Embracing The Melodrama: The Client List (dir by Eric Laneuville)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2010’s The Client List, Jennifer Love Hewitt stars as Samantha Horton.

Samantha’s a former beauty queen whose mother (Cybill Shepherd) always hoped would go on to win Miss Texas and then maybe appear in movies and on television. Instead, Samantha got knocked up by her boyfriend, Rex (Teddy Sears). Rex was a football star at UT so marrying him didn’t seem like it would be a dead-in but then Rex blew out his knee. Now, they’re living in small town Texas, they’ve got three children, and they’ve got a bank threatening to foreclose on their home. When Samantha and Rex head down to the bank, their loan officer spends the entire time staring at Samantha’s chest while Samantha reveals that she has a photographic memory.

Desperately needing a job and with Rex drinking away his troubles, Samantha gets a job at a massage parlor the next town over. Naively, Samantha assumed that her job would actually just be to give men massages. Instead, it turns out that the massage parlor is actually a brothel where the workers continually tell each other that it “beats the heck out of waitressing.”

(They don’t say “heck” but I gave up cursing for Lent.)

At first, Samantha is disgusted by the idea of working as a prostitute. But, with Rex drinking too much and the house about to bet taken away, Samantha goes back to the parlor and soon becomes the most popular person working there. She works herself to exhaustion but one of her clients has just the solution for that. “I’ve never even smoked weed before,” Samantha says while looking at the baggie of cocaine. I’m sorry …. you dated someone who went to UT without ever smoking weed? I don’t buy that.

Samantha can now stay awake for hours, going to work and buying her family a lot of Christmas presents. Samantha’s clients include some of the most powerful men in the county. When one of her co-workers confesses to having doubts about the job, Samantha sends her to a church group so she’ll have someone to talk to. Soon, words gets out that the massage parlor is a house of prostitution and Samantha is getting arrested and led out of the parlor in her underwear while TV cameras roll. “That looks kind of like your wife,” someone says to Rex.

The Client List caused quite a stir when it aired on Lifetime back in 2010. (It also led to a TV series where Jennifer Love Hewitt starred as a different character.) It’s an enjoyably sordid story, one that embraces the melodrama and mixes morality and sex in a way that would have made Cecil B. DeMille proud. The film takes place in my homestate and, fortunately, it stars a lot of Texas-born actors so the accents are authentic, even if the dialogue was obviously written by a Yankee. (“She’s as busy as popcorn,” a character said at one point and I nearly went blind from rolling my eyes.) That the film actually carries some emotional weight is totally due to the lead performance of Jennifer Love Hewitt, who I’ve always liked because we’re both Texas girls and we’ve both got big boobs so I feel like we share the same struggle. Hewitt gives an authentic and heartfelt performance here, leaving no doubt that everything that Samantha does, she does for her family. The Client List is a true Lifetime classic.

Retro Television Reviews: Return To Cabin By The Lake (dir by Po-Chih Leong)

Posted on October 29, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 2001’s Return To Cabin By The Lake! It can be viewed on YouTube.

Stanley Caldwell (Judd Nelson) is back!

At the end of Cabin By The Lake, screenwriter Stanley had managed to escape from the police by faking his own drowning. Return to Cabin By The Lake finds Stanley using a variety of disguises and fake identities in his effort to once again become a part of the film industry. He is particularly interested in the fact that his previous murder spree is being turned into a movie. He’s considerably less happy about the fact that everyone involved in the movie continually disparages his work as a screenwriter. He’s even less happy when he hears them speculating that there was a sexual-motive behind Stanley’s murders or that Stanley was acting out against his mother. For someone who spent the previous movie drowning innocent women and then visiting their bodies in the lake, Stanley sure does seem to be shocked to discover that most people don’t have a high opinion of him. You’re a murderer, Stanley. People don’t like murderers.

Anyway, as a master of disguise, Stanley is able to work his way into the production of the film. Even though everyone on the set is spending 24 hours a day obsessing on and recreating the crimes of Stanley, no one is suspicious of the guy who looks just like Stanley and who keeps saying stuff like, “Stanley would never do that!” Stanley becomes obsessed with script writer Andrea (Dahlia Salem). He also comes to resent the film’s shallow director, Mike Helton (Brian Krause, giving the film’s best performance). Stanley decides that he would be a better director of the film so he buries Mike alive and then takes over direction.

Return To Cabin By The Lake is a bit more deliberately humorous than the first film. If Cabin By The Lake was full of pleasant townspeople and earnest police officers, Return To Cabin By The Lake is populated with caricatures of various Hollywood phonies. Everyone involved in Return To Cabin By The Lake‘s film-within-a-film is blithely unconcerned with the feelings of the the victim’s loved ones nor do they really care about telling the story accurately. Helton’s only concern is that the script have enough sex. That Stanley not only takes over as director but turns out to be a pretty good at it would appear to be Return To Cabin By The Lake’s ultimate statement on the film industry.

Judd Nelson is a bit more energetic in the sequel than he was in the first film. That said, Return To Cabin The By The Lake makes the mistake of asking us to buy the idea of Stanley being a master of disguise. Judd Nelson is always going to look and sound like Judd Nelson, regardless of whether he’s wearing a wig or not.

Though it’s a bit constrained by being a made-for-TV movie, Return To Cabin By The Lake is a marked improvement on the first film, one that has more humor and a better performance from its lead. The film ends with an opening for another sequel but it was apparently never to be.

Cleaning Out The DVR Yet Again #18: Careful What You Wish For (dir by

Posted on November 29, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Lisa recently discovered that she only has about 8 hours of space left on her DVR! It turns out that she’s been recording movies from July and she just hasn’t gotten around to watching and reviewing them yet. So, once again, Lisa is cleaning out her DVR! She is going to try to watch and review 52 movies by Wednesday, November 30th! Will she make it? Considering that she only has a day left, probably not. But keep checking the site to find out!)

I recorded Careful What You Wish For off of Starz on November 4th. It’s one of two films in which Nick Jonas appeared in 2016. (The other film was the underrated Goat, which I really should get around to reviewing some day. Maybe if I ever finish cleaning out this damn DVR, I’ll finally get a chance to get caught up on reviewing all of the other movies that I’ve seen this year.)

Anyway, in Careful What You Wish For, Nick plays Doug. Doug is kind of a dorky, creepy guy who spends the summer at his parent’s lakehouse. His neighbors are the Harpers. Elliott Harper is super rich banker and he’s played by Dermot Mulroney so you know he’s no good. Lena Harper (played by Isabel Lucas) is blonde, young, and always seems to be in the process of removing her bikini top whenever Doug comes around.

Doug is soon lusting over Lena and Lena appears to feel the same way. Soon, they’re having an affair that is probably about as torrid as anything involving Nick Jonas can be. Lena tells Doug that Elliott abuses her. Doug says that she needs to get away from her husband. Lena says that Elliott would kill her if she ever tried to leave…

And then Walter Neff shows up and starts talking about insurance…

Okay, no, he doesn’t. But he might as well because Careful What You Wish For is pretty much a by-the-numbers film noir. It’s obvious to everyone what’s going to happen. Or, I should say, it’s obvious to everyone but Doug. Doug is such a goony dumbass that his whole reaction to everything that happens can be summed up as: “At least I got laid.”

Personally, I think the film made a huge mistake by not having Doug wear a purity ring that he could dramatically remove before having sex with Lena. Seriously, this film could have used some moments of self-awareness like that. (And I do feel a little bit guilty about making fun of Nick here because he actually gives a pretty good performance in Goat.) But no, instead, we get a scene where a bare chested Nick eats an Oreo cookie and it’s kinda gross because he really gets into eating that cookie. I mean, Nick really tries to show us every second of pleasure that Nick gets from that Oreo. But the thing is, Oreo cookies are gross and overrated and to me, there’s nothing more disgusting than watching as someone dips an Oreo into milk and then gets milk all over their chin when they eat it. UGH!

But, listen — if you’ve ever wanted to see Nick Jonas roll an Oreo cookie over his lover’s bare ass, Careful What You Wish For is definitely for you.