CAST: Leighton Meester, Minka Kelly, Danneel Harris, Cam Gigandet, Alyson Michalka, Matt Lanter, Frances Fisher,Katerina Graham, Tomas Arana, Cherilyn Wilson; DIRECTOR: Christian E. Christiansen; WRITER: Sonny Mallhi; GENRE: Suspense/Thriller, Drama; RUNNING TIME: 93 minutes
Technical Assessment: 2.5
Moral Assessment: 2
CINEMA Rating: For viewers age 18 and above.
Pretty girl from Des Moines, Iowa, Sara (Minka Kelly) goes to college in Los Angeles. The roommate she gets at the dorm is Rebecca (Leighton Meester), an only child of wealthy parents. Rebecca turns out to be a nice girl-next-door type, supportive of Sara, shows her the sights in town, offers her wardrobe for Sara to borrow anything from, and even consents to her bringing in a forbidden pet into their room. Sara is grateful that college would be bright with such a roommate around, until Rebecca begins to know her friends. When she comes in late without calling, Rebecca gets mad. When an ex-boyfriend hounds Sara, Rebecca makes sure he keeps away—she has become a little too possessive.
The Roommate is another of those countless movies about psychotics, and naturally extremely violent. It’s a relief, however, that despite the mad killings and vicious attacks on persons practically no blood is shown, and physical combats are limited to what’s possibly human, without CGI to show more super human violence for its own sake. The cinematography is better than most movies of this genre display, and the music appropriately keeps the viewer in tension. The actors, while not that well-known yet, also do justice to their roles considering the limited depth of the characters they portray The story is rather flat, offering no justifiable motivation for Rebecca's behavior, for example, or adequate emotional depth in the her parents' regard of her situation.
Filipino parents with college age children might worry thinking whether the lifestyle of the American college teens isn’t yet being adopted by their children. The movie shows them at parties where booze flows freely and sex at first meeting is an expected part of the party package. You might also wonder what The Roommate is trying to tell us by its underscoring of the wild side of college kids—they are quite too often shown dancing, flirting, and drinking until they’re too toxic to walk home, but never shown poring over books. The only library scene is done more as a scare tactic than anything else. Parents—although by themselves they seem refined—are shown to be powerless over a stubborn daughter. A male teacher bribes a female student to take an “official” trip to Paris. Girls sleep with their boyfriends or engage in lesbian sex in total disregard of what their elders might say. This story delivers no moral lesson, nor does it give direction to young people towards a better life. But maybe you’ll come out of the theater hoping your kids will never imitate these ones!
