Enough Review
by Jerry Saravia (faust668 AT aol DOT com)January 10th, 2005
ENOUGH (2002)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
RATING: Two stars
After the first twenty minutes of "Enough," Jennifer Lopez discovers that her husband of five years is a dishonest prick who cheats on her and is physically abusive. He punches her in the mouth and what is his reasoning? It is his house, his rules. True enough, but it is also her house and they have a child. Thus begins the highly implausible and highly dishonest "Enough," a high-powered Lifetime TV revenge movie for women. It's the kind of picture that women are supposed to love because it empowers them. I also know women love "In the Company of Men" because it shows men at their most piggish. To each her own.
Jennifer Lopez, Miss J-Lo to the rest of you, plays Slim, a Latino waitress whose best friend is another waitress, Ginny (Juliette Lewis). One day, a customer (Noah Wyle) tries to pick her up with flowers only for his bluff to be blown by another customer, Mitch (Billy Campbell), a wealthy contractor. One assumes Slim is instantly smitten since the next scene shows them getting married. Then five years pass. They have one child but Mitch is less interested in having sex with J-Lo than you can imagine. The beatings start. Slim has her ex-boss and Ginny ready to save her by leaving her husband in the middle of the night and taking their daughter. Then Slim ends up in a motel, then in the arms of her ex-boyfriend, then she seeks help from her estranged father (Fred Ward) who doesn't even recognize her, and on and on.
"Enough" is divided into segments of such frenzy that it is difficult to latch onto Slim's own overstated predicament. A better film would have shown her reporting the abuse to the police and dealing with the consequences of her fragile marriage. A better actor than Campbell would've shown the immoral prick that Mitch has become, bedding women left and right. Thanks to the screenplay by Nicholas Kazan, we have scenes of such implausibility that you'll be rolling your eyes and saying, "Oh, come on!" Most of the movie has Slim driving one vehicle after another to elude her husband and other captors he has hired, including pseudo-FBI agents who have no qualms of putting a knife at your throat! Amazingly, Mitch knows where she is at any given moment and presumably has her phones bugged at any place she stays in, but he can't see her coming for the inevitable confrontation!
Basically, "Enough" is saying that if a husband and father is a philanderer and violently abusive, this warrants the mother whisking her child away from him without ever calling the police. If a man can kick a woman's butt, a woman can likewise kick a man's butt. J-Lo is shown training to fight back so she can disarm her husband with severe body blows to the gut and slaps to the face. The problem develops when we ask the most basic question: why does Slim have the right to violently abuse him by taunting and provoking him? How is this woman any different than the man who abused her? Because it is Jennifer Lopez in action-movie-heroine mode, as opposed to a more realistic story of how a woman runs away with her kid without resorting to violence while she grows deeper in trouble with the law by never reporting where she is hiding.
"Enough" is not interested in exploring the morality of this overwrought tale and is less interested in exploring the personalities. The husband is pure evil, the wife is pure goodness who just wants revenge, and the kid is a whiner who isn't allowed a personality beyond excessive whimpering. If this is your cup of tea, sit back and enjoy.
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