Consenting Adults

Richard Parker (Kevin Kline) is a composer of advertising jingles. He is happily married to Priscilla (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and they live happily in suburbia. One day they have new neighbours moving in, Eddy Otis (Kevin Spacey) and his wife Kay (Rebecca Miller). They soon become friends and start spending a lot of time together. Deep down, however, there seems to be a fascination from each man for the other man’s wife.

Look Ma, no hands!

After faking injury to make an insurance claim on behalf of his new neighbours, Eddy one day suggests to Richard that they may in fact swap wives, with or without the wives' knowledge. Richard is of course disgusted and refuses, but Eddy is a convincing character and after some time, Richard starts to come around. This is where this tale of borrowing something from your neighbour spirals into an intriguing web of deceit and suspense.

In the same vein as the thriller Deceived, Consenting Adults is an interesting suspense film. Director Alan J. Pakula (Sophie’s Choice, All the President’s Men, Pelican Brief) does a reasonable job with this story. The cast is very impressive and the story and script start off well and maintain a nice flow throughout. Kevin Kline and Kevin Spacey are extremely well cast in their leading roles, as are the supporting cast including Forest Whitaker as David Duttonville, the insurance company investigator. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Rebecca Milller as the respective wives also put in a good showing, but it is Kline and Spacey that carry this thriller along.

Heeeeeeere's Johnny!

The initial build up of this story and its twist and turns are impressive, but there really are a lot of loopholes. The fact that someone charged with a serious crime can be given bail and then also be able to leave the state in an effort to find evidence to clear his name is a little hard to digest. There are many other issues, but discussion of these may give too much of the story away so they can be left to the viewer's own discovery. Even with these obvious loopholes, this is still not a bad film, simply go with the flow and leave the logic at the door.

Supplied in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and not 16:9 enhanced, this transfer is mediocre at best. Image is soft with quite a substantial amount of grain. Shadow detail is poor during many night scenes and colours are generally very average, looking washed out and a lot older than its 1992 year of production. Blacks are reasonably solid though and aliasing is only minimal. Film artefacts are quite constant and noticeable.

There is a ton of subtitles available and the English ones sampled were reasonable except for when several people are talking at the same time, in these instances it proved very hard to follow. There is no layer change as this is a single layered disc.

Audio is available in either English or Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 surround and although it is always nice to have surround sound, this soundtrack is adequate but nothing special and a stereo mix could have done an equally sufficient job. Surround use is minimal to say the least, with the rears only being used occasionally to emphasise the less than memorable music score. Dialogue is generally clear for the most part and synch is never a problem. The subwoofer is called into action on the odd occasion, but this is quite rare.

There are no extras with this release.

This is not the worst thriller available, but there are a lot more titles out there that would get preference over this one. The cast is the most impressive aspect and the story and script are reasonable, but the huge plot holes are hard to ignore. Video and audio are average at best and there are no extras whatsoever.