Gross Misconduct

Caught this one on the Mystery channel. I was curious about it because I liked Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive. The movie is pretty formulaic with some weak acting and poor production. In several opening scenes, you can even see the mike, so don't expect much here. Feels like a tv movie with strong sexual content.

One curious item is that in the opening scene, Naomi Watts' character is seen pleasuring herself while thinking about Jimmy Smits' character. For anyone who saw "Mulholland Drive," there is an eerie similarity to a pivotal scene in David Lynch's new dark tale. Curious foreshadowing to Ms. Watts' later roles.

Justin Thorne (Jimmy Smits) is an American working as a college professor in Australia. One of his students, Jennifer Carter (Naomi Watts), works for him as a babysitter and keeps flirting with him.

This is an Australian film. It has a bit of Fatal Attraction but it comes without the bunny. The constant changes in Jennifer feels artificial. She's almost doing different characters. While I understand it, I don't like it. Does he have to play the sax? The movie is doing some cringey stuff. The sax really bugs me. It's a ham-fisted way to heighten Jimmy Smits' sex appeal and makes this cheap 90's cheese. Trust me. The man does not need more sex appeal. It does have Naomi Watts doing the softest of erotica which only adds to the movie's B-movie feel. It's 90's late night cable fare. The second half has a boring court case. It's basically an erotic B-movie with A-list stars.

The story of the film is an interesting one that we've heard before, but that's not a problem--all films work like that. Well, most of them do, atleast. It looks as tho this film was made with a very small budget, which might actually be the case, and it takes away from it a lot. There are some sexually explicit scenes in the film, one of the most revealing being when the female lead is in the shower, and there's a full frontal shot of her nude. On that subject, what did that have to do with the story? Why was it necessary to add that scene? Especially at those angles (starting from her breasts, suddenly cutting to shots of her crotch).....makes no sense. This is a poorly put together movie, and it shows. The look of the film is somewhat shady in my opinion, and the way it's pulled off, I didn't find it very believable. Could have been much better. 5/10.

I gave this movie a 7. I would have given it a 9 but a couple scenes of full nudity were not needed at all! That was disappointing to say the least. Great film work and the acting was very good! I thought that this was one of Smits' best roles. He was amazing. Especially the scene where the students wrote on his chalk board! That was incredible!

Although I watched it until the part where the police found her at a bus stop shaking, I thought it was sort of inappropriate for TBS Superstation to play and start it at around 10:30 PM. Young children may still have been watching it and in some places it showed the full female body, behind a very see thru shower curtain. Not appropriate unless starting at 1-2am