MBunge This almost worthless piece of tripe demonstrates what happens to good actors when they're subjected to mind-numbingly bad direction. The result is a film the performers have to walk around the rest of the careers feeling embarrassed about.There is one decent thing in The Cool Surface. Teri Hatcher goes topless and, yes, they are both real and spectacular. Outside of celebrity boob gazing, the only other use this thing could have is as an example to beginning film students of how not to tell a story, handle actors, film a scene or write dialog. The students would get an "A" for best efforts at detailing every last way this film sucks.The main character of this garbage is Jarvis Scott (Robert Patrick), a novelist in Los Angeles. And when the movie doesn't make a comment or an allusion about how "Los Angeles novelist" is an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp or Nazi Zionist, you know right away you're in for a bad experience. Naming the main character Jarvis and giving him the worst bangs that any man has sported since the late Roman Empire are also good signs of how crappy this film will be.Anyway, Jarvis behaves like a bi-polar basset hound, alternating between clingy neediness and seething indifference. He becomes obsessed with the actress who lives next door, Dani Payson (Teri Hatcher), who herself behaves like a bi-polar Donald Trump with better hair and great jugs. One second she's a reasonably nice, if somewhat distant, girlfriend. The next second she's a man-hungry vamp who gets off on being dominated and is driven to succeed at any cost. Robert Patrick and Teri Hatcher spend the entire movie snapping from one emotional extreme to the other, usually for no reason and always with nothing in between. There are points where it looks like Hatcher is trying to erase her own performance from her mind while she's still giving it. There's another stretch where Patrick adopts this weird tone to his voice, like he's trying to imitate somebody you don't know.Now, Patrick and Hatcher may not be the greatest thespians in the world, but they're proved over their careers to be perfectly capable performers with some measure of screen presence. Yet, watching them in The Cool Surface, you're amazed that they ever got another job that didn't involve sexually gratifying someone with a Garden Weasel. I mean, they couldn't have done worse if the only thing writer/director/idiot Erik Anjou did was jab them with a cattle prod in between scenes.I could go on about the vapid plot where Jarvis writes a book based on his relationship with Dani, it gets made into a movie where Dani gets the lead role, she starts screwing the director and then Jarvis shows up wearing an African tribal mask…but I think I'll spare you all that inanity. I will say, in fairness, that some of the cruddiness of the story may be from writer/director/idiot Anjou's attempt to meld what was really happening with nightmares and fantasies that were only in Jarvis' head. He may have been attempting that but if he was, it was so poorly conceived and so ineptly executed that it looks much more like Anjou just didn't know his ass from his elbow.I never thought I'd have to tell you to stay away from a movie that features Teri Hatcher's bare breasts. Well…that day has come, my friends, and it's a sad day for us all.

xsnowangelx After watching 'The Cool Surface', I must say I walked away from it with mixed feelings. It is a strange film. The positive- Robert Patrick's haunting portrayal of a struggling writer turned homicidal maniac. You really did feel for his character several times during the picture. The plot, if you can weed through the constant sex scenes, is worth looking for. The negative- Teri Hatcher was replace-able as well as forgettable as the part of the struggling actress. The movie had it's cheesy moments- Teri Hatcher's confessions of "I want to act until my heart stops beating". But such things are overlook-able. I put in the movie, expecting for it to get tired. But overall, I was surprised to find that I ended up quite liking it.

Squonk I caught about 15 minutes of this on cable while on a trip. It intrigued me enough to rent it. What a mistake. Robert Patrick plays a writer. Early in the film, his writing is criticized because his characters can't make up their minds...well this film suffers from the same thing. The characters change so much there's no chance for the audience to start caring about what's happening.

corvus-3 Fantasies pose as realities in this film of double personalities double crossing themselves. When aspiring "too soft" writer meets sexy actress next door, he rises with inspiration as she plays great reach-withdraw games to keep him creative. But when the writer's screenplay gets bought, intent, motivation, and fantasy all meld into one, big potboiler. The beasts of lust, greed, and ambition surface within the characters, souring to a conclusion.Some pretty talented people cut their teeth on juicy, B-characters and seedy situations in this film. Namely, Teri Hatcher, Robert Patrick, and the writer-director, Erik Anjou. There is even a possible subtextual argument on the dangers of secondary experience supplanting primary experience. It also goes out of its way to damn Capitalism A La Hollywood. After all, the screen writer is merely making his material saleable. It's not his fault that he can only write about what he experiences.All in all, this is quite a respectable entry into the late-night Cable Hell of the Sleaze-B, Thriller genre.