Touches You

As Good As It Gets

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Blistering performances.

Ratings can make or break a movie.How many times have we skipped a movie because of a bad review ? A Good Marriage is a very entertaining, watchable movie.Due to this review,I would of passed on this,but I watched the movie before I read the review.Lucky me.As I try to understand why this movie was given a thumbs down,I cannot come to any rhyme or reason why this movie was tossed in the outhouse.Maybe IMDB should review the reviewer.

I'll start off by saying I'm a huge Stephen King fan - always have been; always will be. But I haven't rushed to see "A Good Marriage" because the reviews haven't been great. But it was the sheer ordinariness of this movie that sent chills up my spine. It made me think of Hannah Arendt's coverage of the Eichmann trials and musings on the banality of evil. Most of us aren't shocked when a criminal is rounded up who looks like Charles Manson and has a troubled past. But what do we make of the criminal who has no criminal past, looks like the classic "boy/girl next door", and was class valedictorian? The Ted Bundys of the world? Okay, so the beginning was a bit of a snooze fest. I kept thinking to myself, "Normal, hard-working people, happy family, solid marriage - I get it already." I honestly wasn't expecting a lot from this movie. I love Stephen King, but I had heard that A "Good Marriage" lacked the requisite Stephen King signature staples, like rotting, talking corpses, telepathic powers, killer cars, etc. And though the main theme was an interesting idea, it didn't break any new ground. I mean, a woman discovers her husband isn't what she thought he was...been there, done that. Story of my life. At best, a sure contender for the Lifetime Channel. But it was the sheer mundane-ness of this movie that made it so intriguing and ultimately disturbing.I could emotionally relate to Darcy as she discovered that her husband was the infamous Beadie, but what intrigued me even more was her response.Darcy's final conversation with a guy obsessed with tracking down Beadie was poignant. Here, he's spent a huge chunk of his life chasing down a serial killer only to be forced to reexamine his own life and learn that things aren't always so cut-and-dried or black-and-white as they initially seem.In the final analysis, "A Good Marriage" may have been too real and down-to-earth for Stephen King loyalists and people accustomed to high drama, but if you can appreciate an intimate, subtle, slow burning character study I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Sometimes it all comes down to expectations. Maybe it's because I've seen a good number of Lifetime movies (over my wife's shoulder of course, in bits and pieces), but compared to the lot of those I found this to be good, quite good. I have a feeling "Uncle Stevie" wanted to do his own take on those kind of often cheesy "thrillers" and somehow through his script (based on a story from 'Full Dark, No Stars') found a way to make it an actual tense and weird dramatic thriller with two excellent performances.I say 'weird' since a lot of this comes off not unlike a dream at times - there's a whole bedroom conversation Joan Allen has with Anthony LaPaglia that I thought at first was an Ambien-induced nightmare of some kind - and there's a whole question of morality to the thing. It shouldn't be some surprise that Allen's character finds out her husband has killed people and has been hiding about it for a very long time. So why doesn't she turn him over to the police? Would you if you found out your significant other killed someone? It's always easier to say than in actual practice, and what I responded to here is that King lets the audience read into Allen's character what they may.In other words, it's King playing in Hitchcock's sand-box (this is more in the writing, the direction is just OKAY TV style, though the use of 2:35 widescreen is a nice touch). Again, it's not anything that you should immediately rush out to see, and of course there are better King adaptations. Though on the other hand I think this is also superior to some of the other overlong King mini-series works (The Shining, anyone?) and I think thanks to the actors on hand, especially Allen who is finding subtlety and nuance to play in almost every moment, it makes it credible. There's even a scene near the end in a hospital room - and all the more incredible since you know King is hit or miss at endings - which is flat out great.So for a trashy TV movie-of-the-week kind of deal, it's almost a minor miracle this is as good as it is, genuinely so, not a 'so-bad-it's-haha' thing. If King had maybe curbed some of the weirder elements - I half expected most of the movie, not just a few scenes, to be some overlong nightmare, which would have made it tremendously experimental - it'd be even stronger.

This was a good movie. It is not what you think...if you read the movie synopsis. It definitely is Stephen King-ish. If you like movies that are interesting and keep you full of "what's next",then you'll like this movie. Some people want so much out of a movie other than entertainment. And most of these reviews sound like these people want to be movie critics but didn't make it. Plan and simple...not a bad movie at all. It starts right from the beginning. Keeps you interested all the way to the end. I, personally, have not seen a movie like this. And I watch a lot of lifetime movies. I really would like to read this book! That's how interesting the movie was to us. Good weekend movie or date movie.