Jennifer Lopez vehicle 'Enough' has a familiar plotline
If you saw "Sleeping With the Enemy," you may have seen enough of "Enough."
The 1991 movie starred Julia Roberts as the wife of a wealthy, abusive husband who flees her palatial Los Angeles home, moves to a small town in the Midwest, and changes her name and her looks. And yet, he hunts her down and tries to kill her.
"Enough" stars Jennifer Lopez as the wife of a wealthy, abusive husband who flees her palatial Los Angeles home, moves to a small town in the Midwest, and changes her name and her looks. He hunts her down and tries to kill her, too.
The main variable here is that Lopez's character, Slim, is a mother, and she grabs the couple's young daughter, Gracie (Tessa Allen), on her way out the door.
Say what you will about J.Lo — that she can't sing, that she's ubiquitous. The woman has an undeniable presence. And watching her transform herself from pampered, betrayed housewife to one-woman wrecking machine makes "Enough" function on a visceral, you-go-girl level.
The third act — in which she exacts her revenge with the elaborate skill of James Bond and the brute strength of Rocky Balboa — is pretty ridiculous if you stop to think about it. But it's entertaining enough that it almost makes up for the inconsistencies in plot and character development that preceded it.
For a thriller, the movie begins more like a romantic comedy, with Slim and Mitch (Billy Campbell of "Once and Again") meeting cute at the diner where she's a waitress, and title cards like "How they met" and "Conquering hero" connecting their early stages.
In no time, they've fallen in love, gotten married, moved into a beautiful house together and had a baby. Mitch, a contractor, seems like the ideal husband, if a bit distant at times.
Then Slim discovers Mitch is having an affair, and when she confronts him, his personality changes completely. He becomes so cold-hearted and cruel so abruptly, it's difficult to accept — almost comic.
Slim cooks up a scheme to escape with the help of Ginny (Juliette Lewis), a waitress at the diner; Phil (Christopher Maher), who's a father figure in the absence of her real dad; and ex-boyfriend Joe (Dan Futterman), who provides refuge at his home in Seattle.
Michael Apted, who directed the most recent Bond movie, "The World Is Not Enough," and another female empowerment movie, "Coal Miner's Daughter," knows how to keep the pace moving during the action sequences. But the midsection of the film — the cat-and-mouse chase, with its requisite cheap scares — gets a bit repetitive.
The plot problems pop up as Slim and Gracie move from city to city. For a contractor, Mitch has the computer skills of a sophisticated hacker; he immediately freezes Slim's access to her cash and credit, and he tracks her moves effortlessly, with a squad of thugs in every city available to pounce on her and the little girl.
Mitch even has a police officer buddy at his disposal ("ER's" Noah Wyle, like Campbell, playing against type) who tries to ram Slim's car from behind, even though Gracie is sitting in the back seat. Um, isn't he supposed to bring the girl back … alive?
As if Gracie hasn't been through enough, Slim sends her away for a month to stay with Ginny and her two kids while she prepares for a showdown with Mitch. She learns Krav Maga — a fighting form originally developed for women in the Israeli army — and her eyeliner and lip gloss are perfect during every punch and kick.
