Review: Won’t take long to have ‘Enough’ of Lopez

Geoff Carter

Friday, May 24, 2002 | 10:02 a.m.

"Enough"

Grade: **

Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Billy Campbell, Dan Futterman and Juliette Lewis.

Screenplay: Nicholas Kazan.

Director: Michael Apted.

Rated: PG-13 for intense scenes of domestic violence, some sensuality and language.

Running time: 111 minutes.

Movie times: http://www.vegas.com/movies/

It's a good thing that "Enough" director Michael Apted had the very good "Enigma" in theaters earlier this year, or I'd have written him off as a director of thrillers. "Enigma" is taut, surprising; it's easily Apted's best narrative film since 1992's underrated "Thunderheart," which almost has the tone of one of Apted's documentaries.

"Enigma," while taking several liberties with the historical record, is at its heart human, with all the gifts and frailties inherent to the species.

By comparison, "Enough" is pure android -- as soulless and calculating as the last James Bond installment, which Apted also directed. At least we know where all these karate kicks and pithy one-liners came from.

In essence a TV movie injected with steroids, "Enough" stars Jennifer Lopez as Slim, a bored but happy-go-lucky waitress. (We know she's bored because the movie begins with a white-on-black title card that hollers "Hey," and we know she's happy because the opening credits bop along to Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do.") She has a loyal best friend (Juliette Lewis), a sweet-natured ex-boyfriend (Dan Futterman) and what looks like a good life, from the little we see of it.

It's inexplicable that she can't see through the hunky Mitch (Billy Campbell), who picks her up by bullying another man out of her way, intimidates everyone he meets and more or less railroads her into becoming his wife. In short order he begins sleeping with other women and slapping Slim around in the film's only truly chilling sequences -- before "Enough" turns into a Lifetime Channel production of "The Terminator."

Slim takes her daughter (Tessa Allen) and hits the road, only to be confronted by the now-murderous Mitch at every turn; he's in construction, which means he can buy off local police and get information that even the FBI would have difficulty getting without talking to at least one judge. She changes her name, calls on one ally after another, ultimately to no avail -- he knows what she's going to do before she does, and stalks her like a proper Frankenstein.

All of which leads us up to the J-Lo butt-whoopin' promised by the title and the trailers, but it comes so late in the film that you more or less take it as read. More interesting are the characters she enlists in her fight, including the father she never knew (Fred Ward, in a terrifically smarmy comic turn) and the noble ex-boyfriend. Futterman's Joe is the only character in the filmwho looks properly scared; everyone else, including Lopez, looks as though they have a hatchet behind their back.

"Enough" is cheap, manipulative and thunderously dull, and Lopez doesn't have the chops to elevate it. At this point I should remind you of those white-on-black title cards I mentioned earlier; they continue throughout the film and parrot the story. "How They Met," "The Conquering Hero" and so forth. I should have taken the advice afforded by the one that declared, "You Can Run."