"The Roommate" Review

When's the last time you saw Single White Female? You know the movie: Jennifer Jason Leigh is a mousy woman who moves in with Bridget Fonda and, being a psycho hose beast, takes over her life and identity. It came out in 1992 and I don't think I've seen it all the way through since then, but the basic themes have been absorbed by the general culture and due to Hollywood's need to recycle the familiar rather than try to come up with something new, it's been prettied-up and dumbed-down as The Roommate for kids who watch the CW Network. (Seriously. Three stars are from CW shows and a fourth is married to Jensen Ackles from Supernatural.)

Minka Kelly is a girl from Iowa going to college in LA. (That she's 30 in real life is fun trivia.) Her roommate is Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester - which prompted me to snark that this was called Single Waldorf Female - who as we know from seeing the trailer is crrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaazeeeeeeee! She's clinging and possessive and...oh, watch the trailer, almost the whole movie minus a subplot involving Billy Zane as a lecherous professor is in there.

The best thing in Single Waldor...er, The Roommate is Meester's psycho hose beast performance. Yeah, it's predictable and poorly motivated - she's off her meds and had some obsession with a girl in high school - but she has fun with it, while not overplaying too much, and I hardly thought of Blair while watching her. (Bestest moment is how she deals with the earrings Minka lends her.) The others are blah, but there's nothing for them to really do and the pacing makes it feel longer than the 90 minutes it runs.

To refresh my memory, I looked up Single White Female at Wikipedia and the number of plot points cribbed should entitle SWF's writers some credit or perhaps a check and no association with this roommate.

Score: 3/10. Watch Single White Female again for the first time.