I think I saw this one before somewhere. Maybe I’ll remember while writing this …

Slim (Jennifer Lopez, last mentioned here in — I think — Angel Eyes) is a waitress in a diner who comes very close to falling for one of her customers, an intellectual sort of fellow who brings her a rose. Just in time, Mitch (Bill Campbell), another customer, interrupts with overheard information about a bet involving $200 and her pants. She ends up falling for, and marrying, Mitch, a go-get-em sort of guy who — as she discovers, some years and one daughter later — has very definite ideas about a woman’s place in the family and a woman’s rights with respect to her husband’s extramural activities. Disillusioned, Slim takes daughter Gracie and hits the road, trying her best — for an hour and a half! — to escape from a possessive, murderous and wealthy husband in an era when there are no secrets anymore. In the end, with no other recourse available to her, she naturally becomes kung-fu Superwoman and offs the bastard — as anybody who has seen the TV trailer must know.

There are points about this movie that bother me. First, that it took Slim so long to discover her husband’s character; it was obvious to the audience, of course, the moment he bought their house (but then, being pregnant, she was hormonally impaired, and might not have noticed). Second, the message on which Slim finally acts — and which she leaves with the audience — is that “you can’t trust the courts to do the right (as I see it, of course) thing”, a point which is nowhere demonstrated in the film but simply repeated to her by people who have no better reason than she does to believe it; the result is, of course, justifiable murder. And third … what was that other movie, anyway? Oh, yes, Double Jeopardy with Ashley Judd. In that one, of course, an abused wife was chasing after her one-time husband, who was trying to hide from her — but the husbands were pretty much the same, both in behavior and in ultimate come-uppance.

Enjoy … on rented tape.