'SWIMFAN' NOT EVEN CLOSE TO 'FATAL ATTRACTION'.Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic MICHAEL DOUGLAS' company was partially responsible for producing ``Swimfan,'' and the new movie plays like a teenage homage to one of the actor's most memorable (and least reputable) hits. It would be ``Fatal Attraction Fatal Attraction is a 1987 thriller about a married man who has a weekend affair with a woman who refuses to allow it to end and who becomes obsessed with him. It stars Michael Douglas, Glenn Close and Anne Archer. It was directed by Adrian Lyne. ,'' MTV MTV in full Music Television U.S. cable television network, established in 1980 to present videos of musicians and singers performing new rock music. MTV won a wide following among rock-music fans worldwide and greatly affected the popular-music business. style, except that Adrian Lyne's original had much cooler visuals than this waterlogged wa·ter·logged adj. 1. Nautical Heavy and sluggish in the water because of flooding, as in the hold: a waterlogged ship. 2. doppelganger doppelgänger Psychiatry A delusion that a double of a person or place exists elsewhere; it is related to other defects in recognition and suggests organic disease in the nondominant parietal lobe. See Depersonalization disorder, Schizophrenia. directed by Australian John Polson. Furthering the Douglas connection, ``Swimfan'' stars his daughter from ``Traffic,'' Erika Christensen, in the blond-tendriled Glenn Close role. She's the new girl in school, Madison Bell (like the author, minus anything remotely connected to his middle name Smartt), a high-strung cello player who takes an immediate liking to star swimmer Ben Cronin (``Bring It On'' hottie Jesse Bradford Jesse Bradford Watrouse (born May 28, 1979), better known as Jesse Bradford, is an American actor. Biography Early life Jesse Bradford was born in Norwalk, Connecticut. He is the only child of two commercial actors. , morphing dangerously close toward Freddie Prinze This article has multiple issues: * Its neutrality is disputed. * It does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by citing reliable sources. Jr. clonehood). Ben explains to, uh, Mad that he's happily in love with the nicest girl on campus, Amy (``Roswell's'' Shiri Appleby Shiri Freda Appleby (born December 7 1978) is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her leading role as Liz Parker in the Roswell television series. Early life Appleby was born in Los Angeles, California. ). That's fine, she shrugs, but couldn't he just, as a friend, show her his butterfly? Tonight, when no one else will be using the pool? Needless to say, despite her inability to swim, Madison winds up in the water, too. Ben can't resist, and is soon in ever-hotter water himself when the one-night-stand boils over with need, then rage. Ah, temperature metaphors. If you think mine are corny corn·y adj. corn·i·er, corn·i·est Trite, dated, melodramatic, or mawkishly sentimental. [From corn1. , how about when Madison tries to put Ben on the spot at a party by actually commenting, ``Is it hot in here, or is it just me?'' ``I think that you're misunderstanding our relationship in a very fundamental way,'' Ben tells her, adding to the movie's pleasing quotient of thoroughly unintended verbal hilarity. Madison, of course, is capable of much more extreme demonstrations of misunderstanding involving controlled substances, baseball bats, SUVs and scalpels. These incidents might have been as much fun as the bad dialogue if Polson had more than one method of indicating that something was about to set Madison off. But no, whenever it's crazymaking time, we get the same tiresome set of hiccuping jump cuts accompanied by screeching, ``Psycho'' strings on the soundtrack. Speaking of music, Polson doesn't even have the sense to add something compulsive like the light-clicking bit when Madison melts down, all alone, while listening to something classical on the Victrola. Wait a minute ... Could the whole plan here have been to produce something that makes ``Fatal Attraction'' look like a classic by comparison? That's the only sane rationale I can think of for ``Swimfan's'' existence. SWIMFAN - Two stars (PG-13: violence, sex, language) Starring: Jesse Bradford, Erika Christensen, Shiri Appleby, Kate Burton Kate Burton may refer to:
Director: John Polson. Running time: 1 hr. 24 min. Playing: Citywide. In a nutshell: Junior varsity ``Fatal Attraction'' in which the new girl in school goes psycho for the swim team's star. It's all wet. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: A high school tryst goes terribly wrong in ``Swimfan,'' starring Jesse Bradford and Erika Christensen. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion