Careful What You Wish For introduces its main character Doug (Nick Jonas) as a nerd who doesn’t know how to talk to girls. His horndog best friend is trying to get him to lose his virginity to any of the willing young women hanging around the lake town where he’s spending his summer. But he is instead drawn to Lena (Isabel Lucas), the young wife of investment banker Elliot (Dermot Mulroney). Much to Doug’s surprise, Lena seems to be more than willing to indulge in his fantasies. He risks everything as he pursues an affair with Lena, and he later pays a massive price.
Earlier this year, we got The Boy Next Door, which was another story of a seduction that grows into something more dangerous. That movie was not good, but it is a good deal more entertaining than Careful What You Wish For. The film functions on the same tired clichés of the genre but lacks the camp value that made The Boy Next Door weirdly compelling at points. And as it goes on, it piles on the twists until all the logic is rubbed out completely.
The film lays it on thick from minute one, where a voiceover lays out some cryptic nonsense that will later point to the vague themes of the movie. The voiceover will resurface at the end to put an exclamation point on what turns out to be an immensely stupid story that seems to argue that getting caught up in the schemes of a murderer might be a good thing in the long run. In between these bookends is a pile of broadly drawn characters defined by singular traits. Doug is a nerd (who just happens to have abs). His best friend is loud and horny. Doug’s parents are oblivious. The sheriff is a good old boy. Elliot is straight up evil, and his wife Lena is sexy.
These characters work within a by-the-numbers plot that takes too long to get anywhere. The first half of this movie is devoid of tension as Doug falls into the affair. As much as Elliot is painted as a temperamental psychopath, his presence is rarely felt throughout this section, and it never really feels like the two are in any danger of being caught. The second half is an exercise in absurdity, as the young Doug seems incapable of thinking of ways of keeping himself out of trouble.
The whole thing might just be about how teenagers do stupid things in the name of love. That’s a fine idea, but it tends to work better with just a bit of a sense of irony. The film plays everything so straight, even when its material veers into the realm of parody. A lot of the blame ought to go the actors, who just aren’t able to make their characters feel like real people. Nick Jonas just seems confused all the time, a blank look standing in for the emotional turmoil that’s supposed to be roiling within. Isabel Lucas doesn’t really have the chops to convey the deviousness that the character calls for. And Dermot Mulroney sleepwalks through what could have been the most interesting role.
Careful What You Wish For is probably hobbled by the fact that the age of the real erotic film is over. The film is trying to present the events within as sexy and dangerous, but it has to function within moral limits. The overall tameness results in the movie feeling dull and silly, the characters unable to commit to the true depravity that a story like this calls for. And so, it just plays everything broad, hoping that it gets the same point across through sheer obviousness. The result is deadly boring.
My Rating:
