Call a leer a leer

True confession: Who doesn't want to see Jennifer Love Hewitt playing a Texasmom turned massage parlor hooker?

The Client List is another opportunity for Jennifer Love Hewitt to show off allher wardrobe choices.
Deep sociological study? No. Maxim magazine cover come to the small screen? Yes.
Jamie-Lynn Sigler explored similar territory in an equally-classy USA originalmovie.

OK, I'll admit. it. I'll be watching Lifetime at 8 Monday night or more likely DVRing it.

Unlike Baltimore Sun TV critic David Zurawik, I'm not going to pretend there are some deep sociological examination motivations behind the unlikely tune in either. No, this is all gratuitous viewing, all about seeing Jennifer Love Hewitt playing a hot mom turned massage parlor prostitute. (As a bonus, she's a Texan in the movie from a fictional town, guaranteeing unbelievable accents).

Yes, it really is as classy as it sounds.

Like many in my generation, I grew up watching Jennifer Love Hewitt on Party of Five (though I was much more of a Neve Campbell man back then) and while this show choice is a largely embarrassing admission today (re-watch Party of Five these days and it's so over-the-top angst-riden that it's hard to imagine anyone could have ever enjoyed it let alone made it appointment TV like I did), it's a key to Lifetime's original movie The Client List.

The formula for basic cable networks' most buzzed-over productions is pretty simple these days: Put a beautiful former TV series star in a role where she'll have good cause to wear a lot of lingerie.

See Jamie-Lynn Sigler in the USA original Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss. High-brow marketing it's not.

Which is fine as long as people don't pretend it's something else. There's nothing wrong with some trash TV. The reason that Jennifer Love Hewitt has been dominating Google search trends for most of the weekend has absolutely nothing to do with a desire from budding amateur sociologists to investigate what could cause a young mom who lost her job to go into massage parlor hookerdom. Instead, it's all about a desire to see what basic-cable-testing outfits Lifetime's stuffed Hewitt and her considerable assets in.

Still, critics like Zurawik (and he's not the only one) cannot help themselves.

"Normally, I wouldn't be writing about a made-for-TV movie on prostitution," the Baltimore Sun's prominent TV voice begins his piece. "But The Client List starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, is different. The sociology of this Lifetime film that premieres Monday night at (8) is what matters."

Sure it is.

Zurawik continues later, "That's what makes The Client List worth looking at and thinking about: It is all about prostitution as it relates to the economy. Furthermore, I believe it is barometer, as only pop culture can be, of how bad the economy is still perceived to be by middle-class Americans. And that means big trouble for Democrats come November. But let me explain how Jennifer Love Hewitt as a prostitute speaks to the anxiety and pain middle-class Americans are feeling today."

Yes, he made the argument that a titillating tone Lifetime original could hurt the Democrats at the ballot box four months from now. Come on Zurawik!

You've seen the clips on The Joy Behar Show where Jennifer Love Hewitt talks about the movie with Joy as a running montage of scenes of Hewitt in negligees from The Client List plays on a big screen in the background (by my count, there are three different babydolls alone and a whip cream scene, not that I could concentrate on such frivolities while concern for the Democrats' hold in Congress was racing through my mind).

And Lifetime's own poster of the movie features a basic cable nude Hewitt sprawled across a bed while a shadowy man leers in the background. In other words, the poster shows what most of the viewers of this "classic character study" will look like.

Even Hewitt isn't trying to sell the movie as basic cable's version of an Oscar winner. This isn't HBO. They're not even pretending it's high art.

Trash TV may rule the world, but let's not pretend it's saving it too.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a DVR to program.

A preview of the deepness that is The Client List:

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Movie review

Messy Frankenstein movie The Bride! stitches camp and confusion

Photo by Niko Tavernise

Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride!.

The story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is now over 200 years old, with Mary Shelley’s book having been adapted or referenced in close to 500 films. Less common is the character of The Bride of Frankenstein, which existed in the original text but has more often than not been excised in adaptations. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has tried to rectify that by giving the character a big showcase in her new film, The Bride!.

Gyllenhaal has reimagined the story as one in which a woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) becomes possessed by the spirit of Shelley (also Buckley). At the same time, the already-existing Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) approaches Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), who specializes in reanimation, with the request to make him a wife. When Ida falls to her death in an “accident” involving her boyfriend (John Magaro), the ideal corpse becomes available.

After Ida’s resurrection, she and the monster become restless being studied by Dr. Euphronius and decide to break out to experience the world. The world, naturally, is not exactly welcoming to them, and soon the couple are on the run for causing mayhem, including a few murders. In hot pursuit are detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), as well as other authorities.

It’s clear that Gyllenhaal wanted to merge the Frankenstein story with Bonnie & Clyde, especially since she sets the film in the mid-1930s. And that wouldn’t have been a bad idea if having the monster and The Bride going on a crime spree was truly the focus of the movie. But most of the time there’s less intentionality in their misdeeds and more confusion, leading to a muddled plot with no clear direction or end goal in mind.

One of the biggest problems is that Gyllenhaal starts the energy of the film at an 11, giving her and everyone else nowhere to go but down. She dabbles in multiple different tones, at times going the straight drama route and other times making what seems like full-on camp. At one point, she even has the monster and the Bride in a dance sequence set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which would be hilarious as an homage to Young Frankenstein if the film weren’t so disjointed.

Most baffling of all is what Gyllenhaal wants from The Bride character. She morphs multiple times over the course of the film, from close to unintelligible at the beginning to rough-and-tumble at the end. There are hints at the lack of control she has over her autonomy, including Shelley’s possession of her and the monster lying to her about her past, but any commentary that Gyllenhaal might be trying to make gets lost amid the oddity of the film as a whole.

Both Buckley and Bale are all-in for their performances, which definitely fall in the “love it or hate it” dichotomy. Each scene is pitched so high that there’s little nuance to either of them, and neither is on par with their previous Oscar-caliber roles. The high-powered supporting cast of Bening, Sarsgaard, Cruz, and Jake Gyllenhaal is watchable based on previous roles, but none of them elevate this particular movie.

Whatever intentions Maggie Gyllenhaal had in making The Bride! are only halfway legible in a film that can never find its tonal footing. There has rarely been subtlety in movies featuring Frankenstein’s monster and related characters, but this one makes all the others seem like stuffy dramas in comparison.

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The Bride! is now playing in theaters.

movies film maggie gyllenhaal annette bening christian bale jessie buckley peter sarsgaard penélope cruz movie review