Crazy in Love
Derek (Idris Elba) and Sharon Charles (Beyoncé Knowles) are happily married parents with a young child and a lovely new home whilst Derek has a very good career. But in walks the attractive Lisa (Ali Larter) a new assistant at the office who instantly becomes attracted to Derek and sets her sights on him, flirting with him despite Derek making it very clear he is not interested. When Derek resists Lisa's come on during the office Christmas party it pushes her over the edge as she becomes incredibly dangerous.
I've lost count of the number of movies I have watched which feature a spurned woman and occasionally a man who turns bunny boiler when it comes to either getting revenge or going after what they want and having dropped the bunny boiler reference in there "Fatal Attraction" remains the best of the bunch. So enter "Obsessed" a 2009 attempt at the psycho woman story which tries to not only bring things up to date with a racial aspect but also switch things around a bit.
So you know what happens right; married man, attractive woman who flirts and ... but wait it doesn't because one of the faults with "Obsessed" is that Derek is a good man, a loyal husband who doesn't stray from his attractive wife despite Lisa basically handing it to him on a plate. The trouble with this is that it removes motivation as whilst bitter for being rejected is a motivation it is not enough for what Lisa does and unless they filled in the background gaps to make Lisa's obsessive flirting explainable it will never work.
But that is one flaw and the second flaw comes to the inevitable slap down between the wife and the psycho which is so ridiculous that it becomes laughable. But I won't go into why as you need some surprise despite the predictable nature of "Obsessed". I could go on as there are other flaws from a director who telegraphs what is going to happen in the most unsubtle of ways to the fact the characters are completely wrong. Notice I said characters because Elba, Knowles and Larter all are very capable at delivering characters but the perfect husband, the sexier than sexy assistant and so on is too cliche. It goes write down to Jerry O'Connell and Bruce McGill playing office chauvinists. But the peach is a brief Christmas morning scene of the Charles family opening presents in front of their Christmas tree which looks like it has come out of a Christmas music video.
What this all boils down to is that "Obsessed" is one of those movies which had potential, a good cast, some nice ideas and so on but failed to deliver on that potential. But it not only failed to deliver on it, it then did some things incredibly badly which made it laughable in places and completely shallow, lacking the depth this sort of movie really needs to work.
