frasier too. But then why not just stab the husband? None of this makes sense.

Linda and Cindy fight and stab at each other and Linda kills Cindy. Linda apologizes to her husband and Meredith moves to Cincinnati (*sad trombone*) to start over. THE END.

AWESOMENESS: 14

The movie is fun. Again, it's the second time I've seen it. There are a lot of Lifetime movies I wouldn't watch twice.

That being said, it's not perfect. There are a lot of plateaus where the viewer is just waiting for anything to happen. But the waits are always worth it since the movie is so unhinged.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 3

The reason I saw this at my old DC group house was that I had a roommate who was flipping through channels who stopped on Lifetime Movie Network. Why? Because the movie stars Charisma Carpenter, an actress from three of his favorite things: Buffy, Angel, and being naked on the Internet. So a point for each of those.

Remember how I tried watching The X-Files in its entirety? Yeah, that was a wash. I, like the majority of X-Philes, couldn't make it past the terrible Season 6. The dream is dead. So, new dream! I am going to watch all of Buffy. It's available instantly on Netflix and a ton of my friends are in love with the show, so I am going to see what the fuss is all about. I just started Season 2 and the show is finally starting to get awesome. That first season though....woof.

Oh, other than Ms. Carpenter, no other famous people. And calling Charisma Carpenter famous is already a stretch.

LIFETIMENESS: 5

It doesn't count as women's intuition if you're just taking wild guesses on who the killer is. There were, like, three non-murdered characters in the entire movie. At some point, Linda was going to figure it out.

But Linda did have a child in danger. And the show is very, very hard on unfaithful women. That scolding tone makes me feel right at home on LMN.

GRAND TOTAL: 22

I'm actually disappointed in the mediocre score. It's definitely not essential viewing, but it is definitely ridiculous.

7 comments:

H said...

Moving to Cincinnati to start a new life is the most depressing idea I've ever heard.

Daniel said...

Hats off to your SeƱor Speilbergo reference.

Jannie girl talk said...

I am a Bruins fan too!

Sheena said...

Damn, I wish I had LMN (and not just Lifetime)! These movies are wondrously horrible.

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muebles madrid said...

It will not really have success, I feel this way.

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