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Sadly Over-hyped

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Starts out with Robert Patrick as a struggling writer trying to crank out a novel his agent can sell--ends up becoming overly concerned with the woman living across the way from him whom he can hear getting beat up at night....but this just turns out to be the first of many mistaken impressions on Patrick's part. It turns out that this woman who's played by Teri Hatcher is an actress who like Patrick is also struggling to get her career up and running...as the two characters pursue success (and each other) they kind of become increasingly odd in their behavior. Patrick starts the movie seemingly meek and mild mannered and Hatcher seems to be rather commandeering when they first start interacting with one another....eventually this dynamic reverses, and it does so kind of abruptly---the idea i think was that in success, Patrick's character ends up becoming more and more dominant--there's a couple of references during the course of the movie directed at Patrick's character to "uncage the animal inside" which he seems to take to heart. Anyways in the blink of an eye--Patrick's novel after some adjusting is eventually released and successful enough that a studio wants to buy the movie rights and his agent negotiates it so that he writes the screenplay himself. Hatcher decides that she wants to be the leading actress in the screenplay based on the book (the book was inspired by her, so in essence she'd be playing herself or at least Patrick's lightly fictionalized version of her) This is where the movie falls off the tracks as Patrick almost immediately gets incredibly angry at this idea, and well things escalate from there to the point where things stop making sense. The ending kind of teases us with the idea that Patrick had been down this road before, there's a character who appears at the very beginning who appears again at the very end, and his reappearance made me wonder if he was real or imaginary, but it really doesn't matter because nothing that happens in those last 15-20 minutes fits with the stuff that happened in the first hour or so...except that that that reappearance of the character at the end does kind of suggest that this had all happened before (and presumably will happen again...so maybe it fits too well?) i'm not sure i can recommend this...there's a lot of overheated dialog, and a couple of sex scenes between Patrick and Hatcher that features plenty of nudity and that's all well and good--- I was with the movie the whole way, but it kind of lost me once Patrick started getting irrational and angry and while that may have been the point (The Cool Surface maybe referring to what we show people on the outside versus what's actually happening underneath???) I'm not sure it was one that was well made by the movie.

Jarvis Scott (Robert Patrick) returns to home in L.A. after finish writing his novel in isolation. His girlfriend committed suicide which affected his writing. His editor Chazz Stone (Matt McCoy) hates the new book. He becomes invested in his neighbors' volatile relationship. He writes a new book with him and his neighbor Dani Payson (Teri Hatcher) as the leads. Dani reveals the abusive relationship is actually a rehearsal for a play. Jarvis starts dating Dani but she keeps pushing him to the edge.This is a rather sad and boring erotic thriller. It has no thrills to speak of. The erotica comes from Teri Hatcher. I don't know if they're real. They are spectacular but they're not enough to make a bad movie good. The actors may be willing but nothing else is. The script is horribly boring. The production is ripped out of every bad 90s late night cable movie.

Well, the above viewer who blasted this film also made the statement 'I haven't seen Robert Patrick in anything else...' Uh huh..., so like have you been a captive on Mars for the last 15 years or what...??? : ) GEEZ, who the hell hasn't heard of T2??!! Anyway, sorry, just had to get that outta the way... Sure, the film has a LOT of ultra-cheeeeeezy clichéd and unnecessary sex scenes; that's a given. So, ignoring those scenes and just taking the movie as a whole as far as atmosphere, acting, suspense, etc. I felt it was quite good; YES, definitely in a low budget B-Movie kinda way, but still well done. And, YES Ms. Hatcher's role was over-the-top as another reviewer mentioned here. I think what I liked primarily was the surreal sense that the film put across quite effectively; there are some scenes where even now (after seeing the film about 3 times) I am not quite sure what is real and what isn't. ****MINOR SPOILER*** Especially the scene where she is making love to the director and Patrick appears to be in the room with them writing on a typewriter asking her enthusiastically what she's gonna do next *****END MINOR SPOILER***** Anything that pulls off a good surreal mood or plays with your mind a little like that is very entertaining to me. So, with all it's many flaws, OVERALL, I honestly feel that the film pulls off a great story with excellent suspense (without having to have people 'SAW' there own foot off, thank you very much : ) and Patrick really does a very effective job in portraying a guy RIGHT on the edge. Good little animal references too and the bit with the wolf and his reaction was a nice touch. Also too, the interesting psychological contrast between how things played out at the director's house, with the way the film ended, was intriguing because your thinking 'Where the heck is this guy really coming from...???' In other words, without getting into an actual 'Spoiler', He appeared to be 'into' what was happening at the director's house, but then at the same time how does that translate into what he does at the end? I think it's just simply that the guy was unraveling from the start, perhaps mentally dislodged from his previous girlfriend's suicide (and then THAT makes you wonder whether her suicide triggered HIS instability OR did his instability trigger her suicide...????!!!) So you see, this movie is not just simply another lousy throw-away; there is a LOT here that really makes you think. Especially if you like films along psychological lines with a touch of the surreal...

I caught about 15 minutes of this on cable while on a trip. It intrigued me enough to rent it. What a mistake. Robert Patrick plays a writer. Early in the film, his writing is criticized because his characters can't make up their minds...well this film suffers from the same thing. The characters change so much there's no chance for the audience to start caring about what's happening.