Weekly Review -- Doppelgänger fiesta

The Roommate (2011) -- Why, oh why do I rent movies such as this gem? I know what to expect and what I will get out of them (hint - not much), so I often wonder about subjecting myself to this kind of cinematic masochism. Hey, sometimes a girl simply needs a night of B-grade dialogue and carefree cheesiness, and The Roommate is everything you anticipated and less.

Peppy student Sara (Minka Kelly) has the world at her fingertips. Having been accepted to a top school to study fashion design, she quickly makes new friends and gets involved with an amateur musician (Cam Gigandet). When she meets her artsy roommate Rebecca (Leighton Meester), they become pals with many interests in common, but the bliss does not last. Already dealing with family issues and her new environment, Rebecca becomes dangerously obsessive, turning against everyone she sees as obstacles on her way to keeping Sara to herself. Will Sara survive and save the people she loves? Do we even care?

The movie is a blatant copy of Single White Female, a film that also belongs to the B-grade opus, but which at least boasts a great cast and a complex villain, played to perfection by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Indeed, the filmmakers had duplicated the 1992 film to such an extent that some situations and relationships in the two releases were identical, so I did not understand how the studio behind The Roommate was not sued. After doing some research, I found out that the studio, Screen Gems, is a direct offshoot of Columbia Pictures, the studio behind Single White Female, so any perceived coincidences might not be very coincidental.

On a different note, cliches abound in the tale, which offers up a good girl, a bad girl, clueless friends and boyfriends, sleazy so-called professors and even some girl-on-girl action for good measure, and why not? When titillating, do it to the max, even at the cost of cheapening the presence of the sole gay character. I am telling you, this thing is on fire. The movie is a cornucopia of faces from the CW network and obviously made to cash in on the success of "Gossip Girl", "The Vampire Diaries" and Twilight. Come to think of it, two actors from Titanic are in it, too. How the mighty have fallen...

The performances are mostly hashed out by the numbers. Kelly is sufficiently cheery as a sheltered student, while Gigandet is bland as the boyfriend who -- let's face it -- has nothing to do to begin with, and Billy Zane is simply not lascivious enough to be believable as a professor who likes his extracurricular activities just a tad too much. The only player that might come out unscathed is Meester, whose innocent-yet-unhinged facial expressions successfully convey a disturbed soul underneath a friendly loner's facade. If given the right screenplay, the actress could work wonders.

I am not capable of recommending The Roommate in good conscience. What I can say is that, if you are like me and have a playful appreciation for all things tacky, you will surely have a fun time watching it. You might want to throw a drinking game in there somewhere or even have a double bill, and you will not have to devote a lot of thought to choosing the other movie, because you know damn well which one it should be.

5/10