Such a frustrating disappointment

Strong and Moving!

Excellent adaptation.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

There's a lot to like about this movie, but by the end it left me exhausted and more than a little bored…and not just because its lack of plot left it sputtering to an anti-climactic ending. Women in Trouble repeats the same narrative dynamic over and over and over again until it has wrung every bit of dramatic juice out, leaving behind a dry and twisted up story that desperately needs a jolt of something to keep the viewer engaged.The film is about what happens in the interconnected lives of a group of women on a single day. Unfortunately, while 10 different women and 1 girl are spotlighted, only three of them actually have a story to tell. Elektra Luxx (Carla Gugino) is a porn star who finds out she's pregnant and doesn't know if she should keep it or even tell the father. Doris (Connie Britton) is a woman feuding with her sister and keeping a secret about her niece. She gets stuck in a hot elevator with Elektra. Maxine is a therapist who discovers that her husband is having an affair with Doris' sister. While other women are focused on equally, they're really just filler or playing a part in the lives of Elektra, Doris and Maxine.The good about Women in Trouble is there are several women who parade around in relatively little clothing and there's some nice acting on display. Most of the characters, even the ultimately unimportant ones, are given long and meaty stretches of dialog to chew their way through. There's also some salty language, but that comes off like a cross between Sex and the City and the Jersey Shore. If you're a fan of pretty and talented actress getting a chance to shine, you'll find a lot of that to enjoy here.Unfortunately, almost every single scene in this movie boils down to the same thing. It's two people sitting on their butts while they talk and talk and talk and talk. This thing is so wordy it would even make Kevin Smith yell "Shut up already!" at the screen. This script could be performed on the radio and almost nothing would be missed. Instead of a motion picture, writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez has made a static picture. While all that stationary emoting is fun to look at for a while, there comes a point where you want the characters to do a cartwheel, dance a jig, pick a fight or just move in some way. And after seeing the same two-person dynamic play out for the 5th or 6th time, you start asking "What else is there?" only to find there isn't anything else here.Women in Trouble doesn't feel like a single story. It feels like watching an audition reel where a series of actresses are doing a bunch of random screen tests, hoping they can catch some studio executive's eye. Some of them are eye-catching but it's just hard to get through them all in one sitting.If you don't care about plot and do like ogling attractive women, you'll have a good time with this movie. For the rest of us, Women in Trouble is an equally entertaining and grueling experience.

An odd but strangely compelling indie comedy, "Women in Trouble" does just what the title suggests; it puts an assortment of lovely ladies into humorously dire predicaments. Two women, Connie Britton ("Friday Night Lights") and the newly pregnant porn star Elektra (Carla Gogina), are stuck together in a stalled elevator; Adrianne Palicki (also of "Friday Night Lights") and Emmanuelle Chrichi are sex workers who witness a crime and have to run to safety; Sarah Clarke ("24") is a therapist whose husband ("The Mentalist"'s Simon Baker) is having an affair with one of her patients; and Marley Shelton is an engaged stewardess who's unfortunate enough to have the rock star (Josh Brolin) who's performing sex on her in the airplane bathroom die when the plane hits turbulence. The story lines, which seem disparate at first glance, do manage to dovetail into one another by movie's end.As written and directed by Sebastian Gutierrez, the situations are played for both humor and sentiment, as we get to see just some of the absurd things women are forced to go through on a daily basis. And in each case, it seems, the women who are "in trouble" are aided by other women who are in trouble, essentially leading to a special bond of womanhood that helps get them through tough times. The dialogue is generally sharp and witty without ever becoming denigrating or smart-alecky, and the situations the women find themselves in are just absurd enough to keep them from becoming soap-operatic but realistic enough to make us care.As with most movies that engage in multiple plot lines, some of the stories and some of the scenes are better than others, and, honestly, the film might have benefited from a little less cleverness and a little more focus overall. Still, it has its moments.

I honestly did not see much potential in "Women In Trouble," but I decided to rent it and I wish I had made it out to the theaters for it. This is a wonderful film that employs the technique of multiple story lines to perfection. The film makes you laugh much more than expected, but keeps its heart in the midst of all the appropriately titled trouble. It's too real to just become a comedy or a tragedy or a drama, this film is an intoxicating blur of emotions. On top of all this is a phenomenal cast. If "Women In Trouble" gave you that hesitant feeling it gave me when I first heard of it, then ignore it and take a risk this one is well worth it!

This movie works sort of like "Crash" or "Magnolia", with different characters having their own story lines that turn out to be related to each other in some way, and intersect at certain points in the film. Also like Magnolia, there's a lot of self-discovery and unburdening of the heart. It's about two thirds drama, layered within outrageous situations and humor. There are a lot of characters. I don't know how the writer kept them all straight. There's a porn star, a prostitute, a porn star/prostitute, a therapist, a flight attendant, a masseuse, and a couple others. Some of these are strangers at first, but form strong bonds, resulting, I think, from some natural female instinct to support each other in crisis. I'd like to run down the various crises they deal with, but to avoid spoiling things I'll just say they involve being stuck in an elevator, infidelity, porn, lesbian relationships, bestiality, and unusual sexual dysfunction, to name a few.This movie basically ends up being about womanly camaraderie, and the bond that ties all women in all walks of life together, I think. However, it's also got enough sex talk, women in underwear, zany situations, and even a degree of bathroom humor, that'll keep guys interested. It's also a great story with an outstanding script and superb performances that combined to have me completely absorbed by the end. I'm a guy, in case that wasn't clear.I have to extend extra-special props to Adrianne Palicki (Holly, the call girl/porn actress), who had a provocative monologue near the middle of the movie that was impeccably and movingly delivered. I was completely entranced.PS. Keep watching after the credits. There's a cute little satirical interview with the "porn stars", conducted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It's not quite up to the level of the material in the rest of the movie (probably why it was placed after the credits), but still worth watching.