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So Idris Elba took her up on that offer. Now they have a beautiful new home and an okay-looking new kid. The kid could use a sitter; the home, a wrecker. Enter Ali Larter, a white she-devil who puts the ‘temp’ in ‘temptress’ and is as fond of short skirts and long glances as she is of gossip sessions with the mincing male secretary who could sink ships with all too much ease. She’s a super-scheming suicidal skank who can turn from the fiercest eyes to the perfect pout on a dime, and whose PG-13-naughty e-mails at the very least give all new meaning to the phrase ‘pop-up blocker’. Ali wants Idris, and Beyoncé isn’t too keen on that – will the claws come out? (Maybe when Wolverine finally does – snap!)

At 80 minutes, Obsessed might’ve been trashy fun, but at 100-ish, it’s a merely competent compendium of every standard-issue stalker beat from a dozen like-minded movies over the past two dozen years, all in one convenient location and just not very much fun. Flirting and friendliness, skyline shot, crying and consoling, skyline, martinis and mistletoe, skyline. Lather? Rinse? Repeat? Skyline? I’ll never tell. Just believe me when I say that by the hour mark, you too will be wishing Anne Archer was waiting in the wings and packing a pistol.

TV veteran Steve Shill was an apt pick for directing the overripe small screen-worthy melodrama, and screenwriter David Loughery is merely the hack that robs the cradle of the single white swimfan and her fatal attraction. One can see how Larter might be wanted in someone’s lap, and then out of their life – she’s frisky that way. One isn’t so sure why, though, the sulks and shrieks of Knowles would make for death-do-us-part material (and as executive producer, she’s a staple of the film’s soundtrack, natch). And poor Elba, torn between the two. When he’s not being meow-whipped, he’s apologetic and then angry and then anxious. Every time he’s hit on, he hits his marks, but he’s still hitting his marks in a movie called Obsessed.

The working title was alleged to be 'Oh, No, She Didn’t,' but of course she did. That’s why anyone is turning out to see this movie. For all this talk of the efficient new temp, though, you’d think she would pick up the pace. Then we’d like it, and it might’ve had a ring to it.

link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=17535&reviewer=409
originally posted: 04/25/09 04:35:29
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