Addicted (Movie Review)

Rating:

The 1-4-0: #Addicted is a guilty pleasure gone wrong. It’s a sex addiction film from a female perspective that falls into all the made-for-tv-movie cliches.

The Gist: The owner of an art public relations company has a perfect life – a great marriage with a handsome husband, home, and job, but… she has a sex addiction. Will she control it before it destroys her perfect life?

What Works: Apart from the ridiculously good-looking cast ensemble, director Bille Woodruff does a wonderful job of crafting a sense of life fantasy that one wishes they could walk right into. Unlike so many Hispanic films that mostly depict Latinos as immigrants crossing the border (Frontera, Under The Same Moon, etc.), subservience or subordinates, this adaptation places its cast in professional upscale jobs, affluent homes, and go-getter friends. Add on the amped explicit sexual scenes and the idea of tabooish, immoral scenarios, and Addicted had potential… but why doesn’t it live up to its promise?

What Doesn’t Work: In addition to the preposterous and far-fetched series of events that make you want to pull your hair out, the flow of Addicted is erratic. It doesn’t know what it wants to be. It begins as a guilty pleasure along the lines of Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal, Basic Instinct, but it turns into a retread cliché of a thriller, then a committed psychological examination of sexual addiction. Which one is it? Many movies have tried to tackle the issue of sex addiction such as Thanks For Sharing, amongst others, but most ultimately turnout becoming implausible and vexing, just like this one.

Pay or Nay? Nay. With so many great thrillers out in theaters with WAY MORE heft, depth, and substance such as Gone Girl, The Equalizer, or The Two Faces of January, why spend your money and time on a cheap made-for-tv movie?

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