Nothing more than your typical psycho character obsessed with his would be victim out of pure love, "Fear" has a few nice touches and suspenseful moments, but the ludicrous ending and final segments really emphasize the kooky yarn this always turns out to be.Reese Witherspoon is a 16-year-old daughter of a newly remarried architect. Houselife is stressful, and though she may dress somewhat risque ("You could have fit inthat dress when you were ten!") her friend Margo (Alyssa Milano) is the real loose wire. They each meet prospective guys, several years older, and at another outing, Witherspoon finds herself wooed by Mark Wahlberg --tough on the outside, gentle on the inside. Their relationship blossoms into love and she stays with him despite her father's prescient bad reception of him. When she does find out about the real him and how crazy he is, it's too late because Wahlberg wants nature to take its toll.
Witherspoon is a good, gentile actress who commands her role well, despite the obvious naivete she wears on her sleeve. She's aplomb in this cast because she never overreaches her character. Wahlberg's handsomeness can't save his inability to act here, as not only is his accent unbuyable, but it was hard to envision him at all as this character. Milano is just a sexy body to toss around for show.
The first half of "Fear" nicely develops and segues. For awhile, despite Wahlberg's overall detriments, there is a continual build of plot. It seems to stay more rooted and graspable, but that effect doesn't last too long. Although certain scenes during the isolated climax are tense and frightening, because of a quasi-realistic sense it emits, there ends up being and equal amount of the totally preposterous and turgid. The involvement of Wahlberg's crew is completely unlikely and ridiculous.
(And the buzz around the "highly erotic" rollercoaster scene, which in fact is a simple fingering/masturbation scene, hardly stirs any eroticism and is as artificial as Witherspoon's climax.)
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