Armchair Script Doc: Deadly Honeymoon

It’s happened to all of us: we watch a movie featuring one of our favorite actors and it simply doesn’t quite work. Being trained as a screenwriter, I find that most of the time the problems can be traced back to the shooting script (not necessarily the script the writer actually intended). The movie I’m taking a look at this time: Deadly Honeymoon starring Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles) and Zoe McLellan (JAG, Dirty Sexy Money).

If you haven’t seen it and don’t want to be spoiled, stop now for there be spoilers after the jump (argh).

Deadly Honeymoon Starring: Summer Glau as Lindsey Forrest Zoe McLellan as FBI Special Agent Gwen Merced Chris Carmack as Trevor Forrest Directed by: Paul Shapiro Written by: Ron McGee Two newlyweds, Lindsey and Trevor Forrest, are on a cruise ship to begin their honeymoon. Trevor turns up missing and Lindsey is found with no memory of what had happened. An FBI Agent on the boat for vacation insinuates herself into the investigation to find out if Trevor’s fate was really an accident. Premiere: Sunday, April 25, 2010 on Lifetime Movie Network

My first complaint about the story was that it was “flat”: the pacing was consistently even; the tension didn’t do much in the way of rising or falling. While this is partly a failing on all involved — director, actors, editor, music — much of it could have been overcome on the page. Something as simple as adding three more scenes (about 3-5 pages) to the script without cutting any of the rest out would have forced the pace.

But pace wasn’t the only failing. The big fail was that the story wasn’t terribly imaginative. Even sticking with the premise that a newlywed wife would profit from an accidental death, the fact is that this is all the story really focused on. The rest of the twists and turns were simply red herrings attempting to distract but never panning out into full complications. None of the threads really tied together to build the suspense.

For example: we have this trio of shady Hungarians (Max, Luca, Ben) and a displaced Texan named Kim. The Hungarians are a complication trying to ramp up the tension, with the rape of Kim by Max being an important tangent (which we are told about without seeing any evidence). Unfortunately, Kim has a don’t-tell-anyone, I’m-putting-it-behind-me sort of attitude that results in a total fizzle with this plotline. I thought it might have been better (and was hoping for) if Kim was actually in cahoots with the Hungarians and they were trying to play a con on the naive newlyweds.

Also, the character of Lindsey was written a bit oddly. I suppose that we’re to assume she was a method actor, never breaking character even when she was alone in her new, tiny cabin. I’m not buying it. Really, the only time in the movie when Lindsey showed any real life was when she confronted the Hungarians and outed Max as a rapist. It was clear, at that point, that she was trying to get some profit out of this unfortunate incident simply by making a stink about things so the cruise line would worry about PR.

Where are we? Picking up the pace. Getting more emotion out of Lindsey (sorry, Summer, I think you needed to chew more scenery even with the material you had). Making the twists a little more convoluted. What else?

The through-line for Lindsey wasn’t established well enough. There was the implication that she may have married Trevor (and into his family) to have a stake in the family money. In any event, she eventually blackmails the cruise line into buying her silence for $3 million. But why? We don’t know her. We don’t know the Forrests. The audience has no information to ramp up the stakes. She’s basically a generic any-character. That she’s both victim and villain, though it should be interesting, is pretty much irrelevant because the audience has been given no reason to care or root for her one way or the other — other than making Trevor a jerk.

Lastly, the ending was lame. It was a cop-out non-resolution ending. Like many oft-criticized movies from the 70s, it largely just ended without any sense of completion. If an audience member is investing two hours of their time, they need a solid climax instead of the movie just rolling over and going to sleep on them. This is a story, not life, after all…it gets to have an ending. Instead, we get a, “What I think happened,” reconstruction of what happened to Trevor from Merced. We wrap things up with a vague threat from Special Agent Merced and a somewhat guilty Lindsey. No actual consequences. Merced may or may not be continuing the investigation. Lindsey may or may not get to have her store and have it live up to her dreams.

Lindsey needed to be a  more strongly-defined character. Both her emotional and tangible goals needed to be clear. Is she just a gold-digger? Is she simply trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear? That the precipitating event was an accident, a lot of what follows afterward is diluted since we don’t have a handle on the whys. Merced, too, needed more definition. Though a go-getter, she’s a toothless lion, seeming to have little purpose than to annoy Lindsey.

Basically, this was a very formula movie with a very formula tone. While budget considerations may have had an effect on what was shot, there was much more opportunity to take this up to the next level. Nothing I’ve mentioned would have required much that wasn’t already there: a few lines of dialog; more background to give context; a little more emotion. A dragon. (Kidding about the dragon–but it would have been cool.) So close. They could have hit a double or a triple, but ended up with a swing-and-a-miss.