This Week in Netflix

July 18, 2008 on 7:26 pm | In Movies, Netflix, Weak Attempt |

Every week, the DVD-through-the-mail site Netflix announces new DVDs for rental. Most are films that never got a theatrical release. Ethan Kaye brings you This Week In Netflix, the most inexplicable actual description of an actual film actually posted by the Netflix staff.

This week?

Poison Sweethearts

Pushed to the limit by their abusers, six young women turn the tables on the vile men who destroyed their lives in this anthology of blood-splattered vignettes. Vengeance-seekers include a sweet girl forced to care for her depraved father, a beautiful hooker and a lonely teen who falls prey to a pair of sleazy breakdancers. Ashleigh Holeman, Roza Haidet, Laura Robbins, Jen Meissner and Raymond Turturro star.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good revenge tale (unless it stars Ashley Judd who has the acting chops of a stapler). If a woman gets “done wrong” by her man, to quote the blues, watching her bring the hammer down makes for a good movie. Thematically, it doesn’t involve a kooky best friend, a dope deal with gangsters gone bad, or cleaning up a house before parents get home.

However, the antagonists are sleazy breakdancers.

SLEAZY BREAKDANCERS. I suspect this droll description was the part of a Netflix staffer who was struggling to come up with a hook for Poison Sweethearts, since there is no nudity in it. When the best your movie has to offer is sleazy breakdancers, you better sell that new car, cause you ain’t keeping up with the payments.

I would like to play a game with you, readers. Can you come up with antagonists for a revenge movie that are goofier than “sleazy breakdancers?” If you read this entry, please post a comment with your thoughts, ideally in the “adjective occupation” format. Here are a few to get your started:

Goofier Antagonists for Poison Sweethearts

1. Schizophrenic Newspaper Magnates
2. Tired Suffragettes
3. Crippled Comptrollers
4. Waterlogged Deacons

I’d also like to point out that these six tales of revenge take place in a 70 minute movie. It’s one of those movies if you like revenge but don’t really like things like set-up or exposition. “None of this talking or explanation nonsense for me,” says the moviegoer, “just give me revenge after revenge!” Assuming that the opening and closing credits take 10 minutes total (that’s also assuming that enough people were involved with this to stretch the credits out that far), each vignette is allowed 10 minutes to get from the set-up to the (assumed) gory punchline. That means that these tales of revenge are shorter than the average episode of Yu-Gi-Oh by about 12 minutes. Hell, they’re shorter than an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

So this is a film that will not be added to my queue. Especially after the lone reviewer on Netflix wished ebola on the cast and crew. Sorry, makers of Poison Sweethearts, but the odds are against you on this one.