Better Late than Never on "Sleeping With the Enemy"

This Friday was my wife's pick for movie night and she showed me "Sleeping with the Enemy". I had never seen it, I liked it and I have some thoughts.

First off, I did not realize how much of a star Julia Roberts was in the 90's. I mean, I know of her, I know she is famous, I have seen her in a few movies. But when I looked up her IMDB page for this movie I was kind of stunned how many leading roles she had in the 90's in all different kinds of movies. She was a top of the line, big time marquee movie star. She was a legit upper tier famous person. My wife also told me she thinks Roberts took this role because this was her "damsel in distress" movie. And she totally knocked it out of the park. She was really great as the damsel, but I will get to it a little later on in my piece how she turned from damsel to hero in 90 plus minutes.

This movie was also a perfect snapshot of 90's fashion and hairstyles. Julia Roberts' hair is beautiful in this movie, but it is so long, so thick and so curly. And the big bows and scrunchies and all of that, they were front and center. The two main male characters, their looks were something else. The abusive husband looks like a villain. I mean, you look up a villain in the dictionary and this dude fits it to a T. He is menacing, he wears all black, he has a creepy mustache and he seems to always have a weapon on his person. The gentleman that Roberts meets when she leaves her abusive husband, his hair and clothes were insane. The amount of turtlenecks was wild. The colorful button up shirts were nuts and loud. And his hair, my goodness. He looked like he had a headband in his hair, but he didn't. It was like this weird hybrid of a mullet and a shaggy hair look. It was as 90's as 90's gets. In fact, the only person who didn't have a wild get up was Roberts' mom, but she was the old lady in a nursing home. She got to wear comfy clothes.

Shifting to the music, it was as cliche as a thriller in 1991 can get, and again, I liked this movie. But anytime there was a tense or nervous or uncomfortable scene, there was this loud twinge of music that filled the movie, and you knew something bad was going to happen. The music when the villain husband was on screen was almost hilarious to me. It was so loud and so ominous. It was a little too on the nose. There was also this weird tonal shift in the movie when Roberts and the new guy are trying on clothes, which becomes a montage scene, and this happy music underscores this very odd moment of an otherwise nice thriller. They also have a weird dance scene where they play the song "RunAround Sue", which seems to be a staple of 90's movies.

Outside of these few minor personal issues I had though, as I have stated so far, I did enjoy the movie. It was a good thriller. It kept me on the edge of my seat. I was rooting for Roberts to be happy, to be the hero, which she gets to be. This movie could have followed along the same lines of most "damsel in distress" movies and let the guy be the hero, but this movie didn't. The villain husband, spoiler alert, tracks her down, and has her trapped in her home. It looks like he will win, but the new guy shows up and tries to stop him. The new guy gets knocked out, and it is just the villain and Roberts. I thought this was where they were going to have the new guy wake up and save Roberts. "Sleeping with the Enemy" had other ideas, and I loved it. Roberts grabbed the gun and pointed it at the villain. He tried to talk her down, tried to control her. And just when it looked like he might win her over, she called the police and said she had just shot an intruder. She hadn't yet, but I was pretty certain she was on that path. When she hung up the phone she fired four shots into his chest. All the while the new guy was knocked out on the floor oblivious to what was going on. Roberts took actions into her own hands, shot the bad guy and won. She defeated the villain. She saved herself and the new guy. She was able to exorcise this demon in her life, and she did it by herself.

I think that is a pretty powerful move by a movie from the 90's. As I have said, a lot of movies back then would have let the guy save the day. This one didn't, and I thought it was a great move on the writers and actors and directors part. I love that they let the "damsel" be the hero. It was great. I recommend this movie to anyone that is looking for a classic 90's thriller and to any Julia Roberts fan. I really enjoyed many things about this movie.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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