Nominated for six Academy Awards and the second highest grossing movie that year, Fatal Attraction is well worth a watch. If only to serve as a cautionary tale for any blokes thinking of having their cake and eating it. Because it’s much more likely that whilst the cake will taste of battenberg at first, by the time you realise the smell of almonds is actually cyanide and ground-up rabbit carcass, it’ll be too late.
Michael Douglas is Dan, a Manhattan lawyer, who has the weekend away from his wife and ends up meeting and subsequently bumping uglies with Glenn Close — a ‘sexy’ ‘woman’. Dan and Alex have a one night stand. Or so he thinks. Her cool, confident exterior soon crumbles as she becomes more and more obsessed, and Dan becomes more and more desperate to ignore her. With Mark Zuckerberg just three years old in 1987, and therefore no Facebook, things soon turn sinister as she’s forced to come up with creatively creepy ways of stalking him.
The trickiest bit is believing that Michael Douglas went for a woman so square-jawed that even the name Glenn isn’t the manliest thing about her. Add to the fact that this was before Douglas became a perfectly preserved living mummy. Actually, not far off the age wife Catherine Zeta-Jones is now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1QuLIPFZL0
Of course, our resident bunny-boiler, now known as Glenn A-Little-Too-Close is a cracking actress (or actor depending on whether or not you believe the rumour I’ve literally just started). But it’s a little hard to imagine that he’d stray away from his Ikea flat-pack family with Alex – Close’s femme fatale. Or femme fatal, if you like. Or maybe it isn’t. In contrast to his pretty-but-dull brunette wife, Alex is bold and blonde. For those that aren’t aware, in Hollywood, brunette translates as dependable. Whilst blondes have more fun, sex and ultimately, screen time. Fatal Attraction doesn’t break the mould. It does however, break rabbit hutches. If you ever wondered why stalker ex-girlfriends are called bunny boilers, here’s where it started.
We’re slightly left wondering as to why she suddenly flips and goes from confident to crazy quicker than it takes to get a badly drawn tattoo of your new boyfriend’s face on your shoulder. But let’s face it, we’ve all done irrational things. I know I have. Ten laser tattoo removal sessions later and you can still see the outline of his handlebar moustache.
So, sit down, pop the DVD in and microwave the popcorn. But whatever you do, don’t watch Watership Down first. Or eat battenberg. Or have an affair with a lady with a man’s name. Because whilst Dave from Accounts might have a cracking cleavage, she’s just not worth it.
