MOVIE REVIEW: Lifetime-style movie worth killing

Lifetime movies are great, aren’t they? They’re bland and inoffensive enough to put you to sleep but lurid and sleazy enough to occasionally jar you awake. Lifetime movies are like white noise occasionally intermingled with the sound of air horns and shouted profanities. They also serve an important role in our society. Without them, Kimberly Williams-Paisley and Angie Harmon would be free to walk the streets and none of us would ever understand what sleeping with danger can do to the mothers of America (as witnessed in the seminal Tori Spelling classic “Mother, May I Sleep with Danger”).

But as wonderful as Lifetime movies can be, nobody actually wants to pay to watch them. And that’s basically what you’re getting with “The Roommate,” a boring, big-budget version of the type of cable-ready movie you half-watch when you’re too hung over and filled with self-loathing to care about simple things like getting up and finding the remote.

As “The Roommate” opens, a walking cardboard cutout named Sara (the strikingly untalented Minka Kelly) is enjoying her first day at whatever generic-sounding university this film takes place (The University of College? Probably). For a short while things are kind of fun as she encounters other cardboard cutouts (Aly Michalka) and is even charmed by a sentient can of Axe Body Spray (Cam Gigandet) and its playful attempts at date rape. But things grow sour as she meets her roommate Rebecca (Leighton Meester), a brooding young artist who appears to be mentally ill mainly because she enjoys modern art and dislikes nicknames. Yes, what a goddamned sicko. Yet, in spite of these glaring red flags violently slapping her in the face, Sara grows closer to Rebecca even as Rebecca grows increasingly possessive. It isn’t long before Rebecca starts alienating or murdering anyone or anything close to Sara (and that includes Sara’s kitten Cuddles). But still Sara doesn’t seem to notice even though Rebecca is prone to sitting in the dark smiling emptily.

It isn’t until Rebecca, mirroring Sara, tattoos the name of Sara’s late sister on her left breast that Sara finally realizes that something is seriously wrong with her roommate. As a side note, there isn’t a more appropriate place to memorialize a loved one than the left breast. It can’t get any more solemn or dignified than that. Well, unless it was a tramp stamp depicting the face of your dead sister. But then it would be far too solemn or dignified.

As a blatant rip-off of Barbet Schroeder’s “Single White Female,” “The Roommate” never had a chance of being a good movie. With that said, however, “The Roommate” always had the potential of being an entertaining movie. Unfortunately, director Christian E. Christiansen never fully exploits the sleaziness of its premise. Instead the film repeatedly sets up outrageous situations only to retreat sheepishly before the scene can pay off in an interesting way (most notably in a moment between Meester and a predatory mechanic). It’s a film where things continually almost happen.

What’s worse is the decision to cast Kelly and Meester not just because they’re grimly incompetent actresses but because they look so much alike it’s often difficult to tell who is who. Did Rebecca just stab Sara’s ex-boyfriend, or was it Sara? Who can say or care, really.

But still, “The Roommate’s” biggest crime is its implication that all people on medication are inherently evil and are one missed pill away from killing your pets and ripping the belly ring out of the stomach of a dear acquaintance. It’s an insulting message because the crazy are far more capable and creative than that.

Rating: No Ws