The Perfect Marriage (2006)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I have seen Jamie Luner in two TV Lifetime "The Perfect ________"- type movies.The first one was entitled "The Perfect Boss" which was shown back in 2013. I just found it to standard despite being implausibility considering that they simply become parts of TV movies.The other one is this TV movie known as "The Perfect Marriage" which was shown more than ten years ago in 2006.William R. Moses, James Wilder and the beauteous Canadian actress Sophie Gendron co-star with Luner.As we all know,any Lifetime TV movie with the title "The Perfect ________" deals with a criminal main character who is ironically far from being perfect.In it,we get to see Luner portrays a woman who is into murdering her husbands to accumulate the inheritance they have have left for her.First,we get to see Annie murder her husband Martin to get $250,000 in California whom he shared with her lover Brent.Later,we get to see her married again and now known as Marianne in Philadelphia.But Brent goes back to her and tries to work with her into killing her present husband who happens to be a real estate tycoon's Richard,who is worth $30 million dollars.Brent and Marianne kills the father of her present husband and tries to kill her present husband as well but the executive secretary Tia Montgomery have other things in mind.Obviously,this is a better TV Lifetime "The Perfect ________"- type movie made by Jamie Lumer as compared to her 2013 film considering that there is more tension as a thriller and unpredictability as well especially on how Tia managed to stop Marianne. The conclusion was also exciting at the end as Tia managed to elude Marianne who was trying to kill her.As a TV movie,it definitely delivers to be a standard one. The presence of Sophie Gendron,who portrayed Tia and who very attractive and sexy when the movie was made,added bonus to the viewers as well.

These Lifetime flicks are a lot like your favorite junk food. Big Macs, Twinkies, Oreos, etc., are satisfying while they're going down, but they don't provide much in the long run.Movies like this one can provide a couple of hours' entertainment on, say, a bleak Sunday afternoon - but there is little with which to empathize or recall or reflect upon after they're over.However, this one did provide an added bonus. William R. Moses is to the male side of this genre what Meredith Baxter is on the feminine counterpoint -- both have played the betrayer and "betrayee," both the villain/villainess and the one being menaced. Seeing either of them on Lifetime (as well as a few others whom we may recognize by sight if not name) is like meeting an old friend.If I were an actor, I'd rather be Mr. Moses than, say, Tom Cruise, or Harrison Ford or Tom Hanks. You wouldn't be on the "A" list, getting $20-mil or more per picture. But you'd still make, probably, something around low-7 figures, get to have a lot of expense-paid trips to Canada, and be able to move around with minimal bother from the paparazzi.As far as the plot of this particular offering - it contains a "plot" which is one of the two main staples of "Lifetime" dramas: the spouse with the hidden past, which comes-up to bite everyone in the ass {the other, of course, is the neighbor (or student or teacher or co-worker) who turns out to be a raving, dangerous, obsessed psychotic sociopath}.Again, two decent hours on a gloomy Sunday afternoon.

The ironic title "The Perfect Marriage" gets the viewer in the right mood to expect the worst. It seems that successful and rich entrepreneur, Richard Danforth (William Moses), has the perfect wife in Marrianne, aka Annie (Jamie Luner), who is adept at party mixing. She appears to be the ideal spouse for her clean-cut aspiring husband. Adding to Marrianne's blissful state is the fact that her father-in-law is president of the company where Richard works. All is going well for the happy couple when suddenly Marrianne's deadly past catches up with her in the form of a slimy leach called Brent Richter (James Wilder). Some time ago in another state, Brent and Marrianne had engineered the death of her aged husband. The good wife, Marrianne,had jabbed her old man in the neck with a fatal dose of potassium chloride. But poor Marriane finds her partner in crime with another woman. Even worse, she learns that Brent has squandered the old fellow's money on wine, women, and bad debts.Marrianne attempts to buy Brent off. When he refuses, she decides that she loves him once more. Together they concoct a scheme to get her father-in-law's fortune. This time around, however, Richard's secretaries become suspicious, leading to complications involving murder and mayhem. Most of this is routine at best, but there are a few novel twists and turns thrown in from time to time, especially in the way the writers deal with Marrianne at the end of the film. The acting is not bad for a made-for-TV flick. The direction is adequate, though at times the film is a bit talky. So though the viewer has seen most of it before in a different guise, there is enough excitement to please fans of the genre.

First and foremost....kudos to Jamie Luner for a great performance as a she-devil Dr. Jekyl and Mrs. Hyde character. ( A HUGE improvement from her two previous Lifetime flicks where she was the resident heroine-in-peril.) This outing made a good bookend to the other end, "Blind Injustice". I posted on these very IMDb message boards that she should cease with the heroine-in-peril scripts, so I now feel vindicated...she is a heroine about as much as Theresa Russell was in " Black Widow". This was a pretty good effort on Ms. Luner's part.The short saga of this flick is a greedy wife Annie (Luner), with the help of a equally conniving back door man Brent( James Wilder in sleepwalking mode) scheme and kill Hub #1 for 250K in insurance money. Predictably, back door man Brent burns through about 90% of her share AND his. Fast forward several years and Annie(now known as Marianne)has new identity, new hub Richard (William R. Moses), high social status, and loads of money. Life is a bowl of cherries until back door man Brent shows up through the front door and Marianne returns to her scheming, murderous ways. Hint: This closet psycho loves potassium chloride and syringes....watch out for those nasty air bubbles! The body count is up to three by the time she sets out to waste her hub's co-worker Tia who is on to her nasty past.(Unbeknownest to Tia, Marianne is out to waste Richard too) Above average chase scene at the end in a parking garage. Jamie Luner does some great, open field running in boots for a gal of her height, 5'9".(I swear she could run the 50 yard dash faster than some guys) Credit the director for NOT having her character fall several times and bust her tush on a slick parking garage floor....which is predictable in some scripts.Catch it on Lifetime when it repeats, it was better than most thriller TV-movies you will see on any of the big three networks.