Homewrecker

Contrary to what many might think at first glance, it doesn't fit the label of "trash," but rather as a serious film - and that's a positive thing, as I detest the nonsense of "trash" movies! However, even with this serious approach, some parts of the plot seem somewhat implausible. The narrative, despite attempting to explore a difficult theme for its time, ends up falling into some improbable situations, which affects the viewer's immersion in the story. Nevertheless, the film has its merits, such as competent direction and convincing performances from the cast, managing to maintain the audience's interest despite some flaws in the screenplay. Overall, the film presents an interesting proposition but could benefit from a more realistic approach in certain aspects of the plot to create a more impactful experience.

I stumbled up on this when it first came out on TV in 1992 mainly because Kate Jackson was in it and I was always a fan of Kate Jackson from her days in Charlies Angels.

Basically in a nutshell, this is your typical sentient female computer (played by Jackson) that is created by a scientist, falls in love with said scientist and then goes berserk and wants to kill the woman that comes between her and her "man" (creator).

The movie is slow and certain points are just not believable as objects move within the home without any apparent physical connection. Does the computer have telekinesis? I don't think so.

If you want to see a homicidal computer in action, go right to the source. Hal-9000 from 2001: Space Odyssey which is considered one of the best sci-fi movies made. Nuff said? At any rate the acting is mediocre overall, and while Ms Jackson's does voice the computer very well, it is in by no comparison to Candice Bergen's voice for SAL-9000 in the movie 2010. (Sal's voice is just as good as Hal's BTW, very eerie).

At any rate for the Hal-9000 fan this might be worth watching in addition other movies that have 'borrowed' from Stanley Kubrick masterpiece. But for a first time view...watch 2001: Space Odyssey first.

This was a really cheesy film to say the least. A guy creates a computer with emotions in his cottage and when he and his wife try to get back together it tries to kill. Avoid this non scary, non intelligent thing and watch something good. Like Dark City, Army of Darkness, or The Thing.

I had the pleasure of watching this "jewel" at about three in the morning, which is the only time of day that one can be in the proper state of mind to sit through "Homewrecker".

The plot itself is pretty thin and you can figure out where this one's heading after about the first twenty minutes. Despite this, the movie proceeds at a tediously slow place, taking two hours to string out what could have been accomplished in about fifteen. By the time its over, you'll seriously wonder why you bothered to sit around and actually see the plot unfold exactly as you knew it would.

The acting is mediocre but not overly bad. At the end, I couldn't fault any of the actors - I wouldn't have been motivated to try hard either if I had the script in front of me. The actress playing the wife seemed to do an admirable job at the beginning, but by the middle of the film she seems to have given up just like everyone else.

"Everyone else" isn't really as grand a term as it sounds though - there's really only four major characters and you can make the argument that the wife and daughter are just cannon fodder added to up the stakes for the grand finale. In the end, this is a story of a downtrodden scientist and his super-smart, super-envious, super-desperate-to-be-in-love computer creation.

The movie never develops the sense of danger which is necessary to make the viewer care about the human characters and attacks the subject matter on a mostly superficial level. It's about what you'd expect from a made-for-TV movie that's being shown in the wee hours of the morning.

"Homewrecker" is somewhat fun to watch if you're a fan of cheesy sci-fi. It doesn't have any guys in rubber suits destroying a cardboard metropolis, but it does manage to parade out all the overdone sci-fi themes of computer-human interaction. The whole movie plays out like a Michael Crichton novel that was re-written by seventh-grader.

Lucy, the titular supercomputer, looks like a bad prop rescued from late 70's movie set. Lots of large blinking lights and a pretty bad HAL-ripoff of an "all-seeing eye" which serves as the computer's main interface with the humans. Lucy can also amazingly manipulate physical objects with which she has no physical connections - doors, water faucets, gas lines, etc... They could have at least thrown a wire somewhere in the camera shot to lend a wee bit of credibility to this amazing ability.

So, "Homewrecker" gets a 2 out of 10 in my opinion. It doesn't try to insult your intelligence, but it doesn't try to do anything else either. This is just another example of generic, off-the-shelf sci-fi thrown out there for the public. A little original thought or enthusiasm would helped a lot.