30 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
30 lines
3.7 KiB
Plaintext
synopsis : blond criminal psychologist sarah chooses to copulate with greasy tony the mysterious puerto rican rather than bearded cliff the wisecracking neighbor upstairs .
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in the meantime , someone sends sarah rotting flowers , puts her name in the newspaper's obituary column , and kills her cat .
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comments : never talk to strangers , a colossal waste of time , moves slower than molasses in winter to arrive at a conclusion which should be obvious to the audience 20 minutes into the film .
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one wouldn't think that two genuine movie stars , antonio banderas ( evita ) and rebecca de mornay ( hand that rocks the cradle ) , and the acerbic comic genius dennis miller ( " saturday night live " ) would be involved in such a celluloid backfire as this turkey .
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not only are they in it , however , but de mornay executive produced it .
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what was she thinking ?
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never talk to strangers centers upon sarah , a psychologist examining the ill-tempered max , a murderer soon to stand trial .
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she receives a sudden visit from her father which elicits flashbacks of some tragedy in her early childhood .
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two men woo her ; tony the " security consultant " wins her over ( so they have passionate sex replete with cheesy saxophone music ) .
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a lot of psychobabble is thrown around about multiple personality disorder , but the movie asks its audience not to derive the obvious conclusion between mpd and sarah , and instead offers several male characters as red herrings .
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86 minutes , the running time of this cinematic mess , thus , seem like 86 hours .
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a good chunk of never talk to strangers is spent upon sarah and tony .
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why would the career-minded , professional sarah feel attracted to the walking steroid with a black hat called tony ?
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that's one of the film's mysteries which are never answered .
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regardless of motive , de mornay and banderas strip down and have sex several times in what passes for eroticism .
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they also manage to go out before copulating occasionally -- in one of the stupidest scenes of the film , tony takes sarah to a carnival that's * right outside * his dingy apartment ( that way , they can hurry back and have sex quickly ) .
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also , apparently , the weather changes quickly in their locale : they're at this outdoor carnival one day before having sex ; the next day , they're out playing in the snow before having sex .
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the filmmakers attempt to produce a suspenseful plot interspersed with tony and sarah's " character development . "
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someone is out to get poor sarah ( though most of the audience should have figured out who before any of this starts ) .
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rotting flowers , a writeup in the obituary , and a beaten neighbor are just a few of the bad things which happen to her .
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suspense cliche number one also occurs : whenever someone is stalked in thrillers , by any means , if the stalked has a pet , that pet will die .
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oftentimes , to even further the cliche , the murdered pet is a cat ( suspense filmmakers , for some reason , just don't like cats ) .
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sarah , in never talk to strangers , receives a package and , lo and behold , discovers her mutilated cat within .
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suspense at its very derivative !
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as stated before , never talk to strangers is a poor excuse for a film whose sole purpose seems to be exploiting banderas and de mornay's bodies as often as possible .
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comedian dennis miller is completely wasted here ( he's not given lines that are suitable for his persona ) and doesn't even appear all that much .
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maybe , in a way , he's lucky for that .
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early on in the movie , sarah tells tony , after meeting him in a supermarket , that she had been advised to never talk to strangers .
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allow me to advise that you never watch this stinker .
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