Writer(s): Feifer
Starring: Cerina Vincent, Elisabeth Harnois, Kevin Sizemore, and Preeti Desai
MarVista Entertainment’s The Work
Wife takes place in the kind of world where doors don’t exist, continuity and
characterizations don’t matter, and no one seems to have any
awareness of their own surroundings. How else can you explain why
characters who are trying to be secretive, obliviously perform said
actions right out in the open, in full view of co-workers? Or how
characters’ beliefs change on a whim, with nothing remotely
resembling just cause or believability? Or how no one locks their
doors, even when the immediate threat of danger is present? Or how a
character is murdered by being flung down stairs in the middle of a
packed party, with no witnesses? (Also, how is it that throwing
someone down stairs is even an option for murder in thrillers,
considering the odds of the victim actually dying is pretty slim on a
standard staircase?)
Sean Miller is the new executive at an
advertising firm. His assistant, Jen, is immediately smitten with
him, and—judging from the completely blatant staredown he gives her
upon meeting her for the first time—those feelings are
reciprocated. They only seem to intensify when Sean’s first meeting
lands his firm their biggest client account to date. But there’s
just one problem with pursuing a relationship with Jen: Whether or
not he wants to be, Sean is married.
His wife, Lisa, is a graphic designer
(of course!) who’s looking to return to work after taking a break
following the move for Sean's job. Well, the whole marriage thing
doesn’t seem to deter Jen, who invites Sean’s wife, Lisa, out
with the work family one night and tosses lines out like “There’s
a joke going around that I’m his work wife,” (I’m paraphrasing,
but you get the point) while getting a video of her badmouthing a
client's alcoholic beverage brand. Uh oh, can’t see how that could
be used against Lisa at any point, like when she’s brought on board
as a graphic designer (at Jen's urging) and the video is played
during a meeting with executives of the Gin Tonic company—the very
one she’s badmouthing!
Things progress from there, with Jen
stalking Sean, who (surprisingly!) refuses all of her advances,
eventually becoming disgusted with her as her obsession quickly
reaches a fever pitch. It should come as no shock that this isn't the
first boss of hers that she has grown infatuated with...and at least
one previous one even ended in murder. Can Lisa and Sean survive
Jen’s murderous ways, or will they succumb to her boss fetish like
others before?
Being a MarVista film, there are plenty of issues at play here, though the biggest one is logic:
even after Jen’s obsessive qualities become more and more apparent,
Lisa still threatens to leave Sean based solely on Jen's
word-of-mouth evidence, believing the habitual liar who set their
house on fire, sabotaged Lisa's job, sent threatening texts to
herself with Sean’s phone (which she acquired by walking through
their front door at night, and literally taking it off their dresser
as they slept three feet away), and murdered her last spouse, over
the man she’s been married to for several years, and who, by all
indications, has always been faithful to her. Okay, makes sense.
Or the random scene where a spurned
character from earlier in the film, who by this point we have
completely forgotten about, shows up at a party to drunkenly answer
the phone and stand awkwardly in a doorway right out in the open to
talk to someone about his plans to have Jen taken in by the police in
the morning. Of course, somehow, amidst the dozens of partygoers in
an obnoxiously loud party atmosphere, at a sprawling multi-story
mansion, she zones in on him and gets so close she can hear his words
without him even noticing.
Not helping matters is the acting, which
is pretty bad across the board, with a special nod going to the
drunk guy, who acts as if he just came out of a coma following trauma
to his brain rather than an individual who's merely inebriated. How
these things can not only get greenlit, but also go into production,
pass through an editing room, and presumably go through screenings
for executives and/or test audiences without anyone feeling
remarkable guilt or shame for unleashing these hellish monstrosities
on the world is something I will never understand.
Occasionally, it even has the gall to
make a play at framing this whole story as some sort of feminist
war-cry, insinuating that several women within the firm are in on
Sean’s undoing, but never fully exploring that story angle outside
of one or two random scenes. That might have actually been its best
bet, but it's yet another idea that seems to have been abandoned in
favor of a by-the-numbers thriller that's completely devoid of
thrills.
About the only things preventing it
from being a complete bomb are the presence of Preeti Desai, who is
gorgeous but wasted in a limited role as Sean (and Jen's) boss, and
the simple fact that Sean never physically cheats on his wife, at
least avoiding one cliché prevalent in the typical “obsession”
movie. Other than those two things, The Work Wife functions best as a
study to see just how abysmally thrill-less a thriller can be.
RATING: 3/10
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