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Friday, June 14, 2019

MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: Fatal Flip (aka The Fixer Upper) (2015)

Director: Maureen Bharoocha
Writer(s): Bharoocha, and Ellen Huggins
Starring: Mike Faiola, Dominique Swain, Michael Steger, and Tatyana Ali


We all have our favorite Hollywood crushes. For most people, it’s the hugely popular Goslings’ or Gadots’ of the world, if for no other reason than their wide reach and massive exposure. Would you believe it if I told you that one of my earliest crushes as a teen was none other than Dominique Swain, star of Adrian Lyne’s adaptation of Lolita, from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov?

Swain, as the jailbait femme fatale, enraptured me in her role, to where I couldn’t take my eyes off of her; she was beautiful (which I can say without being creepy because I was thirteen when the movie came out, though I didn’t see it until a couple of years later), and although she was just 14 years old at the time of filming, managed to share the screen with Jeremy Irons without being overpowered by him. That's a feat in and of itself.

I can see almost everyone scratching their heads right now: not necessarily because they're wondering how in the world I could think she's cute, but simply out of complete ignorance as to who she is. And I can't fault you for that, because, unfortunately, the controversy of that movie—and, more specifically, her role—seems to have been a curse, a death blow to a once-promising career that has since been diminished to a neverending series of thankless roles in countless B-movies (hey, work is work, right?) She’s exactly the type of actress for which MarVista roles were made, so it should come as no surprise that she ended up in one called Fatal Flip. And having stumbled upon that information, it should come as no surprise that I watched it.

In it, Swain plays Alex, a woman who buys a rundown home, along with her boyfriend Jeff, in the hopes of fixing it up to sell for a huge profit. The couple are hugely confident that their investment—which has tied up all of their available money—will reap big rewards, but the gravity of their situation quickly settles in: although Jeff is a knowledgeable handyman, he doesn’t know enough about plumbing or electrical work to finish the project himself. And there's a pretty strict deadline from purchase to sale before the interest kicks in on their credit cards and threatens to rob them of any profit at all: 45 days.

With no money available to pay anyone, they happen to meet Nate, a man who offers his services for free, in exchange for a place to stay. You know the age-old saying “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is?” Well, that would definitely hold true for someone who offers to do countless hours of grueling labor in exchange for virtually nothing. As it turns out (and this is not a spoiler as it’s alluded to in the opening scene), Nate goes around offering his services to couples in need, and then…seduces the women, or something? And then kills them, or the guys, or...I guess I’m not really sure what his MO is, honestly, but either way, all you need to know is that he’s not a good guy.

Things take a turn for the worse when Jeff is injured falling from a roof (an act of sabotage by Nate that, refreshingly, goes uninvestigated). Unable to help the two physically, he also seems unable to help the two mentally, as Alex and Nate make quite a few decisions about the appearance of the house without even consulting with the poor guy locked away in his room.

Aside from Alex, Jeff, and Nate, the other main character is Roslyn (played by another childhood crush of mine: Tatyana Ali, who played Ashley in “Fresh Prince”), Alex’s good friend who’s also smitten with Nate. This leads to a weird jealousy triangle where the writer doesn’t entirely seem to sure on where to take it: one moment, Alex is vying for Nate’s attention, then when she gets it, she acts offended that he would look at a taken woman like that; she seems creeped out by him, yet still puts herself in positions where they’re alone, and even has a one-on-one dinner with him. Um...does she not realize she's clearly leading the poor guy on, whether she thinks she is or not?

Roslyn's “competition” with Alex to be the object of Nate's desires is another source of inconsistencies: what starts off as a playful, innocuous “battle” between the two for Nate's attention eventually leads to the dreaded “180-degree character change” trope that we see too often in these movies, where Roslyn is so consumed by her lust for Nate that she flaunts it around as atonement for the college years, when Alex was popular and got all the guys. Poor Ros meets her end the way she lived—stupidly--when she goes snooping around Nate's room after spending the night with him, and sees some things she shouldn't.

Can I break off for a second here: Why do characters always snoop around in these movies, even when there's no reason for them to? Here, there isn't even an inkling that he's a psychopath until close to the end, meaning Ros is literally just looking through his stuff because she's a nosey little bitch. What could she possibly be hoping to find in this instance that would lead her to look at all? A secret journal where he professes his love for her and mentions his intent to marry her? I just fail to see any logic in this whatsoever, save for the required advancement of the plot through her murder.

Truthfully, outside of the minor characters and amateurish writing, Fatal Flip actually isn't all that terrible. It's bad, but at least competent in ways that can overcome some of its obvious shortcomings: Dominique Swain, for all the low-budget junk on her resume (Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre, for God's sake?!) is actually an accomplished actress who can rise to, or above, the level of the material she is working with. Here, she gives a capable performance, thanks in large part to her ability to convey emotions through facial expressions, without looking entirely stupid. Michael Steger as Jeff (who my wife recognized from his role in the remake of “Beverly Hills: 90210”) is also above-average, though he's largely relegated to a secondary character by the halfway mark.

But this is a Lifetime production, and at some point it's inevitable that all of the movie's weaknesses (like, almost everything else) eventually become too great for anything to overcome. In fact, looking back, it's almost as if the decent acting is actually more of a negative, firmly entrenching the movie in the uncomfortable netherworld between “merely bad” and “bad but entertaining”: With a less experienced (or dedicated) cast, this one could have been more enjoyable in that familiar “campy cheese” kind of way these movies often excel in. Instead, there's just enough competence within the production that it's just flat-out boring and uninspired, rather than laugh out loud terrible; the difference is that one of those is at least entertaining, and the other isn't really worth your time at all.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS
  • In what may actually qualify as “brilliant”, no one even notices that Ros is dead. (Jeff mentions not seeing her in a while and suggests Alex call her soon, but her body is never found onscreen.) While it might sound silly, it's actually pretty believable given the tight timeframe this movie takes place within.
  • Why does Michael Steger's face look like he's wearing a mask of himself over top of his actual face? There's just something off about it, like it's stretched out or something, especially after my wife's adamant insistence that he is good looking in other roles. We'll blame it on his stupid hairstyle.
  • Why do psychopathic characters always have to make things blatantly obvious? Case in point: Nate, who constantly makes his true intentions known by intently staring at Alex for uncomfortably long periods of time.
  • I mentioned it already, but Alex's flip-flopping is anger-inducing: one moment she smiles as he intensely stares her down, then the next time she's grossed out: repeat that cycle about a dozen times.
  • Honestly, there's the structure of a good movie in here somewhere.

RATING: 4/10

TRAILER


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