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DVD Swimfan
Best enjoyed as unintentional comedy, Swimfan is Fatal Attraction in high school, with a modest trick up its sleeve. Pay close attention to the opening minutes and you'll understand why new student Madison Bell (Erika Christensen) is so obsessed with swim-team star Ben Cronin (Jesse Bradford), but the movie's nearly over before that early clue is fully explained. By that time anyone with a pulse will be ahead of the hackneyed screenplay, so Madison's fatal attraction turns increasingly, and hilariously, predictable. Poor Ben has to suffer her suffocating manipulations, assuring his girlfriend (Shiri Appleby) that his quickie with Madison was a one-time mistake. Too late! Madison conned him into saying "I love you," and she's determined to be his girl... no matter what it takes. Credit Bradford and especially Christensen for keeping a straight face, and Aussie director John Polson for milking tension out of this trashy take on psychotic jealousy. Against all odds, it's garishly entertaining. --Jeff Shannon
Obsession. Betrayal. Revenge. Some Girls Have All The Fun!
Swimfan is a psychological thriller in the mold of Fatal Attraction. Although this film does not come close the genius of Fatal Attraction, it does effectively bring a similar feel to a much younger audience. I expected very little from Swimfan, and must say I was surprised by what it had to offer. That is not to say this film is for everyone, but it will effectively scare teenager boys from cheating on their girlfriends.
Special Features can be found on both sides of the disc. On the widescreen side, you will find a collection of deleted scenes and an audio commentary. The full frame side features the same audio commentary, as well as a featurette, and a trailer.
The deleted and extended scenes are, for the most part, were wisely cut from the film. Most of the scenes seemed very redundant, covering most topics already found in the final cut of the film. All of these scenes can be viewed with or without director's commentary, and are presented in 2.35:1 widescreen.
The audio commentary features director John Polson, as well as the two lead actors, Jesse Bradford & Erika Christensen. I found this track to be a little unpolished. The director's comments are very good, but the two actors seem to bring the commentary down a notch. Neither Jesse Bradford and Erika Christensen add much in term of valuable insight into the making of the film. Their consistent interruptions and "giggles" take away from John Polson's informative comments.
The 10 minute featurette is entitled "The Girlfriend From Hell". This featurette is a character study of Madison Bell (played by Erika Christensen), that is executed through a number of interviews. This featurette is not overly valuable... after viewing the film, you already know how messed up this character is. The only aspect that I found insightful is the comments by Christensen on how she prepared for the role, and executed her performance.
This is not the best film, but it is worth checking out. The quality of the disc is very high, the special features are above average, and the film does have some entertainment value.
Quite remarkably unremarkable
Ben (Jesse Bradford) is a high school senior very contentedly paired off with girlfriend Amy (Shiri Appleby) and trying to focus on getting in shape for landing a swimming scholarship at Stanford. Then a new girl turns up at school, the alluring Madison (Erica Chistensen), who seduces Ben into a poorly advised one-off sexual adventure. Only the `one-off' bit is very much his idea. She has quite different ideas and, sadly, she is not a nice girl...
This film is so completely unremarkable that when I saw it a day or two ago I honestly couldn't say whether I'd seen it before or nor. If I had I'd forgotten and confidently expect to forget again. It's faintly entertaining I suppose in its nondescript way, basically a retread of all those other hell-hath-no-fury movies like `Play Misty' and `Fatal Attraction' only transposed, as these days everything is sooner or later, to a high school setting. But `faintly' is just the right word. It isn't often an 85 minute movie seems too long but this one does.
Another Wasted Opportunity
"Swimfan" follows such a successful commercial formula that it is surprising the industry does not jump on this idea more often. Find an older film(s) that had good box office results (in this case "Play Misty for Me" and "Fatal Attraction"). Change the story to target a young audience not exposed to the originals. Keep the costs modest by using a cast that works cheap while not staging any elaborate action sequences-pouring most of the $8.5 Million budget into an aggressive promotional campaign, and wait for some nice profits. There is almost no risk because it doesn't have to be a mega-hit, even if the critics hate it the promotional efforts should guarantee more than enough attendance to put this thing into the profitable category. The only thing more "money-in-the-bank" is Disney's re-release of its classics to a new audience every eight years.
Although portrayed one-dimensionally, the obsessive character in 'Misty" and "Fatal Attraction" was a deep thinker compared to "Swimfan's" Madison. Erika Christensen must play her as a character that comes with zero motivation. The script has no provision for her to communicate what attracts Madison to high-school athletes, what makes her instantly obsessive toward Ben (Jesse Bradford), or even mildly attracted her to him. Seemingly the screenwriter and director made an assessment of the intelligence of "Swimfan's" target audience, reasoning that very few of them would even be interested in knowing how and why Madison is so psychotic and unbalanced.
They appear to be going somewhere with the revelations about Madison's old boyfriend but these are inserted to advance the action and not as motivational explanations. Fortunately, Christensen is talented enough to subtly convey weirdness even before her hook-up with Ben takes place. Speaking of which, Ben and Madison's sexual tumble in the swimming pool is the movie's one moment of true excellence. This is a case where the constraints of keeping a PG rating inspired rather than hindered, as the director ends up with a far more inventive and erotic scene than would have occurred had he been able to be more graphic.
What is tragic is that the director really hit a home run in the casting of Christensen. With those big, round, blankly lidded eyes (the only feature that distinguishes her from her looklike Julia Stiles), she could have brought real depth to her character-she simply glows when on the screen. Superficially Christensen plays the same basic character in "Home Room", "Traffic", "The Upside of Anger", and even "The Perfect Score". But she does something completely different with each of them and really demonstrates amazing talent. The director realized too late how much Christensen was bringing to the screen. There was not enough time to change the story and put in an original twist. There is no way after the swimming pool scene that Ben would have resisted Christensen and gone back to a sexless nothing like Sheri Appleby (insert "Some Kind of Wonderful" here). They tried to fix this issue in post-production by deleting almost all of Appleby's scenes. But the better solution would have been to drop the predictable ending and re-shoot with something quirky.
The technical aspects of the production are excellent. It is nicely lighted and filmed. The supporting cast is competent and Christensen is excellent. But it is not ambitious and the cheapness comes into play by having almost all the action take place off-screen. During the first half one is fooled into thinking this is a high quality effort. At the point of the swim meet and its sabotaged steroid test, the wheels completely fall off. From that point on the viewer is asked to believe a series of absurd plot developments that could only happen if you credited Madison with Bill Murray's "Groundhog Day" ability to relive days. Mostly off-screen and without plausible explanation she switches Ben's test sample, infiltrates the hospital, and breaks out of a police car. The second half of the movie can best be appreciated by viewing the film as weird comedy, like a restrained version of "Scary Movie".
Domestic tensions turn intimately sinister in this pulpy potboiler, which develops a steely sense of menace. The trouble begins when Mr. and Mrs. Glass (Stellan Skarsgård, Diane Lane) are appointed legal guardianship of 16-year-old Ruby (Leelee Sobieski) and her 11-year-old brother (Trevor Morgan) after their parents are killed in a car accident. As trusted former neighbors, the Glasses welcome the orphans into their luxurious Malibu home, but the all-glass structure turns into a gilded cage when Mr. Glass's motivations are revealed to be anything but friendly. With plot-thickening roles for Bruce Dern and Kathy Baker, the film builds considerable suspense before tailspinning into absurdity, and veteran TV director Daniel Sackheim takes full advantage of his prismatic setting and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Leelee Sobieski - Diane Lane Director(s): Daniel Sackheim DVD Release Date: Released the 02 January 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Joy Ride follows the familiar conventions of road-movie thrillers with enough vitality to make everything old seem new again. A confirmed master of neo-noir suspense, director John Dahl (Red Rock West, The Last Seduction) sets a consistent tone of humor and horror as Lewis (Paul Walker) and his black-sheep brother Fuller (Steve Zahn) drive from Salt Lake City to pick up Lewis's friend Venna (Leelee Sobieski) in Boulder, Colorado. En route, they play a practical joke via CB radio, inviting vengeful terror as an unseen trucker (voiced with exquisite menace by Silence of the Lambs villain Ted Levine) pursues them with relentless, homicidal aggression. Inevitable comparisons to Steven Spielberg's Duel fail to appreciate Dahl's unique talent for energizing... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Leelee Sobieski Director(s): John Dahl DVD Release Date: Released the 12 March 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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One Hour Photo may be more civilized than Taxi Driver, but it's just as effectively creepy. Like Martin Scorsese's classic, this riveting character study is so compassionately detailed that we sympathize with poor Sy Parrish (Robin Williams) even as he grows increasingly unhinged. Sy is a meticulously dedicated one-hour-photo technician, but the pictures he processes--particularly those belonging to the successful, seemingly happy family of Nina and Will Yorkin (Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan)--turn into the unhealthiest kind of obsession. The Yorkins' snapshots portray a joyful life that the lonely and traumatized Sy could never hope to achieve, and he sinks deeper and deeper into the solace they bring... until evidence of infidelity turns him into a seething crucible of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robin Williams - Connie Nielsen - Michael Vartan Director(s): Mark Romanek DVD Release Date: Released the 18 February 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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It's not the scary hit that The Ring was in 2002, but The Grudge makes a similarly convincing case for American remakes of popular Japanese horror films. Barely a year passed between the release of Takashi Shimizu's creepy ghost story Ju-On: The Grudge and the production of this American remake, set in Tokyo and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar in her first post-Buffy horror film. About the only significant difference between the two films is the importing of a mostly-American cast (including Bill Pullman, Clea DuVall and Grace Zabriskie), but The Grudge was reconfigured (by screenwriter Stephen Susco) to allow Shimizu to refine and improve the spookiest highlights of his earlier version, which enjoyed previous incarnations as a short film and two... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sarah Michelle Gellar - Jason Behr - Clea DuVall Director(s): Takashi Shimizu DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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