Wait for Re-runs of Southern Gothic Soap Opera

Hush is a guilty pleasure, like the soapoperas that so many people need to live. That being said, it's entirely safe to say that the only people who will see this movie are those who pencil in a TV movie once every month or so. This review is strictly for those people. The rest of the population, content with living their lives clinging to the fleeting solace of reality, should consider themselves warned.

It's a tale of high jinx in the back-woods, complete with the sense of urgency that can only be created in the minds of people with very little to do. The movie has those elements of leisure class life that people who truly work for a living love to see. How do those people create something out of nothing, and create it not only well, but over and over again? Why are these people upset? Honestly, whose mother-in-law hasn't tried to kill them at least once?

Hush starts out as the love in Manhattan affair. Boy takes girl home to mother. Mother shows unnatural affection for son. Mother greets naked girlfriend of boy for the first time in boy's room. Mother manipulates birth control so that son can give her a grandchild. Mother pleads helpless to get the son to move back home so that she can be near him--and can off the offending new queen bee as soon as she delivers the kid.

Even if it skews slightly away from the Harlequin-style plot slightly, there are still things about the characters that follow romantic convention. In fact, the plot skews just enough to make it cute enough to watch.

The male lead (Jonathan Schaech) takes lessons from Paul Reiser, the nineties Alan Alda. The female lead, played by Gwyneth Paltrow is spunky and independent. (See, no jokes about her weight in this review). The mother-in-law presents, sadly, a thoroughly ingrained type, the Endora that all dowagers become. But maybe we should throw social critique to the wind as we've lowered our standards to below action flick plot expectations by watching this movie in the first place. Nope. That's the beauty of being fly enough to play both sides of this issue.

Now, though the movie pays its respect to romantic detail, it's really just this big cat fight over this man who is decidedly handsome but not convincing enough to be worth fighting over. Apparently, women only shine if men are just not present, because Lange plays a widow and Schaech might as well be dead for all his presence does to move along the plot--though he is cute, so he can stay. But I digress.

The movie is all about the aging of a southern belle, a shrinking violet turned black widow at the threat of replacement. The revenge of Scarlett, with the necessary homage to Freud. The film even goes out of its way to give an example of a foil to Jessica Lange's character, Martha. The good belle, played to perfection by Schaech's grandmother (played by Nina Foch) gives a wonderfully spirited performance. She delivers the best one-liners and has the venom befitting a woman on the side of the good and the righteous, the legitimate.

The thing that's best about this movie is that Gwyneth Paltrow knows when to leave. As soon as she figures out that her boyfriend's mom is trying to kill her, she leaves, husband or no husband. Her real-time realization of the situation at hand is so refreshing that you have to smile. Especially compared to the number of people that Freddie eats before the lead realizes what's wrong. Finally, a heroine that does what you would do, or what you say you would do anyway. Gwyneth's character has to be given a commendation for not forcing the audience to talk back to the screen and tell her what to do. She handles the situation with all of the finesse, grace and sneakiness that America prides itself on.

But that's all the good there is to say about the movie, if one discounts the scene where Martha sits weeping on the kitchen floor looking, as a friend comments, "Like somebody stole her food." The novelty of having a movie whose main characters are women is marred, because the plot is channeled through some late-Bond era fantasy of a planet full of women who all want to serve and protect their men. Schaech's non-essential role in the movie is not a triumph for women everywhere--it's more of a slap in the face. Can women only shine in their protracted pursuit of the male species, courting their love even if they gave birth to them? Disturbing, to say the least.

It's not worth paying eight dollars to go see, but it's good enough to warrant renting it and rounding out the rest of the ticket price with a nice pint of Swiss Almond Haagen Daaz. Split the cost with friends. The best of both worlds, the perfect 24 hours. Sleep-overs with your girls filled with Ricki-Lake-style outbursts of "Leave him" and "Should've stabbed her when you had the chance"'s, followed by righteous indignation after confronting your male peers in the morning about the illnesses of patriarchy. Better yet, call the boys up in the middle of the night and lecture them between bouts of helpless glee.