Director: Irwin Winkler
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Jeremy Northam, Dennis Miller, Diane Baker
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I’m beginning to realize that we got HBO in my house in 1996, and that just meant my instinct to see just about anything that got released the year before, and with the help of VHS, doing so multiple times.
Now that all of those films are hitting their 30th anniversary, I feel increasingly dusty and am finding these films (I’m looking in your direction, Tommy Boy (1995)) at a rock bottom prices online, and can’t help but wonder, “Does this one hold up?”
Did I Like It: No. This one doesn’t hold up. There are some mildly interesting moments in the film’s first act where Angela Bennett (Bullock) is clearly living her life that seemed like science fiction in the 90s (probably the film’s main draw) but are almost depressingly mundane now. She works from home, to the point where no one she has worked with has ever seen her. She lives nearly exclusively online, patiently enduring sexual harassment from complete strangers. She orders her meals—including a large pizza she apparently eats all by herself—entirely with the aid of her elite level of computer skills.
Now that all of those activities are completely within reach of even the lease skilled among us, is there anything left to recommend the film? Not really. All we have left is a warmed over Hitchcock plot that never seems terribly interested in working on its own terms. There’s one brief sequence where Bennet tries to take back control of matters by actually going to her place of employment, but the rest of the rest of the plot listlessly wanders, hoping desperately that Bullock’s charm will paper over the lack of the kind of plot mechanics that a film like this needs to work. That might all be forgiven, but this thing is barely held together by the kind of scotch tape editing choices that drive me up the wall. Bennett takes the wheel of a car being driven by a fake FBI agent, and he has to scream from the safe confines of an ADR session, “My seatbelt!” I was able to follow that the guy wasn’t going to make it in 1995, and I definitely don’t need the extra bit now.