“Everything is for sale.”

     The premise of Indecent Proposal is that everything is for sale.  And that’s about all the movie has going for it.  The premise is interesting, in that it is a good spark for discussion.  I remember many a drinking party in my youth where a discussion was sure to arise about what, exactly, one would do for a million dollars.  Would you have sex with Louie Anderson for a million dollars?  Would you spend a week in a septic tank for a million dollars?  For a million dollars, would you fight a gorilla?  And so forth.  And it’s always a million dollars, which is ideal - it’s enough that you can be set for life if you use the money sparingly and invest it well.  But it’s also not enough to guarantee your financial security if you want to live a high-flying lifestyle.  It’s an interesting, giant, round number.

     So the premise of Indecent Proposal, (one million dollars for one night with your wife) is an interesting one.  However, not nearly enough time is spent on the actual pondering of that proposal.  Once creepy billionaire Robert Redford offers Woody Harrelson one million dollars for sex with Demi Moore, there are a couple of speeches about morality and the relationship of sex to marriage and so forth.  But none of those speeches ring true, and the couple decides, very quickly, to go for the money.  So we don’t get to see much of a contemplation on their part.  They are struggling for money, and of course they would take this opportunity.

     So the bulk of the movie is all about the future ramifications of that decision.  Even that has the potential to be interesting for a while, as there could be an interesting story to be told about jealousy and truth.  Instead, we get a really, really stupid soap opera.  Demi Moore is a fine actress, but just about everything her character does in the second half of the movie makes absolutely no sense.  Every action she takes is virtually the polar opposite of the one her character would take, based on the personality and values the movie so painstakingly set up for her in the first half.  And Woody Harrelson has little to do but mope and pout and cry.

     The biggest problem with the last hour and a half of the movie (well, aside from the overly slick, soulless direction from Adrian Lyne) is that Robert Redford’s character, the creepy, power-mad, unpleasantly offensive billionaire who made the deliciously immoral offer in the first place, is given a complete pass.  It turns out he is really quite nice, after all.  And it turns out he is quite charming and handsome and Robert Redford, and he really does care about pretty young Demi Moore.  Who has apparently lived up to that whole prostitute thing which was the basis for them first meeting.  At the end of the movie, Redford gets one of the silliest cop-out scenes in a movie, when he does this Noble, Selfless act that…ah, whatever.  It’s all totally sopa-opera ludicrous.

     Nicely shot, so polished it gleams, Blu-Ray may be the ideal format for this movie.  If you are already a fan of this movie.  Indecent Proposal hits Blu-Ray June 9th from Paramount Home Entertainment, and if you are not already a fan, then you likely have good taste in movies.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 5:43 am and is filed under 1993, Adrian Lyne, Billy Bob Thornton, Blu Ray, Demi Moore, Drama, Garbage, Oliver Platt, Robert Redford, Woody Harrelson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.