Homewrecker (1992) (TV)

User Rating:

5.5/10   

Director:

Fred Walton

Writers (WGA):

Eric Harlacher (story)
Eric Harlacher (teleplay) ...

Release Date:

17 December 1992 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

It cooks. It cleans. It kills.

Plot:

A scientist reprograms his computer with the personality of a woman and names it "Lucy." When the scientist gets back together with his estranged wife...

Plot Keywords:

Computer | Talking Computer | Husband Wife Relationship | Jealousy | Near Death Experience

Cast

Robby Benson	...	David Whitson
Sydney Walsh	...	Jane Whitson
Sarah Rose Karr	...	Dana Whitson
Kate Jackson	...	Lucy (voice)
Curt Hanson	...	Admiral Torborg
Lester B. Hanson	...	Senator McGrif
Scott Roberts	...	Technician
Craig Damon	...	Information Officer
Cecil Davis	...	Mechanic
James Chance	...	Tommy (as James R. chance)
Shawna Schuh	...	Tommy's Mother

Runtime:

Argentina:83 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Argentina:16 | Iceland:L | USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

Portland, Oregon, USA

Company:

Wilshire Court Productions

The people making this didn't care - why should anyone else?

I had the pleasure of watching this "jewel" at about three in the morning, which is the only time of day that one can be in the proper state of mind to sit through "Homewrecker".

The plot itself is pretty thin and you can figure out where this one's heading after about the first twenty minutes. Despite this, the movie proceeds at a tediously slow place, taking two hours to string out what could have been accomplished in about fifteen. By the time its over, you'll seriously wonder why you bothered to sit around and actually see the plot unfold exactly as you knew it would.

The acting is mediocre but not overly bad. At the end, I couldn't fault any of the actors - I wouldn't have been motivated to try hard either if I had the script in front of me. The actress playing the wife seemed to do an admirable job at the beginning, but by the middle of the film she seems to have given up just like everyone else.

"Everyone else" isn't really as grand a term as it sounds though - there's really only four major characters and you can make the argument that the wife and daughter are just cannon fodder added to up the stakes for the grand finale. In the end, this is a story of a downtrodden scientist and his super-smart, super-envious, super-desperate-to-be-in-love computer creation.

The movie never develops the sense of danger which is necessary to make the viewer care about the human characters and attacks the subject matter on a mostly superficial level. It's about what you'd expect from a made-for-TV movie that's being shown in the wee hours of the morning.

"Homewrecker" is somewhat fun to watch if you're a fan of cheesy sci-fi. It doesn't have any guys in rubber suits destroying a cardboard metropolis, but it does manage to parade out all the overdone sci-fi themes of computer-human interaction. The whole movie plays out like a Michael Crichton novel that was re-written by seventh-grader.

Lucy, the titular supercomputer, looks like a bad prop rescued from late 70's movie set. Lots of large blinking lights and a pretty bad HAL-ripoff of an "all-seeing eye" which serves as the computer's main interface with the humans. Lucy can also amazingly manipulate physical objects with which she has no physical connections - doors, water faucets, gas lines, etc... They could have at least thrown a wire somewhere in the camera shot to lend a wee bit of credibility to this amazing ability.

So, "Homewrecker" gets a 2 out of 10 in my opinion. It doesn't try to insult your intelligence, but it doesn't try to do anything else either. This is just another example of generic, off-the-shelf sci-fi thrown out there for the public. A little original thought or enthusiasm would helped a lot.