Rose's Revenge
Rose (Christine Lahti - Housekeeping) and Nathan (Brian Kerwin - Unlikely Angel) have been together for over twenty five years having met on a plane when Rose was a sobbing mess having just ended it with her previous boyfriend Hal (Bryan Brown). And all is going well, they have a grown up children, Nathan is the editor of the Los Angeles Chronicle whilst Rose is the head book critic, or at least Rose thought all was going well. That is until one day Nathan tells Rose he has fallen for someone else, well in fact he has fallen for Rose's assistant Mindy (Abby Brammell). And to make matters worse she learns that the paper plans to go in a new younger direction and that means without her.
So here we go again with Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman" another movie about a woman discovering her happy marriage is suddenly over due to her husband falling for a younger woman and having to restart life. Why is it always women, why isn't it men having to restart their lives when their wife runs off with someone else? Anyway this means that "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman" is basically familiar because of the frightening frequency that this set up is used in movies and it all comes down to is what is Rose going to do after she goes through the immediate depression stage of eating ice cream from the tub and getting blind drunk on vodka.
Now with this being called "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman" you may expect something all about Rose hitting Nathan where he hurts. But nope we have something different, an almost clever twist on what that revenge would be which at this point I suppose I should say spoiler alert for what I am about to say. Revenge in this case is getting over Nathan and finding happiness and romance with someone else; who that is well I will leave that for you to find out.
The thing is that "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman" isn't exceptionally original but it is watchable with an entertaining, light humorous tone. And that humorous tone mainly works thanks to Christine Lahti who plays the part of Rose with just the right amount of over the top to be engaging and cliche without be annoying. In fact everyone plays their parts well including Brian Kerwin as her husband Nathan especially during the scene where he nervously builds up to telling Rose he has met someone else.
What this all boils down to is that "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman" is moderately entertaining but with it being another comedy about a woman starting life again after her marriage ends it is familiar at best.
