I watched the latest "premiere" movie on Lifetime, a bizarre concoction called "Sleepwalking in Suburbia" (it seems that "_____ in Suburbia" has joined the ranks of Lifetime's film "series" alongside "The Perfect _____," "The _____ S/he Met Online," "Wrong _____," and "_____ at 17") brought to us by one Alex Wright, who directed and co-wrote the script with Bryce Doersam. Michelle Miller (Emilie Ullerup, yet another one of those names that in classic Hollywood would have been changed — even "Lucille Le Sueur," which wouldn't have been a bad star name at all, got rechristened "Joan Crawford") is more or less happily married to Dan Miller (Giles Panton, a not-bad looking actor who resembles the young Christopher Meloni enough I could have thought he was Meloni's younger brother) except that — stop me if you've heard this before — they're trying to have a child and Michelle just had a miscarriage. It appears to be the trauma over this that snapped Michelle back into her former habit of chronic sleepwalking, for which she's in therapy with the couple's friend Dr. Kate Ford (Miranda Frigon). One night, Michelle sleepwalks her way into the home of neighbor Luke Williams (Carlo Marks) while his wife Nancy (Lucie Guest) is out of town, and though her waking relations with Luke are (at least on her end) a perfectly proper friendship, in her sleepwalking state she comes on to him so strongly she virtually rapes him. Though Michelle has no memory of having had sex with Luke, not only does Luke vividly remember it, it's made him decide to leave his wife Nancy and pair up with Michelle even though Michelle has no conscious interest in him "that way." Also, Michelle finds herself pregnant but, as it slowly dawns on her that during one of her somnambulistic jags she really did have sex with Luke, she has no idea who her baby-to-be's father is.
As with a lot of Lifetime's thrillers, Wright and Doersam can't leave well enough alone: a wife who unwittingly has an affair with another man while she's sleepwalking and then has to face her husband's and his wife's jealousy and recriminations might have been interesting and even moving — but no-o-o-o-o, given that they're making this through the Johnson Productions Group for the Lifetime audience, they lard on the melodrama. Michelle finds herself being shot at by a mysterious assailant in a pickup truck and, in a panicked search for some kind of cover, she dives into a convenience store attached to a gas station and begs the young man at the counter to close the store's doors and let her hide out there — and the kid playing the store clerk actually does the best acting of anyone in this movie, showing genuine perplexity as this strange woman tells her exotic tale and he wonders if she's just crazy or really is in mortal danger. The whole plot leads up to an over-the-top melodramatic ending that piles surprise on surprise until all plot credibility just collapses. "Sleepwalking in Suburbia" is a real disappointment for those like me who thinks Vincenzo Bellini's "La Sonnambula" is the best dramatic piece ever done about sleepwalking. It's a pastoral comedy that shares with "Sleepwalking in Suburbia" the sleepwalking heroine, the jealous boyfriend and the rich guy in whose bed she inadvertently ends up, but at least Bellini and his librettist, Felice Romani, unlike Wright and Doersam, knew when to stop. "Sleepwalking in Suburbia" might have been good clean dirty fun in the best Lifetime manner if writers Wright and Doersam had known when to stop instead of starting their intrigue at 11 and ramping it up to about 25.
As with a lot of Lifetime's thrillers, Wright and Doersam can't leave well enough alone: a wife who unwittingly has an affair with another man while she's sleepwalking and then has to face her husband's and his wife's jealousy and recriminations might have been interesting and even moving — but no-o-o-o-o, given that they're making this through the Johnson Productions Group for the Lifetime audience, they lard on the melodrama. Michelle finds herself being shot at by a mysterious assailant in a pickup truck and, in a panicked search for some kind of cover, she dives into a convenience store attached to a gas station and begs the young man at the counter to close the store's doors and let her hide out there — and the kid playing the store clerk actually does the best acting of anyone in this movie, showing genuine perplexity as this strange woman tells her exotic tale and he wonders if she's just crazy or really is in mortal danger. The whole plot leads up to an over-the-top melodramatic ending that piles surprise on surprise until all plot credibility just collapses. "Sleepwalking in Suburbia" is a real disappointment for those like me who thinks Vincenzo Bellini's "La Sonnambula" is the best dramatic piece ever done about sleepwalking. It's a pastoral comedy that shares with "Sleepwalking in Suburbia" the sleepwalking heroine, the jealous boyfriend and the rich guy in whose bed she inadvertently ends up, but at least Bellini and his librettist, Felice Romani, unlike Wright and Doersam, knew when to stop. "Sleepwalking in Suburbia" might have been good clean dirty fun in the best Lifetime manner if writers Wright and Doersam had known when to stop instead of starting their intrigue at 11 and ramping it up to about 25.