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    Obsessed (Rental)
    Paramount/Paramount . R4 . COLOR . 87 mins . M15+ . PAL

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    Ah, the life of a DVD reviewer. What a great gig, you think. All those movies you get to see, and all for free. What luxury! Well, yes, but for every Blue Velvet, Almost Famous and Lantana there’s always a price to pay, and that price usually comes as a DVD with a generic one-word title. This invokes the second of the two Laws of Reviewing Safety…

    1. Beware any film with a title that pairs an over-used adjective (Dangerous, Deadly, Disturbing) with an overblown noun (Passion, Game, Obsession).

    2. Be wary of any film with a generic single-word title. Statistics show that eight times out of ten it was actually made for TV, five times out of ten it’s been hastily retitled at the last minute in a desperate attempt to shift units, and seven times out of ten it’s unmitigated crap.
    Obsessed qualifies for rule #2 easily; it was made for TV (the American cable channel Lifetime) and retains the fade-outs for commercial breaks, it has a too-easy one-word title that it shares with over half a dozen other films called Obsessed, and is packaged in a cover that uses the good old jagged-edge theme with a tag line that almost screams from the rooftops that when it comes to crap, this one’s going for the pinnacle. But then a look at the back cover reveals some promising details. For one, it’s written by Matthew Tabak, who both wrote and directed the wonderful Auggie Rose. And secondly, it’s directed by none other than John Badham, the man in the director’s chair on quite a few hit movies (including War Games, Short Circuit and Saturday Night Fever). And as if that wasn’t enough, it’s produced by a company run by the guy who directed Xanadu (yes, really!) So how bad could it possibly be?

    The plot is simple.
    Click here to enlarge and send to a friend
    And she still writes her name on her shower...
    Ellena Roberts (Jenna Elfman) is having a nice hot shower to the tune of a naggingly familiar trip-hop song when suddenly there’s a knock on her door. It turns out to be the police, who promptly arrest her without actually saying what for. She eventually learns that she’s accused of harassing ultra-smooth married doctor David Stillman (Sam Robards), but claims that he was the one doing the pursuing and that she’s actually the victim. All is not what it seems, as we find out through flashbacks (introduced by unintentionally hilarious Scooby Doo-style transition effects), most of which make use of the same naggingly familiar trip-hop song we heard earlier (presumably to save on music licensing costs).

    There’s really not much of note going on here. Based on a magazine account of real-life story, Tabak’s screenplay is efficient enough for the material without really digging below the surface of it. But Tabak’s not averse to offering a couple of sly comedic moments, either. For example, in an early scene Ellena is being led into a prison that’s straight out of Cliché Central - hookers leering and sticking out their tongues, people yelling “lemme outta here”, a woman vomiting in a corner, the butch inmate casting menacing glances. And just when you’re thinking how trash-TV it all is, Ellena offers: “You know what’s annoying about jail? It’s exactly what you’d expect. A couple of hookers, an addict, a few ugly guards and the smell of urine, it’s a cliché.” Bravo.

    What really lets Obsessed down, aside from its obviously low budget and ambitions, is the direction. John Badham is capable of so much more than this, and apart from a few self-conscious crane shots and neato camera angles he seems to have done this one in his sleep. From staging to editing, the entire thing reeks of lack of inspiration. Let’s hope Badham, who in recent years has stuck to telemovies, hasn’t lost his touch completely.

    Ultimately, Obsessed just doesn’t have any momentum or spark; when you’re checking the clock on an 87-minute film you know it’s in trouble. A few unusual characters and a whammo plot twist at the end can’t save a movie where the script jokes about clichés only to have the director film it as a virtual homage to them.

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    Click here to enlarge and send to a friend
    John Howard, judge. Or perhaps not.
    Produced for the wonderful 4:3 world of US cable television, Obsessed comes to us in glorious full-frame, encoded at a high bitrate on a single-layered DVD. And it needs a lot of space, too, despite its short running time - because a great many scenes throughout are absolutely riddled with big, furry film grain. What we’d suggest has been done is that the film has been zoomed in during the editing stage to reframe some shots more tightly; it’s the only explanation we can think of. It’s certainly not intended as a special effect. Aside from those shots, the image is reasonably sharp without ever being particularly spectacular.

    Audio is surround-encoded (and flagged) Dolby 2.0, and while the mix here does the job well enough, nothing spectacular happens. There’s occasional distortion on the location dialogue, but nothing overly objectionable. It’s a TV soundtrack, nothing more.

    As for extras, there are none at all, which is a Good Thing - after all, it lets you get the disc back to the rental store that much faster.


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  •   And I quote...
    "When you’re checking the clock on an 87-minute film you know it’s in trouble..."
    - Anthony Horan
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