The Stream: Same old story with not enough crazy

The Big Screen: Omar Epps is a creep and the home is awesome!

The Final Bill: Typical love affair movie with some funny creepy moments

-S2S: Movie Review and Trip Fontaine
Director: Peter Sullivan
Writers: Peter Sullivan, Rasheeda Garner | 1 more credit »
Stars: Nia Long, Omar Epps, Stephen Bishop | See full cast & crew »
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: 1 hour 24 minutes
Platform: Netflix (July 16)

Misnomer is the true title of this film, but I digress. Fatal Affair is the movie of the weekend. Netflix had my wife and I at lover-boy-gone-creeper. Then, they added in classic actors Nia Long and Omar Epps… how could we resist this treasure!

Now, Fatal Affair is technically bad, but let’s talk about why it’s fun to watch shall we. When I say bad, I don’t mean Tyler Perry 5 days of shooting bad. I mean cost-effective filming and forgettable acting bad. The most expensive part of this movie is the awesome decor and home design on display. The plot is basically almost half of the Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network movies. If the movie is only 82 minutes long, they really could’ve done this in a solid 60 minute episode of SVU. Okay, so now that you know it’s just a made for tv movie that’s a little too long, let’s get to what there is to enjoy.

First and foremost, who doesn’t love to gander at Nia Long! She’s gotten older since Friday, but she is still a sight to behold. Omar Epps is also a classic in film and TV. He plays his hacker/creeper very well. Very few have crazy in their eyes like my boy Omar. Beyond these two, the cast is irrelevant. In fact, if you stare too hard at the other cast members, you might think this movie is utter garbage. Let’s just get back to the stars. Nia is still one to lust after with her middling acting, and Omar Eyes was creepy but I think the director held him and the story back. Omar needed to get to Taraji P. Henson levels of acrimony and insanity. He’s got it in him but the movie didn’t let him take his crazy far enough. Honestly, the movie lacked imagination. At least Tyler Perry’s masterpiece, A Fall From Grace, gave us all of the crazy we could want. Peter Sullivan, as a director and writer, should’ve taken a page out of Perry’s soap opera manifesto.

Trip Fontaine: Let me interject for just a bit! I also watched Fatal Affair this weekend because I needed something on in the background. I was reluctant to watch this move because, from the looks of it, I’ve already seen this movie many times over (ex. Obssessed, No Good Deed, The Perfect Guy, etc.). Of course, I was not surprised by this paint-by-numbers “thriller”. You can’t really call Fatal Affair a thriller when there’s nothing thrilling about it. I won’t discount movies like this just because the story is always the same, but there’s got to be something more to make it worth the time. Luckily, Fatal Affair is relatively short although I felt like it drags. I wanted it to just get to the point already. I’ll also give it a pass for giving Nia Long and Omar Epps something to do even if it is pretty basic stuff. Finally, I’ll echo what S2S said that even though this movie is technically better and more coherent than most Tyler Perry thrillers of this same genre, the heightened melodrama of those Tyler Perry films make them just a bit more entertaining in that so-bad-it’s-good kind of way. My two cents – back to your regular programming.

Nevertheless, Fatal Affair is technically better than most Tyler Perry movies in acting and consistency but way less interesting! While Long and Epps gives us their all, viewers need more. For this, the typical storyline and lack of craziness leads Fatal Affair to be a stream if you’re bored, or nostalgic if you’re black, handful of popcorn.