Oh my God! Almost thirty years after seeing this crapper in theaters and I still remember its awfulness. Timid librarian Penelope Ann Miller (the Betty Lou of the title) is literally a background player in her own life. Her police officer husband Eric Thal barely notices her and the world at large takes her for granted. After a gangland slaying, she stumbles across the murder weapon and tries to turn it in to the police, but swiftly gets ignored and railroaded out by her idiot husband and his colleagues. After firing off the gun in a restroom, she gets taken in to custody and claims to be the murderer, resulting in her luxuriating in the newfound attention being heaped on her.
This is definitely the type of film that should have gone straight to video or ended up on cable without stopping in the theater. This must have been a painfully slow movie weekend that this flotsam generated a cinematic opening. Even worse, I have no idea why half the recognizable people in this cast are squandering their talents here. Cathy Moriarty was slowly being relegated to bad comedy support, but Alfre Woodward, Catherine Keener, Julianne Moore? What the heck?!
No doubt Miller thought it would be something to carry her own comedy, but she should have chosen better. Betty Lou alternates between a forgettable mouse and a woefully wrong-headed moron. Miller has been much better elsewhere.
The comedy is nonexistent. It is 1992 and the film still thinks it is funny that when Woodard as Betty Lou's attorney introduces herself with "Ms." that all of the men in the room give each other a look like she is "one of those". The serious and rather violent final act of the film does really help matters either.
A good deal of the problem is that Betty Lou engages in this obstruction of justice or media circus in order to snatch the respect being denied her by her husband and the world in general. Alas, we have no understanding how Betty Lou and her husband ended up married at all. Betty Lou is tragically colorless and uninteresting, Thal's husband is a boorish overbearing buffoon. Worse, he and his colleagues do not seem to have a handful of brain cells to rub between them and could not solve the easiest crossword puzzle. The two leads have literally no chemistry, so it is hard to become engaged in this chicanery. Perhaps if the filmmakers had gotten Thal naked as the makers of The Puppet Masters wisely did, we might better understand Betty Lou's attraction to him.
The whole production is just a boring, lifeless and tonally absurd mess. I would say catch it at your own risk, but I don't think even late night cable resurrects this wayward zombie.
This is definitely the type of film that should have gone straight to video or ended up on cable without stopping in the theater. This must have been a painfully slow movie weekend that this flotsam generated a cinematic opening. Even worse, I have no idea why half the recognizable people in this cast are squandering their talents here. Cathy Moriarty was slowly being relegated to bad comedy support, but Alfre Woodward, Catherine Keener, Julianne Moore? What the heck?!
No doubt Miller thought it would be something to carry her own comedy, but she should have chosen better. Betty Lou alternates between a forgettable mouse and a woefully wrong-headed moron. Miller has been much better elsewhere.
The comedy is nonexistent. It is 1992 and the film still thinks it is funny that when Woodard as Betty Lou's attorney introduces herself with "Ms." that all of the men in the room give each other a look like she is "one of those". The serious and rather violent final act of the film does really help matters either.
A good deal of the problem is that Betty Lou engages in this obstruction of justice or media circus in order to snatch the respect being denied her by her husband and the world in general. Alas, we have no understanding how Betty Lou and her husband ended up married at all. Betty Lou is tragically colorless and uninteresting, Thal's husband is a boorish overbearing buffoon. Worse, he and his colleagues do not seem to have a handful of brain cells to rub between them and could not solve the easiest crossword puzzle. The two leads have literally no chemistry, so it is hard to become engaged in this chicanery. Perhaps if the filmmakers had gotten Thal naked as the makers of The Puppet Masters wisely did, we might better understand Betty Lou's attraction to him.
The whole production is just a boring, lifeless and tonally absurd mess. I would say catch it at your own risk, but I don't think even late night cable resurrects this wayward zombie.