Beyonce shows she is not a woman to be messed with! (Obsessed (Blu-ray))

Member Name: Great_reviewer07

Product:	Obsessed (Blu-ray)
Date:	24/06/09 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Decent enough ending

Disadvantages: The acting, the music, the production... pretty much everything!

Derek and Sharon Charles seem to have a perfect marriage, the two fell in love when Sharon (Beyonce Knowles) was a temp at Derek's (Idris Elba) office where Derek works as the Executive Vice President of Gage Bendix. Sharon has stayed at home to look after the pair's baby boy Kyle.

When new temp Lisa (Ali Larter) begins working at Derek's office, he doesn't realise that his whole world is going to be rocked significantly by her arrival. Lisa is something of a temptress and quickly has the men of the office talking about her raunchy looks. All apart from Derek, he's very much in love with his wife and wouldn't do anything to sabotage that. Lisa however isn't put off with Derek's lack of interest and quickly becomes very interested in him after he comforts her after she suffers a broken relationship. Quickly Lisa begins making very obvious advances towards Derek which Derek shrugs off as a crush however Derek is unaware that things are soon to turn nasty and his wife and young son may be in grave danger...

When I saw previews about Obsessed I became very captivated as this is just the sort of film that I enjoy. After recently seeing Fatal Attraction for the first time I was hoping for another version of that as it was a fantastic film. Therefore the first chance I got, I went to see this with some friends expecting to see a tense, taut thriller that we would all thoroughly enjoy.

Unfortunately that wasn't quite the case, this film lasts around an hour and 45 minutes which to my mind is an hour too long. The film doesn't get going until about 45 minutes in and by that time we were already deliberating whether to leave the cinema or not, in the end we decided we had nothing to lose by staying and part of me is glad that I did because the last 45 minutes is a lot better than the first so I was glad I didn't just give up on this film straight away.

I must pre-warn you, if you are planning on watching this you must be prepared to sit through around 45 minutes of absolute tripe and that's me being nice. The acting was an absolute disaster and was less menacing and more humorous.

Beyonce is someone who is primarily known for her fantastic voice and superstardom as a singer and up until this film I thought that her acting career had no boundaries. This film however has probably done more bad than good for her acting career and after starring in a number of good movies previous to this I was very disappointed with her performance in this film. Her character Sharon just seems to have no personality whatsoever, she seems to be a typical housewife and she doesn't really have a lot to say or do until around an hour into the film. I think it would have been nice to give her character a lot more to say and do as I personally am a big fan of hers. Sharon simply had no depth to her at all, near the beginning of the film there's a scene where Sharon goes to see Derek at work and she comes across as extremely jealous and desperate and not a strong female lead at all. She's one of those women who can't stand up for herself and will do anything to keep her man. As the film goes on her character does develop though which was quite pleasing to see but with this change she transforms from being an upper-class, well-bred housewife to a ghetto fabulous woman. At numerous occasions I was waiting for that infamous line of 'oh no you didn't' to come out of her mouth and I was actually somewhat disappointed when it didn't as it would have added some much needed intentional humour into the film to try and cover up all the unintentionally funny parts.

Idris Elba is someone that I had never heard of before seeing this film and to be honest it really wouldn't bother me if I never saw him again in my life. His character, just like his wife's has no depth at all however unlike Beyonce's character you see no character development from him whatsoever . He's bland at the start and he's just as bland at the end. You have no feelings towards him of any kind which is another aspect of the film that drags it down in my estimation. Ali Larter's character is someone that I struggled to peg throughout the film and I found it hard to work out whether that was a good thing or not! For the first hour or so her acting is absolutely awful and being probably the best known actor of the three this was quite disappointing. Out of all three Ali Larter's character was the one that held the film together, or was supposed to anyway. During the first part of the film she came across as extremely fake and apart from the aesthetically pleasing aspect of her character there was nothing redeeming about her personality at all which would make men fall in love with her. It really manages to dumb down both sexes; women because it shows them as husband stealing sluts and men because it depicts them as skirt chasing players. Having said that, for me, Ali Larter did kind of save the film, as the film progressed (slowly) her character steadily became more and more unhinged and she managed to do a complete u-turn and became the best actor in the film. There were some parts when I thought her acting was brilliant and others when I found it to be cringe worthy. I think she played a good baddie however another more experienced actress probably could have done a much better job. As I said she does manage to redeem herself towards the end of the film and there are parts when she comes across as genuinely menacing however I don't think she manages to pull of the temptress part of the role very well though, the way in which she throws herself at Derek just isn't sexy at all. I was expecting her to slowly seduce him which would have made the film a lot more credible.

I've heard lots of bad things about this movie and a lot of comparisons to Fatal Attraction however I don't think this film even comes close to replicating the sheer terror that Glen Close struck into the eyes of men all around the world all those years ago! The story could have done so much more if only they had been given more accomplished actors to work with. The way the story progresses is extremely slow and although there are some genuinely gripping moments it just wasn't enough to leave me exiting the cinema with a good memory of Obsessed.

The Executive Producers of this were Beyonce and her Dad/manager Matthew Knowles; what experience have they got producing films? He's obviously a brilliant manager to her as he was the mastermind behind the mammoth success that Destiny's Child and Beyonce as a solo artist has achieved and I'm all for expanding your horizons however I think the Father/Daughter pairing jumped in at the deep end with this film and it was a bit of a catastrophe. The soundtrack to this was absolutely dire, some of the songs were modern pop and R&B songs that I liked however they had absolutely no place in the film and they didn't fit in with the tone of the film at all. This was obviously the musical influence from Beyonce and her Father's side but I think they should just stick to one thing instead of trying to incorporate the two and I'm afraid the thing that I believe they should stick to is music. There was an unmistakable Beyonce song at the very end of the film so I'm assuming she's managed to dip her toes into the soundtrack as well which although I haven't heard the song in full, going by Beyonce's reputation as a musician will probably be the best part of the movie.

The beginning of the movie had something of a 50's feel to it, as a result of the music and the way it was shot, the whole thing came across as very cheesy and yet again it didn't do the movie any favours in gaining credibility with audiences. I've given this movie a disappointing 2 stars, I considered giving in three but sadly I don't think the good bits of the movie managed to outweigh the bad.

The entire movie all leads up to one pivotal part which is probably very obvious right from the start, however what isn't obvious is what will happen within this part which is what made it ending surprisingly tense. Of course the audience will all get behind Beyonce's character and although there are aspects of the end sequence which are a tad unrealistic it still makes for an exciting and almost worthwhile ending.

Overall I wouldn't recommend this film, I do however believe that with Beyonce in a lead role it will attract a steady audience and some people will probably still want to see it for that reason alone given Beyonce's colossal fan base all over the world. If you're going to see this film then don't expect it to be another Fatal Attraction though, infact this film is far from it. It's unintentionally funny, very cheesy and it holds no credibility whatsoever which, given the lead actresses in this is very disappointing. I would also say that this is definitely more of a female aimed film, with the two female leads you have the usual catty remarks which will most likely go over a man's head! This is without doubt only a movie that I will be watching once and although I'm glad that I've seen it because I did really want to I'm also extremely disheartened with how bad this film actually is.

The DVD is set for release in Aug/Sept time.

Summary: Could have been so much better.