Review of Single White Female (1992) by Jonas S — 27 Jan 2015

Finally getting around to seeing movies that were made over 20 years ago that I once intended to watch. Go me!

While I love just about everything about Jennifer Jason Leigh, this movie suffers from a great deal of creative arrangement that doesn't hold up well. The character of Hedy transforms unrealistically into Peyton from The Hand that Rocks the Cradle where they did this same plot much better. Her acting worked well enough amongst the choppy writing that seemed to demand a different character from her every few moments of the film. It would almost have been better to learn that Aly and Hedy were the same person all along in a different psychological path.

Speaking of Aly, she's not that interesting of a character and has plenty of her own flaws, making one wonder even after the mirror scene what makes her so interesting to others. She comes off as barely human which could have been the fault of male writers/directors misunderstanding how to represent a female properly. She just comes off bland at best with more than a little rooting for Hedy to just get rid of her and move on. After all, many of Hedy's claims about Aly, her boyfriend, etc, were not terribly off the mark. He most certainly would have cheated on Aly again at the very least.

Sam(Weber)'s scenes were so far from realistic and I have to wonder how they decided that A. He didn't have anything better to say to Hedy upon her reveal to him, and B. How much time was spent deciding a quick heel to eye blow would render him dead without as much as a twitch of life? People survive close gunshot wounds to the head(sadly) and even Hedy, who's half Sam's size can take multiple severe wounds before she goes down.

While some find the ending showdown to be exciting and climactic, I was left wondering scene after scene how the heck they concluded that would be how it went down. Not the least is the gunshot not attracting attention to an area where loud music brought the super to the apartment just hours before. And I've never heard of a dog jumping from a window on it's own but they never reveal that she had more to do with that, leaving that open for rather poor allusion.

Ultimately, this movie didn't make me think I wasted 2 hours of my life like some have, but its choppy and rambling story left me numb and bored.