dbdumonteil Borrowing more than a little from Roald Dahl's "the great Switcheroo",without giving the famous writer any credit, AJ Pakula shows his limits;his last movies (this one,"Pelican brief" "presumed innocent" "Devil's own" )will stand as a poor end to a director extraordinaire who wiped clean and drew again the face of the political movie ("Klute " " all the presidents' men" the highly superior "the parallax view" ) a director who took Meryl Streep to peaks of emotion in "Sophie's choice" ..."You are playing safe !you do not take any chances" Spacey complains ,and Mastrantonio repeats almost the same lines.You could have said the same about the director's work whose most "daring" idea ,as I wrote above ,was stolen from Roald Dahl.In spite of the unquestionable talent of the four leads,the movie is actually distastefully bourgeois .Kline writes horrible jingles (the one time he tries his hand at rock music is particularly awful),his daughter is a wiz kid and they live in a desirable mansion.The last picture,which is supposed to show Pakula's sense of humor ,succeeds only in proving that Pakula had no humor at all.Take my advice and do choose Pakula's great movies of the seventies,particularly "the parallax view" ,which is,IMHO, second only to "the Manchurian candidate " ,as far as political movies are concerned.

Predrag The film stars sexy Kevin Kline and Kevin Spacey, both married and recently becoming next door neighbors. Kevin Kine is supposedly in a happy relationship with his wife (played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, but all hell breaks loose when Kevin Spacey's character sets his new friend up for the murder of his wife so he can collect on a heft insurance policy. Does the criminal justice system in America really let a man who is about to stand trial for a brutal murder out on bail? Do they then let him wander, unsupervised, wherever he pleases? This movie started out great the way it established the growing friendship between two very different couples and then moved into a murder mystery. The acting was first-rate (with the exception of Rebecca Miller can we say boring?) but then the plot defied logic. Further, it is completely unrealistic that a shattered Kevin Kline's wife would have so immediately taken up with Kevin Spacey. By the time the film ended, it felt like a comedy, it was so ridiculous! Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

treeskier802 This movie had been in my Netflix Queue for sometime and I decided to give it a watch after meeting Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio in person (very gracious lady). Anyway, I'd seen the film before, but it had been many years. After viewing it again this time around, I came to the same conclusion. The first half of the story is very engaging and interesting. Kevin Spacey is brilliant in one of his early roles. Mastrontonio and Kline are also very appealing. You like the characters and you care about them. However, the second half of the film, the "thriller" portion, is so lame and unrealistic that I completely lost interest. It's as if the writers simply gave up on how to finish this film off. They created very interesting characters, set up a nice story, but the story didn't have anyplace interesting to go. I'd love for someone to try a rewrite of this thing. Anyway, not much going on here with this film. The only relevance it has is if you are a Spacey, Kline, or Mastrontonio fan. Rating 5 of 10 stars and that is being somewhat kind.

Jackson Booth-Millard From director Alan J. Pakula (All the President's Men, Sophie's Choice) this is an odd thriller film. Basically Richard Parker (Kevin Kline) and his wife Priscilla (Scarface and Robin Hood: Princes of Thieves' Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) have an ordinary life, and they meet new neighbours Eddy Otis (Kevin Spacey) and his wife Kay (Rebecca Miller). They seem to become friends quite quickly, and for some reason because Richard is looking at Kay quite a lot, Eddy seems to be okay about it, and knows he wants to have sex with her. He somehow manages to persuade Richard to get in bed with Kay and have sex, and not long after she is found murdered, Richard was set up for money. Richard is out on bail, and he wants to prove his innocence to detective David Duttonville (Forest Whitaker). Richard believes that Kay is still alive, and it all comes to a climax when Eddy, who I thought was creepy anyway, is trying to kill Richard. To be honest, it is a little random, and not the sort of film I had in mind, when it mentioned neighbours from hell, that's what I wanted, not this. Okay!