The Liars' Club (1993) starring Wil Wheaton, Brian Krause, Michael Cudlitz, Soleil Moon Frye, Jennifer Burns, Aron Eisenberg, Shevonne Durkin directed by Jeffrey Porter Movie Review

The Liars' Club (1993)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Brian Krause in The Liars' Club (1993)

Dirty Little Liars

After cheating their way through their final test a group of friends head off to a graduation party. Whilst there Pat (Brian Krause - Return to the Blue Lagoon) behind his girlfriend's back starts dancing with the attractive Marla (Shevonne Durkin) and soon after follows her behind the house and rapes her. With Pat saying she never said no the friends stick by him and try to keep what he did from his girlfriend. But when Marla decides to go to the police things take a deadly spiral when one of the group in their attempts to silence her accidentally murders her. The group promises to keep quiet about everything but the web of lies they spin gets harder and harder to keep especially when one of them has started to talk.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear what a fine mess we have with "The Liars' Club" a movie which whilst having a good storyline makes a lot of bad mistakes. But first to the good as the storyline is not bad with a set up which sees a group of teenagers sticking by a friend and ending up in a whole mess of lies because of their mutual deceit. There is a touch of the "I Know What you did" about it as we have these friends swearing to lie about a murder but without the whole coming back to haunt aspect. It means that whilst "The Liars' Club" is not the most original movie as there are a lot of similar movies it does at least grab your attention.

Wil Wheaton and Aron Eisenberg in The Liars' Club (1993)

And carrying on with the good for a moment is the well chosen young cast as Brian Krause as Pat has that sport jock look and arrogance, Michael Cudlitz as Jimbo has the brutish aspect and then there is Wil Wheaton giving sensitive as David. I am not saying that the characters are well written or are well acted because frankly they are not but the actors look the part. What I will say is that their characters do some seriously daft things and even good actors wouldn't be able to make it work.

But here is the bad and I am talking seriously bad here because we are talking about a movie which deals with rape. Now rape is not pleasant but for some reason the rape scene in "The Liars' Club" has a strange erotic styling as we have slow motion with naked breasts gently wobbling, it is just wrong and seems to be trying to be titillation for teen audiences. That is not the only issue as we have also have a murder, a poorly executed series of scenes which start with an over the top car chase and ends in an unconvincing moment of despair.

What this all boils down to is that "The Liars' Club" is a good idea for a movie but one which is poorly executed. It probably was entertaining for young teenagers on its release but for anyone else it is wrong.


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