A Good Marriage

source: A Good Marriage

This was a good movie. It is not what you think...if you read the movie synopsis. It definitely is Stephen King-ish. If you like movies that are interesting and keep you full of "what's next",then you'll like this movie. Some people want so much out of a movie other than entertainment. And most of these reviews sound like these people want to be movie critics but didn't make it. Plan and simple...not a bad movie at all. It starts right from the beginning. Keeps you interested all the way to the end. I, personally, have not seen a movie like this. And I watch a lot of lifetime movies. I really would like to read this book! That's how interesting the movie was to us. Good weekend movie or date movie.

Here is the plot, man and wife appear to have an idyllic marriage, in the book apparently the stress is on what a good man Bob is, unfortunately in the film he comes across as smarmy and creepy but not in a horror type creepy. He turns out to be a rapist serial killer and the wife finds out, to keep the good name and protect the children she carries on with the marriage until she kills him by pushing him downstairs and then suffocating him. Would an autopsy not find the cause of death? an ex detective discovers their secret by combining their names Bob and Darcy which is bedee ??????????? never mind. That is the film no twists, no horror, no tension, acting passable but this is a film which goes out of its way not to alarm the audience, no loud noises, no sudden movements, no gore, no horror, nothing, luckily it was free on Sky so I have only been robbed of my time.

I'll start off by saying I'm a huge Stephen King fan - always have been; always will be. But I haven't rushed to see "A Good Marriage" because the reviews haven't been great. But it was the sheer ordinariness of this movie that sent chills up my spine. It made me think of Hannah Arendt's coverage of the Eichmann trials and musings on the banality of evil. Most of us aren't shocked when a criminal is rounded up who looks like Charles Manson and has a troubled past. But what do we make of the criminal who has no criminal past, looks like the classic "boy/girl next door", and was class valedictorian? The Ted Bundys of the world? Okay, so the beginning was a bit of a snooze fest. I kept thinking to myself, "Normal, hard-working people, happy family, solid marriage - I get it already." I honestly wasn't expecting a lot from this movie. I love Stephen King, but I had heard that A "Good Marriage" lacked the requisite Stephen King signature staples, like rotting, talking corpses, telepathic powers, killer cars, etc. And though the main theme was an interesting idea, it didn't break any new ground. I mean, a woman discovers her husband isn't what she thought he was...been there, done that. Story of my life. At best, a sure contender for the Lifetime Channel. But it was the sheer mundane-ness of this movie that made it so intriguing and ultimately disturbing. I could emotionally relate to Darcy as she discovered that her husband was the infamous Beadie, but what intrigued me even more was her response. Darcy's final conversation with a guy obsessed with tracking down Beadie was poignant. Here, he's spent a huge chunk of his life chasing down a serial killer only to be forced to reexamine his own life and learn that things aren't always so cut-and-dried or black-and-white as they initially seem. In the final analysis, "A Good Marriage" may have been too real and down-to-earth for Stephen King loyalists and people accustomed to high drama, but if you can appreciate an intimate, subtle, slow burning character study I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

I have learned to not go by the reviews of naysayers solely. Weigh the reviews and you can usually tell within the first half hour which way it's going to go. That's what happened and this made for such a good movie. Plot twist was amazing and definitely a Stephen King plot. Enjoyed it. It's not average by a longshot.

This is an entertaining movie with a good cast. It held my interest and lived up to my expectations. I generally disregard the ratings when they're all over the place, as then I figure I have a fair chance. Sometimes I win and sometimes not. This time was good, and I did enjoy it right up to the end. Give it a try, you can always turn it off.

I watched this today and I was on the edge of my chair, I thought it was very good and I highly recommend this movie. I thought this was one of the best of Stephen Kings stories. It was suspenseful and I wonder what I would do if I was in Mrs. Anderson's shoes.

I haven't seen a new movie based on Stephen King material in awhile, and saw this off Netflix, so I thought I'd give this a go. I noticed it's pretty new- a 2014 film- yet absolutely have no memory of it being released in theaters. Overall, it's a major let-down. Looking into this further, I read at Wikipedia that Stephen King based his book on the Dennis Rader AKA The "BTK Killer". I even read that Rader's daughter was opposed to King doing so, saying she didn't want him to be profiting off the victims. Well, that being said, if you want to see a much better film about BTK (there are at least 3 or 4 others), I would recommend watching the made-for-CBS TV movie called "Hunt for the BTK Killer" starring Robert Forster. It's a "CSI"-style show, with a compelling performance by Gregg Henry as Rader. This movie isn't much more than a Lifetime Movie Network film; a BTK story from the wife's perspective, and really didn't find much interesting or compelling about this piece at all.

A Good Marriage is the latest Stephen King adaptation to hit the film realm and it does so with a splat. Bland direction, hollowed performances and a lazy script propel A Good Marriage from being apart from the rest and instead it sits happily between Sleeping with the Enemy and Cape Fear. The film stars Anthony Lapaglia and Joan Allen as a happily married couple that have their lives turned upside down when the husband is discovered to be a serial killer. This film isn't a terrible film in the least. It is cliché, cookie cutter cinema rehashing what other better films have done in the past. There is nothing new to the story and honestly, it doesn't even seem like King's work. It is lazily written as if it this were meant as a made for TV movie with a slightly bigger budget and a bit more violence and language. Despite some of these negative aspects, the film is still silly entertaining fun. This is a midnight movie type, it isn't good, it isn't bad. It is a film wallowing in mediocrity and it seems to be okay with that.