The Temp
The Temp
R | 12 February 1993 (USA)
The Temp Trailers

A series of mysterious accidents at a food company lead a manager to suspect his impressive new temporary secretary.

Reviews
bob_meg

I'm relieved to see I'm not the only one who finds pleasure in this cunning little trifle from "Fright Night" director Tom Holland.Yes, it's a blank-from-hell picture and yes also, the blank in question happens to be a secretary/admin assistant (amazing how much mileage this particular career gets in this role), but "The Temp" jazzs up the stakes by making the stalkee --- in this case ad man Peter Derns (Timothy Hutton) --- a paranoid head case with anger management problems.Lara Flynn Boyle of Twin Peaks fame plays the stalker with a mix of innocence and deliberateness that suggests a truly unhinged personality waiting to detonate. Watching her manipulate and provoke Hutton's character provides for some sick thrills --- it's like tormenting a wounded insect only the insect probably has more going on upstairs.The plot is cheesy, for sure, but the script always keeps you watching. The dialogue is smooth for the most part and even when it borders on camp, it's not so over the line that it breaks the spell (until near the end when some of the action gets a bit superhero-ish).Despite being a fun ride, "The Temp" suffers from one of the lamest closing lines ever (tied with "Get a Life" from "Sliver") but even that will give you a little chuckle. And there's worse things to get from grade B thrillers.

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mnwcsult

Sat through this with the wife, overly long, dull, insane situations, add nonsensical ending and the cable TV rating of 1 (one) star is generous. Skip it.Silly plot, Predictable, Drama none, Boring, Long, most of it should have been left on the cutting room floor. Ending, how lame was that, the women had killed or maimed several co-workers and the CEO. She is told to clean out her desk and leave. What was that?Should have known better, it was on Lifetime Movie Network (LMN) formerly Lifetime the network for women. The Simpson had it right, the Network for stupid people.I prefer stories with many plot threads, twists, events you cannot foresee. The Temp is right out of the Dummies Guide to Movie making, page 2.

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caa821

If you haven't seen "Can't Stop the Music," starring Bruce Jenner, The Village People, and a host of "B" flick personalities from multiple generations, please take it in at first opportunity. It's my all-time favorite "guilty pleasure" movie, but unlike this one, is truly so bad, so over-the-top and loony it's moved on the dial past "0" and to "10" in its awfulness.This picture, for me (as with others who've commented here) also falls into the "guilty pleasure" classification.Nothing new for Fay Dunaway; she is attractive, but gnaws the scenery like a horde of beavers.And this entire crew in the featured business enterprise, including Hutton and Boyle with their supporting players, would have trouble running a Junior Achievement project, say, where the kids were selling glove compartment emergency kits, or carriers for your television directory and remote control - much less engaging in big-time corporate strategies. Throughout the film, this thought held almost as much fascination for me as the plot and performances.Another fringe benefit of a presentation like this one is that if you're interrupted, or have to leave for a brief chore or errand, there is no problem picking it up when you return.The attractiveness of the cast, and the quality of their talents and resumés, is a few notches above those normally found in this type of t.v. film -- so this is another plus, which makes it perhaps 7*, instead of the 3 to 5 it would otherwise merit.

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triple8

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT: The Temp is a by the numbers "stalker genre" Movie similar to movies like Single White female, Fatal Attraction and Swim Fan-which I had the privilege of seeing not that long ago. It's also not very good. Actually it's, while not unwatchable, pretty unoriginal in the way the story goes but I doubt when they made this, originality was the main thing they were aiming for.The two things I noticed with this movie were: first, the movie (for the beginning and middle) plays like any other stalker movie and actually becomes almost dull at times. There's really nothing here that hasn't been done a million times and The Temp doesn't do it in such a way that one is glued to the screen. The second thing I noticed is that "twists" are introduced which in this movie's case, is not a good thing, because most of them don't make any sense and the movie plays in such a way that by the end one is more baffled then intrigued.The movie also had an opportunity after one of the twists to go in a rather interesting direction but it doesn't happen. The whole scene at the end with the chases in the factory was just to much and I'm not sure if the final twist in the last few minutes was supposed to be clever but all it made me do was think: CMON! By the end of the movie The Temp has become to jumbled and over the top to be interesting. It's not the performers who were fine. But the movie itself didn't seem to try to hard and was alternatively run of the mill and over the top weird. This isn't the worst of the Worst but it isn't very enjoyable. My vote's 3 of 10.

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