| Swimfan Released: 2002 MPAA Rating: PG-13 Genre: Psycho-Thriller Nuts and Bolts: Fatal Attraction - Episode I: The Phathom Menace! Well hell, it sure beats the movie title they ACTUALLY used. Summary: Y'all better appreciate this. The things I do for the sake of this website… Let's start by introducing our Goon du jour, Ben Cronin (Jesse Bradford). Ben is a thirty-something year old high school student who also happens to be on the high school swim team. He's in real great shape and if he plays his cards right, he may end up being awarded a scholarship to Stanford depending on how well he performs at the next swim-meet. Now Ben is going steady with this chick named Amy Miller (Shiri Appleby). Amy's love for Ben is so true and pure that she is actually considering going to Berkeley just to be near him (As opposed to the university in Rhode Island that she originally applied to). Awww…idn't dat just da kewtest! Now Ben and Amy have these two friends named Carla and Josh. Josh is also on the swim-team and Carla…well…umm…err…I don't know what Carla does. She doesn't really do shit. There's also this weird freaky kid named Christopher Dante. More on him later. Anyway, one day Ben meets the 'new' girl in school Madison Bell (Erika Christensen). Ben helps the ole gal open her stuck locker and from that point on she carries a torch for the fella. Ben actually sees Madison again that afternoon when he nearly runs her over with his truck. He feels bad for almost greasing her into the pavement so he offers her a ride home. He drops her off, but Madison conveniently leaves her music book in Ben's truck. So Ben does the honorable thing and brings it back to her. At this point, he discovers that freaky-ass Christopher Dante lives with Madison (The two are cousins). So everything seems to be going along smoothly until later that night. Ben is practicing his laps in the high school pool when guess who shows up? Yup, it's that filthy slut Madison. Madison strips down to her skivvies and jumps into the pool (Despite the fact that she can't swim). She puts the moves on Ben and you can pretty much see where this is headed. All men are slaves to the cooter and as such, Ben has little choice but to yield to the demands of his meat puppet. So the two are slapping skin inside the pool and Madison even cajoles Ben into telling her that he loves her. After they're done they each promise not to tell anybody else about this affair. The following evening, Ben's friend Josh is having a party. Ben attends and 'meets' Madison for the first time all over again. Madison warms up to Ben's girlfriend Amy a bit, and Ben has to double-time it in order to stop Amy from finding a pair of Madison's crusty undies on the front seat of Ben's truck. Ben is starting to feel a little uncomfortable around Madison and regrets cheating on Amy. The following day Madison actually shows up at the guy's house. She gets real friendly with mom and acts as if Ben and she had been friends for a lifetime. Now Ben is really starting to get nervous. He finally decides to draw the line and he tells Madison to quit bugging him. Maddy doesn't take it too well. Firstly, she floods his email account with nude pictures of herself. And on top of that she begins stalking him wherever he goes. She stalks him in school and even at his job where he works as a male nurse (Pansy). Things get even weirder when she begins dating Ben's friend Josh. But Josh soon dumps her skank ass when she begins shouting Ben's name during sex (This actually happens later on). Madison kicks her psychosis into high gear and decides to completely screw Ben over as much as possible. First she lets it slip to Amy that Ben and she had sex. Naturally Amy breaks up with Ben because of it. Then she sneaks into the hospital where she switches around the medication cups on Ben's hospital cart. Ben begins giving people the wrong shit and they start going into seizures. This was actually kind of funny come to think of it. Nothing makes me giggle more than seeing a psychotic octogenarian frothing at the mouth after being fed the wrong meds. Regardless, Ben gets blamed for this little faux pas and is fired because of it. Just when you think it can't get any worse…it does. The day of the big swim-meet comes and all of the Stanford scouts are in the stands watching. Madison works her magic behind the scenes and does the ole switch-a-roo bit on the swim-team's urine samples. I actually used to do this quite a bit myself in high school. Not quite as much fun as the medication shell game, but worthy of a few laughs nonetheless. Now as you can probably guess, the nurse examines the piss and discovers that Ben tests positive for anabolic steroids. He's immediately kicked off the swim-team. For some reason he suspects that Josh was responsible for switching the pee. Maybe it's because Josh and Madison were still fucking at this point. Later that evening, Ben returns to the pool to find Josh's body floating in the water. He's dead. Now since a hundred witnesses saw Ben and Josh get into a fistfight hours earlier, guess who gets arrested? Yup, good ole Ben. This guy just can't get a break. They let Ben off with a warning since there isn't enough evidence yet to actually charge him with anything. So now Ben decides that it is time to either shit or get off the pot. He learns that Madison used to date some guy from New York named Jake Donnelly. Apparently she did the whole obsession-stalker routine with Jake as well. But Jake was in a car accident and is now laid up in the hospital. But Jake's not the ONLY one in a hospital bed. While Ben was researching Maddy's background the psychotic little nymph decided to fuck Amy Miller up good and proper. Maddy stole Ben's truck and used it to run Amy's moped off the road. So Ben decides to bait Madison into a trap. Conspiring with Carla, and freaky-deaky Christopher Dante they lure Madison into the parking garage of the hospital. Madison admits to all the fucked up shit she's been doing not realizing that Carla was kneeling behind a caddy with a video camera recording the whole thing. Madison is arrested soon after. Okay, here is where the movie officially jumps the shark. The cop is taking Madison down to the police station when he has to stop and wait for the train to go by. During the lull, Madison reaches over the seat withdraws the guy's service pistol and shoots him dead. She then drives back into town and kidnaps Amy. Ben is racing all over the place when he receives a text message from Madison saying, "Care for a dip". He knows now that Madison took Amy to the high school. So Ben gets there just as Madison pushes Amy's unconscious ass into the drink. He dives in and rescues her while managing to pull Madison into the water as well. Now remember in the beginning when I said that Madison couldn't swim? Guess what? She was telling the truth. Madison drowns and everyone lives happily ever after. The fucking end. Acting/Dialogue: The acting is pretty generic in this one. The only one who even marginally stands out is Erika Christensen. She's actually pretty decent in this. She manages to do the 'stalker' thing without automatically sending out flashing signals indicating that she's a fruit-loop. Jesse Bradford has one function in this movie and that is to look confused. I think he times his watch to it. If you carefully observe his performance, you will find that he projects his patented 'stupefied' face roughly following every fourth line of dialogue. What cracks me up about this guy is that you can tell he is striving desperately to act like Jason Priestly from Beverly Hills 90210. Here's a clue Jesse. 90210 stopped being 'kewl' about twelve fricking' years ago (If it was ever cool to begin with). Notice how Priestly hasn't done any noticeable work since then? In fact, I think I just saw him filling my gas tank last week. Try picking a better role model okay Buttercup? At least your co-star Shiri Appleby (Amy) took her cues from a MODERN actress. She does a fairly decent impression of Kristen Kreuk doing an impression of Lana Lang (Smallville reference). The only other actor worth mentioning is James DeBello as Christopher Dante. He was actually kind of interesting. Unfortunately, his character was given virtually no opportunity to expand or develop and he more or less becomes a convenient plot contrivance. Gore: None! The only blood we see is when Ben finds Josh's body floating in the pool. There's a smattering of blood floating in the water. Hell, these guys didn't even have the balls to show us the cop getting his face blasted off. Pussies. Guilty Pleasures: Erika Christensen fills out a bikini pretty well, but you have to be really attentive to even notice that. Christ, even Glenn Close showed her tits when she was getting shtooped by Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction. What is the point in having a movie about a provocative female stalker if she doesn't even show us the goods? Bah! On the flip side, the ladies may enjoy seeing Jesse Bradford and a few of the other gents walking around in their bikini briefs. Then again, maybe they won't. The Good: Let me tell you a story about a girl I used to go with. I won't mention her name here out of fear that she may one day find this website and somehow manage to track me down and turn my life into a living hell all over again. But basically, it goes like this. I was dating this broad who was a bipolar psychotic Polish lesbian still in love with her ex-boyfriend (If that makes any degree of sense). At the time it seemed like a pretty sweet set-up; all the fun, but none of the commitment. Pretty cool eh? I was just so stoked over the idea that I might get laid, that I really didn't give a shit. I mean…what redheaded American youth WOULDN'T want to fuck a lesbian right? So there I was, primed and ready, eager to boldly explore new avenues of pleasure and pain. We would go out and party and have fun, but ultimately the evenings would always end in disaster. Not a night would go by when I didn't have to sit frozen in my seat and watch her mystically transform from a quasi-lucid semi-stable person into a sex-starved delusional schizophrenic harpy from hell. Actually…scratch that. Harpies have better table manners. Now this roller coaster affair may sound kind of enticing to some of you out there, but believe me when I say…it's better to think with the head that's actually on TOP of your shoulders. Anything else leads to certain doom. More men have gone to their deaths by way of the fabled booty call than I even care to talk about. This chick had my head so twisted around my ass that I would've ended up doing anything for her. I was a mental fucking slave. So imagine my surprise when X amount of years later I find a movie featuring a character that looks and acts EXACTLY like her! So if this movie can be accredited with having any positive qualities at all, then I would have to say it succeeds in invoking a very specific emotional response; Fear. Now hopefully some of you will harken to my tail of woe and maybe even learn something from it. If something looks as if it is too good to be true…it probably is. Now aside from that gruesome walk down memory lane, Swimfan does provide some fairly slick visuals. The camera work is better than average and there are some interesting exchanges between showing what a character is saying and illustrating how they are feeling as they are saying it. Most of this is done by way of quick-flash changes of the POV, but it succeeds in capturing a particular style that is not completely offensive. The pacing is very well coordinated and your interest is steadily maintained as you journey along with Ben on his crashing downward spiral curve. The editing is nicely done as well and everything is very clipped and polished looking. Maybe if the director had chosen to go with a different script, I would have enjoyed this more. The Bad: This movie is just dumb. If this flick were a Mexican entrée it would be called Dumbalaya. Why was this movie even made? Seriously, what was so compelling about the plot that convinced director John Polson that what he had in his hands was a surefire money-grabbing winner? The concept is rather generic and could have easily been thrown into a two-part episode of any number of prime time WB programs. I can readily see this story manifesting as one of those goofy little 'serious' episodes. You know, the pretentious ones that are so 'serious' and 'special' that they even get their own title-headings in the previews. "Dawson's Creek: The Revenge!" Crap like that. I just don't see how there was any kind of demand for this sort of a movie to be made. It offers nothing to the viewer. Fist off, I have a major issue with the leading man. There is no way in hell you are going to convince me that this is supposed to be a seventeen-year-old high school student. The guy is obviously twenty-five years old at best. But then again, Ben doesn't strike me as being very bright, so I suppose its feasible that he was left back six or seven times. This is the kind of asshole that plays with firecrackers without reading the warning labels on the package. I also feel this movie really went to extremes in regards to pandering to the bottom-feeders. Every plot twist is telegraphed a mile away and no effort is ever taken to shock the viewer's sensibilities. Take for instance the Club. For those that don't know, the Club is hook shaped locking mechanism that people put on the steering wheel of their cars. That way, even if someone manages to hot-wire your shit, they won't be able to move it anywhere because the wheel is locked into place. Supposedly this thing is a 100% effective theft deterrent despite the fact that I've seen people on episodes of Phil Donahue crack this thing in less than 15 seconds. The first time we see Ben latch the Club onto his steering wheel, we know it's going to be a plot tool. How do we know this? Simple. Who the fuck uses the Club anymore? Everyone else in America who comes from an upper-middle class income uses key chain car alarm systems. You know, those things you always hear honking incessantly in the parking lot at work which you consistently ignore despite the fact that some gutless prick is in the process of stealing your Saab? Yeah…those things. Despite the fact that they are irritating as hell, they're a fuck of a lot more effective as a theft deterrent than those idiotic Clubs. Now there is one critical moment in the film where the movie ceases to be merely insipid and becomes genuinely asinine. This occurs during Madison's 'escape from justice'. Now anyone who has ever been arrested can attest to the fact that all police vehicles are equipped with a steel mesh screen separating the backseat compartment from the front. This is provided in order to prevent EXACTLY the dumb sort of shit that Madison manages to pull off. Now when looking at this scene, you have to consider the locale. As near as I can figure, this movie takes place in either Mahwah or Ramsey New Jersey. You can tell based upon the suburban environment and its relative distance to New York City. Now what people don't know is that Mahwah is just a stone's throw away from Paterson, one of the dirtiest nastiest underdeveloped urban environments in all of Jersey (Think "Lean on Me"). The idea that a police vehicle without the benefit of the protective steel-mesh screen would actually be utilized in a city near a community with an exceptionally high crime rate is ludicrous at best. Secondly, Madison is handcuffed with her hands in front of her body. This is also unrealistic. Police handcuff your wrists behind your back in order to prevent mobility. Again, this is standard operating procedure and there is no way you are going to convince me that a Jersey cop is going to make such a boneheaded maneuver. This isn't Hazzard County! There's no Sheriff Roscoe here! This is the land of Tony fucking Soprano! But I guess logic would impede Mister Polson's story, so instead we are asked to ignore these little non-sequiturs. Throw this fish back into the water swimfans. There are bigger and better catches out there. Great Lines: Sorry. I'm drawing a blank here. I can't think of any line of dialogue from this cow patty that is even worth the time it would take to type out. In fact, I regret taking the time out of my day to bitch about the time it would take to type out a line of dialogue from this movie. Furthermore, I regret taking the time to discuss my feelings of regret over taking the time to….Awww hell. You KNOW what I mean. Overall Rating: 3 out of 10 severed heads. |
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