The premiere to this movie in Indonesia was actually 3 days ago but my wife and I finally decided to watch this one only today. After her food tasting event, we had some free time in the afternoon and I have also finished up my morning meeting with our client. We went to Plaza Semanggi to enjoy the bank promotion of free 1 ticket for purchase of 1 ticket. It had been quite sometime since we do this since the promotion was only available again after 2 months discontinued. Anyway, we reached the location few minutes before the start of the show at 2.15PM.
Brief Story Line
Julia Banks (Rosario Dawson - Daredevil TV series, The Lego Batman Movie and many more) was a writer working for a website managed by her very best friend Ali (Whitney Cummings - The Wedding Ringer). After getting engaged with her boyfriend David Connover (Geoff Stults - Wedding Crashers, 7th Heaven TV series etc), Julia decided to resign from her work and moved outside of San Francisco to David's house. David was divorced from his ex-wife Tessa (Katherine Heigl - 27 Dresses, Knocked Up, Grey's Anatomy TV series etc) and had a young daughter named Lily (Isabella Rice).
Moving to a new city meant adaptation to a new life for Julia and things were not so easy for her with Tessa's "perfect" appearance and behavior. Not to mention she was the mother of Lily, a fact that she never failed to remind. Julia was always worried that her past would come back to haunt her. Apparently she was assaulted by her old boyfriend Michael Vargas (Simon Kassianides) years before and had a restraining order against him, which already expired by the time she moved in with David.
Meanwhile Tessa seemed to be having a breakdown due to her difficulty in accepting the changes she had to face in her life, with David seemed to be moving on and Lily also seemed to be hitting it off with Julia. In addition, she was also getting a lot of pressures from her own mother Lovey (Cheryl Ladd - Charlie's Angels TV series). She started to do various bad things on Julia to break her relationship with David and also get back into the family.
So would Tessa be successful in sabotaging Julia's relationship? Could Julia be free from her dark past and also have a happy life with her new family? Find them all in this drama thriller movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well, this movie is what I would consider as a "what you see is what you get". I had seen the trailer to the film few weeks earlier with my wife. I thought that the trailer revealed a lot and I even think that most of the stories were shown in the trailer. But I wanted to keep an open mind and still give this one a try. Unfortunately it was a false hope. Almost all the important things were indeed shown in the 2.5 minutes trailer except for the ending part.
So I believe you could imagine if the really important stuffs were shown in that short duration of the trailer, that would mean the rest of them were not really necessary scenes. Yes, there were of course some things which were important, but the movie really lacked the surprises, suspense and twists you would expect in a thriller. The movie felt more like a drama with brief thriller. There were one or two scenes that gave us a bit of shock (due to the sound effect), but other than that, the film felt plain.
From what I read, the movie was actually having some love making & nudity scenes which were cut by Indonesian censorship body, though I think those scenes would not have any impact as this one is not an erotic thriller like Basic Instict. However it still should be categorized as movie for adult. I also felt the movie was targeted more to female audience. At least that is what I think when my wife told me no wonder this happened or that happened. This movie was directed by Denise Di Novi who had produced some well known movies such as Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, A Walk to Remember, Sisterhood of Travelling Pants and even smaller budget movies like If I Stay. It was rather unfortunate that her directorial debut turned out not to be a really big hit.
In term of the cast itself, I actually was amazed with Katherine Heigl whom I thought was surprisingly convincing as a cold & rather psycho ex-wife. This was a bit different from her usual image that I saw in her other movies which happened to be romantic comedies. But not in the case of Rosario Dawson whom I felt reminded me too much of her characterization as Claire Temple in those Netflix Marvel's series. And I personally felt that Cheryl Ladd was given too little screen time. Perhaps if she was shown a bit more, the complexity of the story would be felt more.
Due to those reasons, I fail to really connect to the movie and it was not as enjoyable as I would have hoped for. And the trailer certainly did not help. Maybe if I had not seen it, or it had been shortened to give just a bit of a teaser. But I could not turn back time or rewind the clock. So as it goes, I think that this movie might not be satisfying if you are looking for a drama thriller movie. However, if you have not seen the trailer yet, and would like to see this, then you could probably give it a try. Who knows you might be able to enjoy it. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
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