GeronBook/Ch13/data/aclImdb/test/neg/11548_3.txt

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This unintentionally amusing mid-80s TV movie is based on the premise that sex bomb Donna Mills (in a mostly appalling wardrobe throughout) is a neglected housewife, pining for her sexy past as a cheerleader. She escapes her empty life by fantasising about random sexual encounters with one of the many attractive men she comes across, finally giving into her fantasies and indulging in a bit on the side, although all she really wants is to reignite the flames of passion with her boring husband James Brolin.<br /><br />There are many laughable aspects to this film, Mills' first foray into co-producing (later, following her departure from Knots Landing, she found great success as a trashy TV movie queen starring in mostly issue-of-the-week melodramas through most of the '90s - she usually played a victim of some sort, clearly determined to wash her hands of the wonderfully wicked and entertaining conniver she played for so long on Knots). Funniest are the drawn-out fantasy sequences, filmed as though they are meant to be soft-core porn (wind and smoke machines, backlighting, porno music), but as this is a network TV movie the scenes are all very chaste and ultimately not very sexy at all. The most amusing (and bizarre) scene has Mills taking a walk on the wild side downtown among the spiky-haired punks (complete with Robert Palmer soundtrack). <br /><br />Less laughable is the dreadful dialogue that the cardboard characters are forced to utter (pity poor Cicely Tyson as the mandatory psycho-analyst, or Veronica Cartwright as the mandatory best friend, or even pre-Babs James Brolin with that daytime soap style of clenched fist anger.)<br /><br />Of course, as in all of these sorts of films, we learn that all problems can be solved through psycho-therapy and then the film just becomes silly, as we explore, briefly, the reasons for Mills' "shocking" behaviour (as if it can't just be that she wants a good shag!)<br /><br />Vacuous.