It's disturbing that John Travolta, with a fairly impressive track record, chose the heavy-handed film Domestic Disturbance for his latest project. With its cheap thrills and low intelligence quota, the movie is more reminiscent of the fluffy good time of Grease than Pulp Fiction. And though Travolta and Vince Vaughn deliver convincing performances and manage at times to generate spurts of suspense, it's not enough to salvage Lewis Colick's hackneyed script.
Vaughn plays the handsome, polo-wearing millionaire Rick Barnes, whose evil streak becomes readily apparent to everyone except for his irritatingly passive wife, Susan (Teri Polo). Susan, who is too blinded by her love for Barnes and their white picket-fenced life, doesn't notice that he murders people and threatens her son, Danny (Matthew O'Leary), so it's Frank Morrison's (Travolta) role to protect Danny from the clutches of his new stepfather.
The plot continues to spiral through a series of somewhat entertaining yet extremely predictable twists, fueled by the good-dad/bad-dad battle. Because Domestic Disturbance has all the qualities of an entertaining, clich‚d made-for-TV movie, it'll satisfy anyone in the mood for an innocuous good-time thriller.
--Abby Leonard
