The movie Beyonce couldn’t save

There’s a cocky, confident executive with a pretty stay-at-home wife. Then there’s a sexy office temp who tries to break up their marriage. The wife is on the warpath, the temp is determined. One and a half hours later, they get into a fight.

You think you’ve seen this before? It’s because you have. Only this time it stars Beyonce, a shoal of cheesy soap stars and B-list Hollywood talent.

Obsessed comes loaded with every cliché known to man. One should have been warned when Lisa Sheridan (Ali Larter of Heroes) began a chit chat with the obligatory gay confidante. “Why are all the good men married—or gay?”

Then it happens that, at the exact moment Derek (Idris Elba of The Wire) decides to tell his wife (Beyonce Knowles, as Sharon) that Lisa is after him, she gets off the phone with a friend whose husband just admitted to an affair.

There is also the chandelier conveniently placed beneath the decrepit attic which can’t even support the weight of a stack of feathers—and that is where the two girls decide to battle: what is this—Spiderman 6?

The movie starts with the perfect couple. They have been married for three years and they like to have sex on the floor of their home, occasionally. Derek is an executive vice president; the couple live in a swish home, complete with a Cadillac. Life is good.

Enter the foil. Lisa works herself into Derek’s personal assistant seat. We know she’s evil, because the directors immediately cue ominous music. Of course, wife gets jealous, and husband assures her it’s just a job.

Lisa quickly goes from office seductress (“black with two sugars,” she says of his coffee habits, in a double entendre) to delusional: she is convinced he is in love with her—which of course he isn’t.

To its credit, this psychodrama can draw you in. The cinematography is sexy, and the initial dialogue is witty. Until they lose the plot.

Everyone is made to act foolishly, which doesn’t make sense, because the characters aren’t foolish, and the actors are capable.

The director then misses another opportunity in the “crazy bitch” angle i.e. Lisa’s attempts to twitch everything to suit her warped reality. The woman is unrelenting no matter how many ways she is told no. When he tells her it is unprofessional to sleep with her, she quits: “You said you didn’t want us to get together because of your job!”

In a classic scene, she manages to shock Derek—and the viewer—when she somehow manages to convince him—and us—that he really was into her. “If I went in there and told them what happened, it would be the truth,” she says, shocking you with how messed up she really is.

The producers have little interest in actually being perceptive. Instead they have Beyonce saying stupid things like “You better do something about this woman or I will!” and “I don’t come from a family of divorce.”

They are clearly in a hurry to get somewhere else: that place being a hackneyed, contrived cat fight between the feisty black housewife and the slutty white single girl (“skinny bitch,” Beyonce calls her).

Without warning, the director jumps across several plot holes to place Lisa and Sharon in the same house, trying to kill each other. Despite the pleasures of watching the curvy Beyonce throw down, literally, the equally gorgeous Ali, complete with blood and torn clothes, there is no redeeming quality to it.

At some point you can almost see in Beyonce’s eyes how ridiculous she thinks this is. It makes one wonder, what is she doing in this suspiciously low-budget movie—a favour for a friend?

But she’s not the only one the movie limits. Bruce McGill, as Derek’s boss, is a delight to watch; but his priceless body language is wasted by the ham fisted directors. The investigating officer’s swift comebacks are also wasted. And usually effective supporting actors, Jerry O’Connell, Richard Rucolla, are also strangely muted, like they can’t wait to get this over with.

However, the movie is not execrable; it’s even been called “trashy fun.” Yes, it’s predictable and soap opera-ish, but audiences will be forgiving—thanks to surprising moments of real tension and suspense.

Put together, the movie can be so effective at times that you find yourself hoping, against all the evidence, that it won’t collapse in a heap of clichés. Which of course, it promptly does.