Leah Vaughn (Sanaa Lathan) has it all, a great career as a lobbyist and a loving relationship. Things start unravelling when her long-time boyfriend Dave (Morris Chestnut) begins to question her plans for the future including marriage and having a family. This leads to a breakup which leaves her heartbroken. This feeling starts to go away when she meets the handsome and seemingly charming Carter Duncan (Michael Ealy). Their romance soon turns dangerous when Carter reveals to Leah his more violent side forcing her to reconsider who she once thought was Mr. Right.
The first thing that came to mind when I was watching this was that this what The Boy Next Door should have been more like. Now if you like melodrama, then this film is for you. I haven’t seen too many Lifetime films but I would imagine this would be a good one. This isn’t a negative but this is just what I thought. The story isn’t too original and does tend to go to the cheesy side but not unexpected based on the trailers. To be honest, this film is actually two films, it’s a romance film and also an action/suspense film. I thought the transition between the two tones was rather rough where the first part did not match the second. The first part was cheesy from the dialogue, to the soap-opera level acting, and the cheesy upbeat romantic music. You can tell the actors were trying, however, despite the cheesiness. The second part, which I actually liked more, was still cheesy but it had its moments. It started with Carter showing his violent side once and it continued in that direction from there. I just didn’t like how quickly it happened. It just got more exciting as we got to see Michael Ealy be a slimy, sneaky, evil guy. I thought he did that very well and it was fun to watch and his performance was my favorite thing about the film. Sure, there are subplots about mid-life crises and kids but other than serving as Leah’s motivation for her relationship choices, is ignored for the most part. They try to make Leah into a likeable character but it just doesn’t work as she is so fickle with her relationship choices by easily or impulsively moving on from man to man. This is probably unfair to Sanaa Lathan and the film but I couldn’t stop thinking of Donna Tubbs from The Cleveland Show so I’m not sure if this affected my enjoyment of the film. This is not a bad film per se, its just a trashy 100 minutes
Score: 5.5/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.
