I have decided that since Shadow has taken over my movie column, that I need some other column to keep busy, so I came up with book reviews! Yea! Yipee friggin skipee! As you may or may not know, I am the queen of conciseness when it comes to critiquing stuff, so I'm not going to make an exception here by going into detail about the book. I'm just giving you my impression and a couple of sentences that sum up the plot. Well, here's your book:

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. Now, those of you who are obsessed with me may know that this book first caught my eye when I found out that John Cusack was working on the movie version, which comes out sometime within the next six months I think. Anyway, it's a very good book and a quick read. Rob has just broken up with his girlfriend and is going through one of those what-do-I-want-to-do-with-my-life things which leads him to sleep with an American folk-singer and track down old girlfriends in futile attempts for closure.

If you're in to pop culture, you'll like it. If you like quirky characters, you'll like it. If you want to step into the mind of a nekkid-year-ol'-man (as Olga and I call 'em), then you'll like it. I liked it. Yep. That's all I have to say about that.

Our very own Big Penis Man has agreed to do this column on a monthly basis, so send in your burning questions!

"Dear BPM,
My boyfriend's family wants to meet me. I'm nervous and was wondering if you had any tips as to what I should wear and say.
--Sleepless in Seattle"

"Dear BPM,
My mom won't get off my back! She wants me to settle down--find a wife, have kids. I'm not ready for that stuff yet. I'm not done having fun. How can I tell her?
--I've got mail"

‘Consenting Adults'
Directed by Alan J. Pakula
Starring Kevin Kline, Kevin Spacey, Mary-Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Many people will back me up when I say that I tend to give every movie the benefit of the doubt, especially a movie starring a gloriously tanned Kevin Spacey (all right, all right, you guys know that Charlotte must interject here. You understand why I invited this girl to join the IPS now don't you? Okay, continue.) , but about halfway through ‘Consenting Adults' I actually muttered "oh my God, I can't watch this" and turned off my VCR. In all fairness, the movie plays very well as a comedy, with Kevin Kline and the perenially (Again, interjection. Although a big word was used, do not mistakenly think that Shadow Omega is an alias of Olga's. Resume.) underrated Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio rounding out a far-too-good-for-this cast, but it takes a potentially intriguing idea and turns it into a humiliating would-be thriller. Observing that perhaps Hollywood hadn't produced enough gritty suburban melodramas in the early 1990's, director Alan J. Pakula decided to up the ante and shoot ‘Consenting Adults', which oozes so much smarm and contrived ‘suspense' that you'd expect Jennifer Love Hewitt to pop in somewhere along the line in a thin tank top. She doesn't. (Interjection: Damn shame too y'know. Continue.) (Pakula being the man who also brought us the equally smarmy but actually thrilling ‘Presumed Innocent')

‘Consenting Adults' begins with promise...Kevin Kline and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are a loving, successful upper-middle-class suburban couple whose lives are suddenly made a little more interesting by the arrival of a scathingly blonde Kevin Spacey and his equally blonde wife. Things get *more* interesting as Kline struggles with his ethics against Spacey's hedonistic, quasi-felonious approach to life in general, and then things get *even more* interesting when the time comes for the men to discuss wife-swapping.

I'll admit it's right about this point that I began to think there was some meat to this movie. The acting was right on and the script to this point had been easily digestible.

Then it seems as if someone stepped in, forcibly liberated the script from the screenwriter's hands, and held Pakula at gunpoint to make a movie that is all at once confusing, plodding, and very very disturbing. The men swap wives, and the next morning Spacey's wife has been murdered (it takes them about an hour to arrive at this, the narrative hook, of the entire story). The prime suspect? Kline! The audience knows that Spacey did it, but this film has such a low regard for its audience and itself that it mopes through another hour of Kline's misery and detective-work. Is the wife really dead? Who's conning who? Will Spacey turn Kline's family against him? How? Why? Who cares?

For the record, the 1998 Video Movie Guide gives this 1 star. ‘Breakin' 2: Electric Bugaloo' got 2 ½ stars. (Interjection: I swear, neither Charlotte nor Olga wrote that. The girl's just that cool.)