Malicious (1995)

Generally movie critics think it is a good thing when a film is 'ambitious,' but I argue it's a bad thing with Malicious. The movie was made for only two explicit reasons: 1) to be a Fatal Attraction for a younger, 'hiper' audience (God help us all), and 2) to show Molly Ringwald's naked breasts. This film does indeed deliver on both promises, but it feels obliged to become even more offensive than Fatal Attraction ever was.

The Michael Douglas of this movie is named, well, Doug (coincidence?), a college student (or maybe grad school student, I have no idea really) who's main ambition in life is to be a professional baseball player. Five minutes in, we're introduced to his fiance Laura, one of the most irritating, spineless, and downright wimpy film 'heroines' in the history of cinema. Meeting Doug in a university library, the duo start making out. Now, both Laura and Doug are very attractive young people so the whole sight isn't at all unpleasant to the eyes. The ears, however...let's just say the dialogue here is about as sexually charged as an episode of "Matlock" and this is a problem the movie doesn't shake. That's not to say that the bulk of the acting here is necessarily awful, but to call it 'uninspired' is an understatement.

My initial impression was that this was going to be a generally harmless movie: boring and dumb, but not aggressively so. Unfortunately, the movie quickly realizes this weakness and tries to make itself memorable (well, beyond having a naked Molly Ringwald) by trying to invoke the audience's eternal hatred. Poor, insipid Laura announces to Doug her intention to go to San Francisco to interview for some kind of post-graduate program (she's just telling him about this that night?). He badgers her for some sex right then and there, but she declines, being too uptight and Concerned About Her Career to submit to Doug's perfectly natural and reasonable request to screw in a public space. Poor Doug, eh? No wonder he's going to run off into the arms of another woman...

...and, minutes later, we see Doug at a party where he's accosted by Molly Ringwald's character, Melissa, who, even without knowing anything about the movie beforehand, we know is going to be our psycho-chick because a) she's sexually aggressive, b) dressed entirely in black, and c) omniously smokes a cigarrette (she does this a lot in the course of the movie, by the way, giving a more obnoxious anti-smoking message than even those irritating Truth.com commercials). Doug is supposedly drunk (the dialogue suggests it, but the acting is so dry it's impossible to tell if he's actually meant to be) so Molly easily lures him into her car. After some more trying-hard-to-be-erotic-but-really-not dialogue, we seen them having sex in the car parked in the middle of a baseball field.

Let me stop for a minute to say that really the only thing this movie begins to excel in is its sex scenes, which are fairly well-done, at least with the usual limitations of a film with this rating and compared to what passes for sexy dialogue here. Plus Doug and Melissa are hot, so that naturally contributes to the audience's enjoyment, whatever your intentions with this film. Unfortunately, there's only two such scenes in this movie and they're comparatively short, so you'd have to be quite desperate, bored, or very attracted to Molly Ringwald or Patrick McGaw (Doug) to rent Malicious for that reason alone.

Anyhow, Doug is reasonably distressed, and becomes even more so when he discovers that Melissa just happens to be a T.A. under one of his professors (which, since he's been taking the class for a while, he should have already realized...honestly, this movie doesn't flaunt enough sex to make this kind of thing excusable.) Even though he continuously whines about his current relationship, he accepts Melissa's offer to tutor him. This leads to Melissa, who is actually quite wealthy, taking Doug out for a ride on her yacht where he...has sex with her again. In true Fatal Attraction tradtion, Doug ends up dumping Melissa the minute his girlfriend gets back in town and, of course, despite coming across as a complete jackass, the audience is supposed to see Doug's actions as slightly misguided, at best.

Melissa quickly and unbelievably makes the jump from being an aggressive, intelligent woman to a sociopathic stalker because, in the "logic" of these types of films, only an insane woman would get really upset about a guy sleeping with her twice and then shrugging her off for convenience's sake. The best apology Doug ever offers to Melissa is, "I'm sorry you felt that way," already shifting the blame on Melissa's shoulders and paving the way for the movie's conclusion that Doug's actions are completely excused by Melissa's insanity. You can map out the rest of the film from there. Melissa's behavior gradually goes from mildly obsessive to completely threatening. Doug's loved ones begin to be put in danger. There's even the Unnecessary and Graphic Death of a Cute Pet, a complete 'homage' to Fatal Attraction.

Laura, who's already bummed that Doug couldn't rise to the occaison when she tried to seduce him a library (awww...now she's trying to make up for being such a disobedient, puritannical bitch earlier...she even says infuriatingly, "I know i have to change!") is eventually told about the whole Melissa thing. To her credit, she doesn't instantly break down in tears and cry out, "But I thought you looooved me!" and she actually throws a blunt object at him (sorry, but she misses). Unfortunately, afterwards, a friend-or should I say, "friend"- tells her, "I don't think you can just blame Doug" (let me step out my professional reviewer hat and type WHAT THE (@*!@(*#?!?!), and this somehow inspires Laura to investigate Melissa's shady past.

I've already wasted more time and words on this movie than it deserves, so I won't go into the many ways Laura's 'investigation' is blatant and pointless padding (besides, words can't do justice to the scene where Laura goes up to talk to Melissa's catatonic mother, who doesn't look so much cataonic as she looks as completely irritated with Laura as the audience is). I should mention, though, that Laura looks at a newspaper reel where the headline visibly reads "PRESTIGIOUS SURGEON'S WIFE COMMITTED" while Laura's voiceover goes "PROMINENT SURGEON'S WIFE COMMITTED." A continuity error almost worthy of Ed Wood! In the end, Laura discovers that Melissa was the victim of unspecifed child abuse by her wealthy surgeon father. In a much better movie, this plot point would have been used to give some insight on Melissa's motivations and try to engineer some sympathy for her character. In Malicious, it's just a good stock reason why she's so ee-vil.

Meanwhile, Doug, whose life is being dismantled by Melissa, enlists the aid of a family friend, Detective Pronzini, played by John Vernon (!). The good detective proves practically useless, except for getting almost killed. Nevertheless, Melissa is eventually exposed after her father's corpse is found in a meat locker and Doug narrowly escapes an attempt on his life made by Melissa. Doug is even able to patch things up with Laura by uttering these powerful words, dripping with remorse and sorrow: "I never meant to hurt you. I'm sorry. I love you." Of course, one scene later, we find that they're both living in San Francisco (albeit not together). Um...alrighty. Did Laura take Tony Blair's advice on intrapersonal relationshps or something?

Of course, it's not over. Using a plot twist stolen exactly from Play Misty for Me while giving a 'clue' to it that would have been too obvious by "Scooby-Doo" standards, the movie shows us that Melissa has become Lisa's roommate. Will Doug be able to save Laura in time? Suprisingly, no, as Melissa manages to fire an arrow throw her throat and into Doug's chest. Oh, wait...that's how I wanted the movie to end!

Not recommended really, even for you die-hard Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club folks out there.


Drinking Game Suggestions:

One shot for:

-Every bad 'thriller' cliche that bubbles up.

-Every time Doug's or Lisa's respective 'best friends' show up to contribute nothing to the movie, except to maybe convince the audience that these people aren't as shallow and pathetic as we think they are.