I got home from work after midnight, and turned on the TV to unwind for a few minutes. I had left it on HBO, and as the screen warmed up I saw that a movie was just starting: Consenting Adults, from 1992, starring Kevin Kline, Kevin Spacey, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and directed by Alan J. Pakula, who has fallen from the mighty heights of All the President's Men and The Parallax View to stuff like The Pelican Brief and The Devil's Own.
Anyway, I had no idea of the film's plot, but decided to watch for a few minutes to see if it lived up to its late-night HBO slot and pseudo-sensual title, or at least had some violence or Casio scoring or something I love about '90s movies. I admit, I'm a sucker for the glossy junk movies of mainstream American cinema from the early to mid-'90s. How can I resist it? From lazy-eyed Forest Whitaker working a really bad Southern drawl to the predictable but inexplicable presence of Mastrantonio, who was in pretty much everything from 1989-1995, it's just too good/bad/good to pass up.
It took a hard left turn about half an hour in, though, as Spacey tried to convince Kline to swap wives, only to take advantage of Kline's insane lusts to set him up for murder. Turns out Spacey hired a lookalike for his wife to sleep with Kline, and then Spacey killed the lookalike and pinned it on Kline. Spacey then moves in on Mastrantonio, and Kline tries to fix things. He tracks down Spacey's non-dead wife, and in one of the film's dumber plot turns, they actually talk for a while before Spacey leaves her alone to get Louisville Sluggered to death by Spacey, who's been tracking them both.
Yada yada yada, Kline corners Spacey and Mastrantonio at Spacey's house and kills him. I had really hoped Mastrantonio would be in on the set-up, and that Kline would wind up dead at the house or dying in prison, but Pakula, a little too trusting of Mastrantonio's character, had a happier ending in mind.
Which brings me to this:
Am I the only one who thinks of Scott Bakula when I hear the name Alan Pakula? It's like I can't help but do it. When I see "Pakula," I don't think of movies, I think of Sam Beckett stuck in time. Weird.
