The Roommate (2010)

Yeah i know. This film has all the hallmarks of the sort of tut, we all try to avoid- it's a silly cheesy remake remade by no-name, probable hacks for tweenagers, who'll pay to see the guy from Twilight and/or the girl from Gossip Girl in a movie. On the right, i promised I wouldn't watch anything I had no interest in because It's not fair for me to make films i won't like into punching bags and that would get repetitive, so here's why I went to see this. The Roommate is made by Screen Gems.
Screen Gems is the b-movie production wing of Sony Pictures and I'd guess their remit is to make PG-13 genre movies. By this I mean stuff like Easy A, Takers, Prom Night, the Resident Evil movies, that Beyonce-Fatal Attraction movie. I won't say all the above are worthy of your time but the first two were VERY good especially, Takers, a wonderful crime thriller, which never saw the acclaim I thought it deserved. I think it's better than Heat.
Back to The Roommate- if anything was demanding a remake with younger womens, It was Single White Female. Okay not the best idea but there's a lot worse out there. I was totally expecting a silly teen thriller, 90mins of bitchy fluffy but i'm ashamed to say that towards the end I was really engaged and thrilled by it. Let's just say this film has a lot going for it and guess what? There's a film where Billy Zane is an asset... *whispers* THIS ONE. Zane has finally found the role he was meant to play: himself. He's not actually playing himself but his character is pretty Zane-like. I seriously imagine him asking the director questions about the character, his accent, what he'd wear and the director would seem dismissive 'Billy, just use your own voice, wear what you're wearing now...'
'Humph', thinks Billy, 'it's your funeral, mate...' but no, we all suspect Billy Zane is a lavacious good-looking creep. Him playing one is no hard sell. The rest of the acting is alright. Leighton Meester doesn't over egg the crazy, which is a personal success for her. Minka Kelly plays the 'stalkee' and well, it's a thankless role when her colleague gets to be nuts and have all the fun. Cam Gigandet plays the boyfriend and in my day, he was called Luke Perry and was far less cocky. He's a pretty boy but he's no Brando. His line delivery is unintentionally funny like when tells him, she thought 'her Roommate was sensitive but didn't know she was capable of this... ', he responds with 'i know I just thought was a wierd freak. Not this. Not this...'
But really, the success of this film is the story. As I said, I was girlishly gripped towards the end and it is in places gleefully over the top- when Kelly picked up that stray cat, i knew it was deadmeat and a phone sex scene, seemingly explicitly made for lip and mouth fetishists. All highlights.
So this was a bit of a guilty pleasure but we're getting much classier tomorrow...

I watched The Roommate (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Fellini's 8 1/2 (1962)...