ExTerminators

"ExTerminators" is about a woman named Alex (Heather Graham) who loves to help out people. This could be the reason why she married a man that she supports and doesn't work. One day, Alex comes home from work to find her husband cheating on her. Without any explanation needed, this ends the marriage leaving Alex feeling bitter and upset. A few weeks later, Alex is at the grocery store and while shopping a random male approaches her and takes the pie that Alex was planning to purchase. Alex informs the man that she was going to buy that pie. The guy responds by stating, "I don't see your name on it." Upset by the response, Alex punches the guy and is of course, arrested. Alex now has to attend an anger management class. This is where she meets Stella (Jennifer Coolidge) and Nikki (Amber Heard), who have their history of anger issues pertaining to men. What happens next has to be seen to be believed but the three women go into business to become the ExTerminators.

"ExTerminators" is terrible title for a film. I get the fact that it's suppose to be funny because its a play on words. If you read the title and get the little gag in the title than you will figure out exactly what the film is about. Its a film about a group of women who go around and terminate the exes of various women who pay them to do so. I guess if the film had the right director and writer on board it could have been a pretty funny film but instead it turned into something that I feel I would see on Lifetime.

The first problem I had with the film was that it made every male in this movie out to either be a jerk or completely clueless. That element alone made this film feel like a Lifetime movie. Alex's husband is a user and a cheater, another guy is a woman beater, and all the other men in this film are all the typical college guy stereotypes who just grab female asses. Even the good guy in this film was portrayed as stupid. I understand this is a film about strong women but seriously not every guy is an ass or an idiot. Don't insult my intelligence like that. I would pose to even question what kind of guy would cheat on Heather Graham? The woman is freaking beautiful with an amazing body. I don't really get that. If your going to make a film about someone cheating why not make Jennifer Coolidge the main character, because than it would be a bit more believable but that's just my take.

The next issue I had was the whole subplot of the film, which involved an IRS agent by the name of Hutt (Sam Lloyd). You see Hutt was investigating Stella's business, which ironically is a exterminator business. She kills bugs for a living. As it turns out, Hutt now begins to investigate Stella and and the rest of the girls. One would argue that this is all part of the story and adds something to it. I personally found it to be rather silly and the twist in the end seemed almost too simple for its own good. It wasn't as crafty as writer, Suzanne Weinert intended it to be. As the story develops everything just seems to simple and unexplained. Why doesn't anyone look into why all of a sudden this anger management class keeps getting a ton of new members each and every week. Why are the cops so stupid? It's three women who are killing men left and right but yet no one can figure this out? I am sorry but that's a bit of a stretch. The cops didn't even really investigate through the film.

I actually liked Heather Graham in this role. I think she did a decent job even though the script was weak and the characters weren't well written. I personally thought it was really silly to try to make her look ugly by giving her huge glasses from the 50's though. What the heck was the director thinking? Who makes fun of people who wear glasses anymore? Seriously, what is this... the 70s? I don't get it. Anyway, Graham did all she could to survive the role. As for Coolidge, she was alright as well. I think she plays a good drunk and bitter ex-wife. Amber Heard was unrecognizable in the film and was good in the role even if she was a bit too over the top at times. I don't know why they made her into such a psycho but would guess she was the perfect opposite of the character Graham played. The acting by the leads was decent however all the smaller supporting roles were horrible including the guy who played Hutt. Just bad supporting roles all around...

At the end of the day, "ExTerminators" is a direct to video film that truly deserves the title. While the film's premise could be funny, it fails to produce any real laughs. The direction is sloppy and the writing is poor. Graham, Coolidge, and Heard do all they can to help make the film watchable but sadly due to the poor character development they couldn't do much. It's no shock to me why this film went right to video because it would have failed in theaters as a feature film. Its sad to see movies like this sometimes because you can see where if it were in the hands of another writer or director it could have been 100 times better. I will give it some points for the premise and for the decent acting job by the three leads but other than that I would have to tell you to skip this one because it's definitely a stinker.

MovieManMenzel's final rating for "the ExTerminators" is a 4 out of 10.

This is by far one of the funniest and under-rated films I have seen in recent years. Jennifer Coolidge rocks as usual and she makes this film what it is. She is just funny with meaning to be or at least in a very unpretentious way. I love all these girls and have watched this movie over and over. The soundtrack also compliments this movie completely. This is a movie that doesn't go stale or off in left field like most do half way through. The story offers continuous laughs and keeps your attention. It has some very surprising takes along the way and keeps you guessing what's next. These girls are my hero's and this film was cast in absolute perfection as each one plays their roles perfectly and gives this movie a sense of reality. These characters all pull off their roles in a way that doesn't at all seem scripted but like you're watching an actual everyday happening. Thanks to everyone involved in this movie for offering such an entertaining and comical movie that I hope will gain all the recognition it deserves. My hat's off to these women.

"EXterminators" is a film that explores the possibility of putting angry, violent women in the same room, leading to something worse than bad. A four-legged pest control business becomes the front for "two legged vermin" extermination. The film's screenplay is filled with black comedy, but only occasional scenes display dark humor. The clever plot never really blossoms, as everything is too restrained.

"ExTerminators" is one of the funniest and under-rated films I have seen in recent years. Jennifer Coolidge rocks as usual, making this film what it is. She is just funny with meaning to be or at least in a very unpretentious way. The soundtrack also compliments this movie completely. The story offers continuous laughs and keeps your attention. It has some very surprising takes along the way and keeps you guessing what's next. The film is about a woman named Alex (Heather Graham), who loves to help out people and may have married a man she supports and doesn't work for. One day, Alex comes home from work to find her husband cheating on her. Without any explanation needed, this ends the marriage, leaving Alex feeling bitter and upset. A few weeks later, while shopping at the grocery store, a random male approaches her and takes the pie that Alex was planning to purchase. Alex informs the man that she was going to buy that pie, and the guy responds by stating, "I don't see your name on it." Upset by the response, Alex punches the guy and is arrested. Alex then has to attend an anger management class where she meets Stella (Jennifer Coolidge) and Nikki (Amber Heard), who have their history of anger issues pertaining to men. What happens next has to be seen to be believed, but the three women go into business to become the ExTerminators. "ExTerminators" is a terrible title for a film. If the film had the right director and writer on board, it could have been a pretty funny film. However, it turned into something that I feel I would see on Lifetime. The first problem I had with the film was that it made every male in this movie out to either be a jerk or completely clueless. That element alone made the film feel like a Lifetime movie. Alex's husband is a user and a cheater, another guy is a woman beater, and all the other men in this film are all the typical college guy stereotypes who just grab female asses. Even the good guy in this film was portrayed as stupid. The second issue I had with the film was the whole subplot of the film, which involved an IRS agent named Hutt (Sam Lloyd). Hutt began investigating Stella's business, which ironically is an exterminator business. As the story develops, everything seems to be simple and unexplained. The cops didn't even investigate through the film. I liked Heather Graham in this role, but the script was weak and the characters weren't well written. Amber Heard was unrecognizable in the film and was good in the role, although she was a bit too over the top at times. The acting by the leads was decent, but all the smaller supporting roles were horrible, including the guy who played Hutt.

In conclusion, "ExTerminators" is a direct-to-video film that truly deserves the title. While the premise could be funny, it fails to produce any real laughs. The direction is sloppy and the writing is poor. Graham, Coolidge, and Heard do their best to make the film watchable, but due to the poor character development, they couldn't do much.

Alex (Heather Graham) gets laid off. She breaks up with her boyfriend after catching him sleeping with another woman. She punches a guy for trying to take a blouse she wants to buy. She's sentenced to 12 months in group therapy. Stella (Jennifer Coolidge), Nikki (Amber Heard), and Kim (Joey Lauren Adams) are some of the others in the women's group. Stella hires Alex to be her accountant. Alex rejects lascivious tax auditor Hutt and he starts stalking her. Kim is abused by her husband. Stella, Nikki, and Alex follow him after one such incident and end up ramming him off a cliff killing him. Police detective Dan investigates the case. He recognizes Alex from school and they start dating. Stella and Nikki start wrecking havoc against the men of Texas.

Despite having a couple of pretty funny actors, this indie lacks big laughs. These are beautiful women with varying comedic skills. The material is where this movie falls short. Neither director John Inwood and writer Suzanne Weinert are that experienced. The writing lacks good jokes. Inwood is a functional TV director. The basic premise has potential for a black comedy but the writing is not funny enough.

While I went into this movie not expecting much because of how low its ratings generally are online, I'm happy to say that I came out of it having been blown away. From the suspense it creates in its very first scene to the twist it reveals in a sexy and well-shot scene near its end, this dark comedy succeeded in keeping me captivated and laughing for most of its running time. Additionally, it left me with some serious questions and lessons about some serious issues like domestic violence and women's solidarity in the end.

Perhaps what is most positive about the movie is the chemistry between its three main cast members - Heather Graham (as Alex), Jennifer Coolidge (as Stella), and Amber Heard (as Nikki). The three do an excellent job portraying three women who though they could not be any more different in their personalities, are nevertheless united in the their having gone through awful experiences with men and in having ended up on the wrong side of the law for having reacted in violent ways to the experiences. And it's perhaps because of the chemistry between these three women that the movie succeeds in being the entertaining comedy that it is.

Although the three women all gave stellar performances, I have to especially single out Amber Heard for her role as Nikki. I was at first skeptical that Heard would be able to play Nikki well because this was the first time in her career that she was playing a major comedic role. However, she managed to do away with this skepticism in me within the first 15 minutes of the film and she in the end succeeded in entertainingly merging, within Nikki's character, the comedic aspects of the movie with its darker aspects. This attests to Heard's versatility as an actress by that time because she'd already managed to convincingly play characters in horror (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane), thriller (Criminal Minds), drama (Hidden Palms), action (Never Back Down), teen (Remember the Daze), and now comedic roles in the movies she'd done. It's also worth noting here that ever since her performance in North Country (2005), this was more or less the first time that Heard took part in a movie with feminist themes and that had a strong leading female presence. And it was the second time that she was shooting in her hometown (Austin, Texas, USA) in her career - the first time having been her shooting All the Boys Love Mandy Lane in 2006.

Given Heard's great performance and her centrality in the movie's plot, one therefore wonders why she was excluded in the main poster for the movie. Whatever the reason was, her exclusion would have been a massive marketing mistake and it would also have been somewhat out-of-place since her character (Nikki) is more of an "exterminator" in the movie than even Heather Graham's character (Alex).

Besides matters relating to the performances, I found the movie's writing to be impressive in its uniqueness and creativity. Indeed, it is rare to see a movie that has women killing men as part of its major plot that is not overly sexualized and that presents the killings through a woman's gaze rather than through the "male gaze." This movie is, fortunately, exactly such a movie and so it would not be surprising know that it was an independent filmmaker woman (Suzanne Weinert) that wrote it. Contrary to most "woman kills men" movies - which have women's motives for killing men inevitably tied to sex and men's sexual fantasies in one way or another (e.g. Rape, lust, affair gone wrong etc) - Weinert centers the motives for Alex, Stela, and Nikki's killings of men on women's needs, particularly the need for women to free themselves from abusive relationships with the male victims. This, in my opinion, explains why many critics - most of them men - would have related poorly to the movie and thus panned it. And yet it is a strength of the movie rather than its weakness. Consequently, I believe that the movie is highly and unfairly underrated by an audience that is too used to centering women's cinematic violence against men on men's sexual needs to appreciate a movie that centers such violence on women's needs.

Another plus for the movie is that, despite some reviewers here saying otherwise, it actually is a great comedy. Most of the jokes in the movie are well-written and equally well-presented and performed and so I have little doubt that anyone with any sense of humor would be laughing throughout most of the movie.

Also of positive note are the movie's primary messages. One of them is that, often, women in abusive relationships with men are unfairly punished and pathologized for reacting violently to the abuse. Indeed, this is context in which Alex, Stella, and Nikki meet. The other key message is that women should learn to work together and promote other women because women's solidarity goes a long way towards improving women's lives and towards helping them escape abusive relationships. This message may be lost to many by the radical (read: murderous) way through which the three main characters in the movie choose to "solve" their problems but once one realizes that their "solution" is, among other things, merely an instrument for emphasizing how strong the bond between women needs to be, this message will not be lost to them.

All those said, I would criticize the movie's poor racial representation even as I would praise its positive gender and socio-economic representations. Every other aspect of the movie besides these - editing, cinematography, costumes, production design etc - is just so-so, being neither distinguishable nor problematic.

I rated this movie a 10 for all its strengths as discussed and despite its racial underrepresentation (because I did not deem this underrepresentation to take much away from its positives). I recommend the movie strongly to all looking for a light and fun dark comedy with which to pass time while also picking up some life lessons along the way. I especially recommend it to women but also to men who are unafraid of seeing the cinematic dark side to women through women's perspectives rather than men's. Fans of Amber Heard would also really want to watch this movie because she gives one of her best comedic performances in it.