Film Reviews

Enough

• Rating:
• Director: Michael Apted.
• Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Billy Campbell, Juliette Lewis, Dan Futterman, Fred Ward, Bill Cobbs, Noah Wyle, Tessa Allen.
• Details: US / 115 mins / (15PG).

In the four years since she last appeared in a good film (Out of Sight), Jennifer Lopez has become one of the most famous women in the world. Yet quality has never been a barometer for J-Lo, and her latest movie sees the diva slips to new depths of creative redundancy. In Enough, a morally ambiguous riff on Sleeping with the Enemy, she plays a waitress called Slim. After a customer tries to come on to her, she's rescued by the charming Mitch (Ben Campbell). Slim falls head over heels for the mysterious building contractor and before long she's married to Mitch and borne him a child. Almost as soon as we've established that Mitch is a nice guy, he (shock! horror!) turns outs to be a nutter, prone to adultery and beating his wife. After taking her daughter (Allen) and leaving her hubby, Slim tries to establish a new life for herself. But Mitch won't let her go so easily. Melodramatic rather than thrilling, Enough is a shockingly simplistic, one-dimensional film, which grinds along with the athleticism of a snail. The plot's deficiencies are so apparent that one can only deduce that the director and screenwriter are enjoying some sort of a sly in-joke, while Lopez's performance is its usual shambles. To make matters worse, not only is it a bad film, but in terms of messages, Enough's only words of advice seem to be to meet violence with extreme violence.

Review by Garreth Murphy