Increasingly bland and uninterested in the audience

bob the moo

Continuing her trend as "angel of death", Sam is out jogging with friend Cassie when they blunder into the middle of a murder investigation at the golf course. Seemingly Chief Connors is on top of it so, much to his surprise, Sam jogs on and leaves him to it. Later that day a young woman with a baby comes into the bookstore, looking for the previous owner – Sam takes pity and agrees to let Susie and her baby stay in her house. Days later she is still keeping this from Cassie but has found herself left looking after the baby herself while Susie has gone missing. Philby's return from San Francisco helps Sam get a grip on what is going on and how, surprisingly, it fits in with Chief Connors' missing suspect.

Not sure why I keep bothering with the Mystery Woman series of television movies. Perhaps it is because theoretically it offers me easy and undemanding viewing that might actually produce some interest in my tired brain. One or two of the films have managed to do that but more and more recently I seem to be writing about how smug and bland the whole thing is and it cannot just be that I have become more discerning, because I am quite sure that I have not. This film is typical of what I mean in the way that it offers nothing in the way of mystery in the way you would expect it from a mystery film. Instead what we have is a murder where we pretty much know what happened (due to terrible structure of the story) but cannot bring ourselves to care mainly because of how bland the delivery is. There is no urgency to connect things and no pace or direction taking us towards the end; instead it is like spending an hour in a small swimming pool – we know we are in water at the start, spend the time moving around to different parts of the pool but ultimately we only discover what we already knew – we are in water. The structure of the story is terrible, letting characters drift around as if they are meant to intrigue us but really they are obvious and the lack of them developing just makes it all the duller.

The direction, music and structure are all parts of this problem as none of it seems to have been constructed with the viewer in mind. On the contrary the film just feels like a product that has been manufactured on a process line regardless of demand or need for its existence. To a certain point I do not object to daytime filler doing what it does but I do require it to do more than just fill time in a self-satisfied way as if it owes nobody anything more than that. The cast offer nothing either. Martin once presented her self with a bit of sass and character but to my eye now she is just a pretty girl reading out clunky dialogue. Williams still looks like he is on the edge of crying but then is also grateful for the regular work – here he can barely muster himself to do anything. Siemaszko is unable to work with her terrible character and is yet again is handed action and dialogue that would see her disbarred in the real world. Sander is just gruff, grunts his lines and then heads off. The guests are mostly bland – with Davies trying to outdo Martin in the "inane grin, big eyes, nod to show interest" technique, Jackson just being a pretty boy and Schuldt and Curry both failing to make anything out of their characters or plot.

Overall then another bland product in a series that maybe once or twice has produced something amusing but is increasingly smug and happy to just fill time on television. Certainly the desire to engage the viewer or present an intriguing mystery is almost totally absent.

score /10

bob the moo 4 December 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1774857/