Movie and Television Reviews

Given a choice between Vacancy and Perfect Strangers, I went with the adjective-noun mystery (primal fear et al. ), Perfect Stranger. It’s about an intrepid reporter (is there any other kind?) who goes undercover to solve the mystery of her best friend’s death… or does she? Hmmm. It stars Halle Berry, who won an Oscar once upon a time, and Bruce Willis who used to be bald. Anyways, the plot twists and turns until the audience is surprised. In fact the audience is so surprised that some of them may become angry. I won’t give it away, but just imagine if Daphne was the one scaring away the customers to buy the land.

PS can be very annoying. One noticeable annoyance is the product placement run amock. Because Bruce Willis works for an ad agency, the producers must feel no reason to be subtle. We get Heineken and Reebok, amongst others. And they’re not in the background like in most movies. They’re mentioned by name-a lot.

Second, as I mentioned earlier Halle Berry won an Oscar. Here she does an Ok job, but nothing Jennifer Lopez couldn’t handle. She gets frightened sometimes and nervous sometimes. Both of these emotions are accompanied with open-mouthed panting.

One thing I’ve noticed in movies where the actress is on FHM’s top 100 hotties are the self-conscious “I’m hot” scenes. It happened in an Eva Longoria movie as well. Basically, the director can’t just have the girl be attractive. The director needs to make sure you know you should find her attractive. With Eva Longoria, they added several distracting comments and turned heads. This movie has a scene where Halle Berry gets dressed. Maybe I shouldn’t complain, but it strikes me as cheap.

Rowena’s (Berry’s) friend, Miles, is annoying. He says those unshocking, unfunny things meant to be shockingly funny like, “does a bear sh—in the woods” and “let me be the first to say, ‘wow.’” There are worse ones, but he said them before I went to ask the manager for a pen.

Some of the things I initially found annoying weren’t after all. The beginning of the movie has some flashbacks which refer to the previous scene. Do we really need to be reminded of something that happened two minutes ago? Some of the later flashbacks, however, were useful as they remind us of the clues we missed a la Fight Club. The childhood flashbacks, which I thought were irrelevant, turn out to be relevant-big time.

So, why am I giving this sometimes annoying movie three and a half stars? Because I paid attention the whole way through and PS placed me in a legitimate suspense (that would be a good movie title) for a good part of this movie, accomplishing, therefore, the main mission of a suspense movie.

Politics/message

The beginning of the movie had Rowena uncover a senator-page-homosexual scandal. Hmmm, where'd they get that from? The senator had a prominent "R" (Republican) before his name. The character also makes some noise about powerful men. Another trend in movies-especially those aimed at the female market is for nobody to either assume people to be heterosexual or to be the slightest bit surprised that others are. The gossipy office worker (a fun character) at the ad agency first asks Rowena if she has a boyfriend and then if she has a girlfriend. Is that a question one asks somebody they barely met?

James Foley

Writers (WGA):Todd Komarnicki (screenplay)
Jon Bokenkamp (story)

Halle Berry ... Rowena

Bruce Willis ... Harrison Hill

Giovanni Ribisi ... Miles

Richard Portnow ... Narron

Gary Dourdan ... Cameron

Florencia Lozano ... Lieutenant Tejada

Nicki Aycox ... Grace
Kathleen Chalfant ... Elizabeth Clayton
Gordon MacDonald ... Senator Sachs
Daniella Van Graas ... Josie

Paula Miranda ... Mia Hill
Patti D'Arbanville ... Esmeralda
Clea Lewis ... Gina
Tamara Feldman ... Bethany
Gerry Becker ... Jon Kirshenbaum