The Perfect Roommate

I just got the W movie channel and this is what they showed tonight. The listings said Contact with Jodie Foster was on. Instead, they showed this derivative, hackneyed, poorly acted and amateurishly written made-for-TV movie. Someone is clearly asleep at the channel, but I gave it a chance. It does have a plot that seems to be leading up to a violent encounter a la Single White Female. There is tension - who is going to get hurt or killed? Everything that is going to happen is telegraphed and obvious. I won't put any spoilers here, but it was watchable purely because of the hilariously bad (like a high school play) acting and the unbelievably overdone plot - haven't we seen a story like this about 1,000 times only without the plot fizzling out? PS I found out the name of it by typing in the keyword "roommate" in IMDb.

My god, what to say about this movie? It's one of those made for TV movies you come across one afternoon when you're a bit bored and channel surfing and decide to watch to see if it's any good, then when you realise how cheesy and lame the 'storyline' (if you can call it that) is, and how terrible some of the acting is (BOTI BLISS please step forward!!) you can't stop watching it because it's so bad it's entertaining for that reason alone!

I won't go into details about what this movie's about (read some of the other reviews for that!) but it really is very lame and, as other reviewers have commented, Boti Bliss is one of the main reasons it's so bad. With her dark 'pixie' haircut she looked like an Audrey Hepburn wannabe, but failed miserably. She isn't 'femme fatale' or sexy enough to have played that role - she looked more like a bug eyed middle- class suburban housewife with a husband who has an incredibly boring but well paid job. Also, her acting in general was awful and she just wasn't believable in that role. To be expected to believe that William Moses's character would fall head over heels for someone like her was ridiculous.

William Moses seems to have become the Susan Lucci of TV movies and he's not a bad actor so I wish he wouldn't lower himself to be part of crappy movies like this! He can do much better.

Also, I noticed a goof in this movie, which doesn't seem to be mentioned on here. When the daughter rushes from the restaurant towards the end of the movie, after asking her boyfriend to take over her shift because she has to go and warn her dad about what's going on, her hair is in a ponytail, yet at one point when the camera goes to her driving along in her car suddenly her hair is down and not in the ponytail anymore. Presumably, if her character was so frantic to get to her dad before anything bad happened to him she'd hardly have taken the time to change her hairstyle on the way there!

Oh, as for the first review on here of this movie - as someone else has commented, that the reviewer (Coop Burtonburger?!) has given this movie a 10 star review is hilarious! Either that person was associated with the making of the movie or he's connected to someone who was part of the movie - and given that he gushed twice about one of the actresses (I think the actress who played William Moses's character's daughter) I think maybe it was her boyfriend or someone who's obsessed with her !! Of course, the other alternative is that that Coop Burtonburger has recently landed from Mars and this was the first movie he has ever seen and he was so awestruck that he thought it was incredible! Oh, or he could have been as high as a kite when he saw it and reviewed it. Those are the only possible reasons surely for giving a 10 star rating to a movie that should really have a zero star rating ! !

The villain is so poorly acted that it was all I could do to not only finish the movie, but not cringe or laugh. This movie was so dull and the ending happened so quickly with no suspense that I couldn't believe it when my tv showed there was less than 10 minutes left.

I didn't recognize BB with this hair, but seeing photos on IMDb, I do recognize her from CSI. She had so many terrible scenes. The "climax," if you can call it that where she had her villainous breakdown was more awkward than scary and she droned on so long, all Ashley had to do was throat punch her or something. I half expected the old gas attendant to come back and take her out.

It was just bad. As a positive, it wasn't slow, but so much of the movie was absurd. The dad who was skeptical of his daughter's older roommate...sleeps with her and goes head first into a fling after a couple of days. Not to mention not getting how that might strain his already fragile relationship with his daughter. He was just too naive to be believed.

The happily ever after ending was kind of ironic. Ashley was all about not taking money from her dad and in the span of two minutes, she takes gifts and her boyfriend takes jobs.

It's a super boring movie and only worth it for background noise. My dvr recorded the opening scene of The Wrong Tutor and that couple of minutes was more intriguing and suspenseful than this entire flick. The actress who played Ashley was in a movie with Jon Cor and Adrienne Barber (as the villain) and BB could take some lessons from Adrienne on how to play a similar role.

I thought this movie was the best ever. Really great acting, especially Ashley Leggat, who did the best acting ever. I love this movie so much! It's the best horror/thriller film ever. I've never seen anything like it, because it's the best ever. I thought this movie was very interesting, and I couldn't stop watching it. When it was on, I was automatically glued to the couch, and was eating popcorn, and was very impressed with the movie. Best movie ever! I hope they make another movie similar with the actress, Ashley Leggat in it. She's a really great actress. They all are great actors/actresses. Perfect characters for their roles. I give this movie a 10/10!

THE PERFECT ROOMMATE (TV movie) 1.5 out of 10 stars Time to Read:3min

BASIC PLOT: Normally, I'd write a succinct outline of the plot. But there never was a plot to write about. Basically, a waitress let's another waitress move in with her, then suddenly becomes suspicious of her (for no reason), and somehow suspects she's up to no good (with no reason). It's just a bunch of one dimensional, wooden characters, taking actions with no motivations, without any explanations, right up to the end. It's a disjointed, convoluted mess that should have been stopped while it was still words on a page.

WHAT WORKS: *CINTHIA BURKE IS A LIFETIME MOVIE GUILTY PLEASURE Cinthia Burke is a guilty pleasure of mine. She always plays the bad girls in Lifetime movies from this era, and even though these roles are cheesy, she manages to make it work. She's about the only thing in this movie that does work.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK:

*I KNOW THIS IS A MELODRAMA, BUT THE CHARACTERS ARE TOO ONE DIMENSIONAL I know in melodramas, characters aren't supposed to have much depth, but this movie takes that too far. Everybody is very wooden, and the little character development there is, doesn't tell us enough to make us care. Even the background people seem like cardboard cutouts. Christine Conradt should have tweaked the script, and given the actors more to work with.

*WHY WOULD ASHLEY AND MATT BE SUSPICIOUS OF CARRIE BECAUSE OF SOMETHING HER EX HUSBAND DID? Women get conned by men all the time, why would Ashley be suspicious of Carrie because Carrie's ex-husband killed his mistress? If anything, that would make most women MORE sympathetic to her. Matt is supposed to be a good guy, well most good guys are sympathetic to women who get used and abused. His suspicions are NOT BELIEVABLE! He insists Carrie should have told Ashley BEFORE she moved in, again, I ask WHY? Why should she be required to share something so humiliating before becoming someone's roommate? This whole plot line RUINS the movie, and cancels my suspension of disbelief.

*THINGS GET MORE UNBELIEVABLE WHEN MATT'S BROTHER BECOMES SUSPICIOUS... Are you freaking kidding me? Matt's brother, Ethan, decides to play Nancy Drew about Carrie, again, I ask WHY? Carrie has not given these people any reason to be suspicious of her, so why are they? If hooking up with a lousy, deceitful man makes you untrustworthy, then I guess half the women in the world are not too be trusted.

*ASHLEY SAYS CARRIE KNEW ABOUT MARTY'S AFFAIRS and this makes her suspicious because Carrie testified at Marty's (Carrie's ex) trial that she didn't know about them. But what Carrie actually said was she knew about his FIRST affair, and then didn't want to know about the subsequent ones. So again, poor writing, and LOTS of deus ex machina from Christine Conradt.

*THERE'S LOTS OF CLOSEUP WEIRD SHOTS This may be because it's from 2010, and maybe wasn't widescreen (& they are stretching it to make it work on today's TVs). Sometimes when they stretch things, you get a strange effect. But even if that's the case, a lot of the shots are still awkward.

*WHY WOULD ASHLEY CARE THAT CARRIE IS SLEEPING WITH RICHARD? Ashley says it's a betrayal that her roommate slept with her dad. Again, I ask WHY? Why do writers continually forget that characters NEED motivations to make them believable. Ashley HAS to have a REASON why she is mad, that two people she cares about are no longer lonely. But instead she throws a tantrum like she's 12. Protagonists need to be LIKABLE (especially in melodramas)! But in this movie, the only person that's sympathetic is Richard (William R. Moses, Ashley's dad.

*IF ASHLEY IS SO SUSPICIOUS OF CARRIE, WHY DOESN'T SHE ASK CARRIE TO MOVE OUT?

If you are so suspicious of someone, you're interviewing people from their past, and throwing fits about them sleeping with your dad, why would you still be living with them, when it would be so easy to just ask them to leave? You can't have it both ways, either they suspect her (even though there's nothing to suspect her of), and should ask her to leave, or they don't suspect her, and she stays, you see how confusing this convoluted script is?

*WHEN ASHLEY'S CAR BREAKS DOWN, SHE KEEPS CALLING HER DAD FOR HOURS, EVEN THOUGH SHE CAN'T GET AHOLD OF HIM. WHY DOESN'T SHE CALL HER BOYFRIEND, MATT?

This is yet another giant plot hole that MAKES NO SENSE! She's going to stand at a gas station, all night, when she could just call her boyfriend instead? REALLY?

TO RECOMMEND, OR NOT TO RECOMMEND, THAT IS THE QUESTION: *I would NOT recommend this movie, even to fans of melodramas. The characters are wooden, their motivations are not believable, and even at the half way point, we don't know why the antagonists are doing what they are doing. If you're looking for a decent made-for-tv melodrama from Christine Conradt, try The Bride He Bought Online (2015). It's actually enjoyable.

CLOSING NOTES: *This is a made-for-tv movie, please keep that in mind before you watch\rate it. TV movies have a much lower budget, and so your expectations should be adjusted.

*I have no connection to the film, or production in ANY way. This review was NOT written in full, or in part, by a bot. I am just an honest viewer, who wishes for more straight forward reviews (less trolls and fanboys), and better entertainment. Hope I helped you out.