Enough

Rating:
Summary: Review - "Enough"
Review: "Enough" (2002), written by Nicholas Kazan and directed by Michael Apted, is the story of an mother Slim Hiller (Jennifer Lopez) who finds that the man she married Mitch Hiller (Bill Campbell) is nothing but an abusive person, and represents nothing she thought he was. Slim has a daughter Gracie (Tessa Allen), and decides for both their safety to leave Mitch. After Slim and Gracie leave, Mitch relentlessly pursues them wherever they run to, and Slim is then faced with the reality that she could either be on the run the rest of her life, which would be totally detrimental to Gracie's life, or face Mitch and put an end to this conflict.
Through most of this movie, it portrays a stereotypical situation where an abused wife is on the run from an abusive husband. We see a typical portrayal of the woman being afraid in Slim and the typical portrayal of the abusive, not afraid husband in Mitch. Although the end of the movie sort of strays away from this stereotypical setup, for the most part it is thrown in our faces.
We also can take note as to some of the camera angles throughout the movie. When Slim is shown throughout, the general angle is that of her entire body. This is definitely an example of objectifying the woman character because showing the whole body is saying that we (the viewers/surveyors) want to see her entire body (surveyed), not just her face.
Overall, this movie is not the greatest of movies as it presents a stereotypical situation while objectifying Slim's physical appearance. Although the ending gives a sense of retribution, we see that Slim's appearance is still objectified in her tight clothing that she wears that just highlights her figure.

Rating:
Summary: Womens Studies 285C Final, Professor O'Sickey
Review: Enough

This film takes the socially constructed image of a downtrodden weak, yet family oriented woman, and places her in the visual gaze of combat. The plot of the movie uses Lopez' sex appeal to its full potential as this revenge thriller is cliché down to the last drop. Jennifer Lopez dawns the initial guise of a beautiful, frail waitress, whom seemingly meets and marries the man "of her dreams." That dream however, quickly becomes a nightmare. The two marry, and Jennifer Lopez' character, Slim, has a daughter. She later finds out that not only is her husband unfaithful, he is also abusive. Her solution? Rather than confront the cinematically portrayed "dominant" image of her husband, she flees, reinforcing the stereotypical representation of a "terrified woman."
It just so happens that she is the illegitimate daughter of a business tycoon, who helps fund her "new life" or rather, several of them. She learns that running serves no purpose, as her husband tracks her down time and time again. The law cannot help her, as she has, in a sense, kidnapped her own child. It seems being a woman isn't enough to resolve the issue, as her only solution is to confront her husband man to man. She invests in personal combat training to prove to him once and for all she has had enough of everything, with the exception of tight body suits.

Rating:
Summary: not enough but too
Review: Michael Apted's 2002 movie 'Enough', though being marketed as appealing to a 'feminist' audience through it's plot, rather shows and affirms prevailing stereotypes of woman- and motherhood as well as class and race.
Even though the 'operative' character is a woman, her motivations and actions are ultimately dependent on men.
The heroine, portrayed by J. Lopez has no upward mobility whatsoever and is 'rescued' into better circumstances by an, of course, far wealthier caucasian man.
When he turns out to be violent, she acts against him not on her own, but on her childs behalf. Furthermore, in order to achieve anything against him, she requires male council and financial support.
Thus the supposedly strong female character is the bearer of a naive morality, lacks economical aspirations and insight and is powerless in society in comparison to the male characters. J Lo's character far from being independent and empowered, re-confines 'woman' to Kinder/Kueche/Kirche.
On top of this, J Lo is framed throughout the movie in a commodifying manner that supports the unlike distribution of power between the sexes in this movie. Her body is rarely shown as a whole but always from compromising angles with focus on her bosom and behind.
Overall the film advertises desirable feminitiy through visual traits while omitting to comment on women's capabilities outside of traditional female space.

Rating:
Summary: it was okay........
Review: In this movie, Jennifer Lopez plays the character Slim, who is a victim of abuse. The movie starts off with Slim waiting tables at a restaurant where she meets Mitch (played by Bill Campbell). They get married and have a daughter named Gracie. As the movie goes on, she finds out that her husband is cheating on her. She confronts him about his cheating and he hits her. This is when the movie starts to take off.
Slim's character goes through a series of transformations. In the beginning, she starts off as being your typical housewife and mother, taking care of Mitch and Gracie. Mid-way through the film, her character turns into a kidnapping fugitive, running away from her husband. By the end of the film, she fights back, knowing that there is nowhere to run.
In my opinion, this movie really represented Slim's character of the victim rather well. Overall, the movie was great.

Rating:
Summary: Final Germ 241
Review: Jennifer Lopez plays the role of Slim, a battered wife who overcomes the stereotypical qualities of a woman to free herself and her daughter, Grace (Tessa Allen), from an unsafe home environment. Slim is your typical mother whose main concern is the safety of her daughter. In the movie, she is willing to do anything to keep her daughter out of danger even if it means leaving behind a picture perfect household. At the start of the movie you see Slim as a submissive wife doing anything she can to please her husband Mitch (Bill Campbell). However, when things go awry she abandons her role of a perfect wife and begins to form a new image as the protector of herself and her daughter. In her transition she goes from the weak and defenseless wife to a powerful and independent woman capable of taking on her husband. The metamorphosis into a dominant woman consisted of Slim cutting her hair short and training to be a fighter. Slim is no longer objectified by Mitch or any other man as she was at the opening of the movie. When Slim worked as a waitress at the onset of the movie she was unknowingly being watched by Mitch. Through Mitch's surveillance of Slim, he determined that she would be his wife. This is a portrayal of a society where men choose whom they want and how she will be treated based on physical attributes. Enough is a dramatic interpretation of an ideal family going tragically wrong. It is also a representation of how it is possible for mistreated women to overcome their typical obedient roles in a male dominating world.

Rating:
Summary: Escapism in Disguise
Review: In many ways, Enough is a stereotypical Hollywood escapist type movie. On the surface level, it's a reasonably entertaining movie about a woman fighting back against an oppressive husband. However, As is the case with most escapist type movies, under a critical lense the plot shows some serious flaws. Despite the guise of female empowerment, the plot fails to show any genuine resistance to the patriarchal system. In many cases, there are many scenes in the movie that seek to highlight Jennifer Lopes's sexual attractiveness, all in the typically male gaze of Hollywood All of the authority figures are male, and Slim is constantly dependent on them in order to resist her abusive husband. Slim only resists one man, her husband, while she leaves the patriarchal system virtually unchallenged. The appeal is not to a social betterment of women, but a single isolated event of resistance.
In the end, if your looking for a powerful movie relating to empowerment of women and resistance to the patriarchal system, there are far better movies. However, taken in the context of a simple escapist movie centering on a tale of revenge, with the twist that it is women against man, it is probably not a terribly bad bet. Some amusing moments, a reasonably exciting end, numerous plot holes, but in the end it is defiantly not the worst movie ever made. But it is nothing terribly "special" either.

Rating:
Summary: Enough A Review by A McBride
Review: Enough A Review by Ashley McBride

In this film the character of Slim played by Jennifer Lopez finds herself with a child and married to a husband who has undergone some dramatic and unexplained personality change and begins to beat her. Overall, the plot was easy to guess as well as incredibly over the top and somewhat difficult to watch.

This film puts on a façade of being a feminist revenge film, however fails miserably with its male cinematic gaze and compartmentalization of Slim's body. What purpose does a tight black outfit and numerous full screen shots of Lopez's million dollar bottom serve? Though this looks like a feminist film, it is misleading-there are simply too many shots of pieces-of-woman verses shots of the whole woman.

Throughout the film, Slim is objectified by the panoptical view from her abusive and threatening husband. She is chased down and "always being watched" by her husband, even when she is not. Slim subjectifies this panoptic field of view of her husband and this terrorizes her-driving her to martial arts which turns into revenge driven ploy to drive her husband away, yet not to kill him. Though I really do not know what she would have done if she had not killed him, would anything have changed, especially with his evident drive to pursue her?

This film recreates certain stereotypes as well, with motherhood, class and color-coding. The color coding issue is that it is a Latina mother that is so driven to protect her young from danger. Another example is that both the lawyer Slim sees for advice and the martial arts instructor are black, and the abusive father is white-rarely, if ever, in Hollywood mainstream for this situation, do we see these roles reversed. Another stereotype is that Slim is not of high economic class (she is a waitress)-a major myth in Hollywood is that a middle or upper class mother would not protect her young as undoubtedly as lower class.

Though the film offers a terrorized wife/mother her independence and control-it also makes it seem that she is driven by social, economic, and racial issues to do so. This intersected with the compartmentalization of Slim's body and the fact that she had no other choice by the time she did something about her husband, add up to create not a feminist, but rather anti-feminist film shot with a cornerstone male cinematic gaze.

Rating:
Summary: Just isn¿t Enough
Review: When I first saw Enough, I'll admit I was entertained. There was a decent amount of action and suspense, including an on the edge of your seat car chase and a gigantic J-Lo dominated fight scene with Billy Campbell. However, I began to think about my reaction to the film in more depth and realized that maybe just enjoying the action sequences shouldn't have been my strongest feeling. The film is after all about a battered wife who is trying to escape the grasp of an abusive husband in hopes to raise her daughter in a physical threat free environment. I tossed aside my guilt only to blame director Michael Apted for not presented the narrative and its characters in a more believable fashion. I found it displeasing that even in a film about the dealing with and the overcoming of spousal abuse that we as an audience are still subjected to Jennifer Lopez's sex appeal. I found her character Slim to be inappropriately objectified in moments where she should have been personalized. If only Apted layed off of some of those buttock close-ups and focused more on Slim's whole person and/or her determination cinematically I believe the strength of the narrative would have prevailed.
The film's strongest conflict is that of gender. In the beginning of this film Jennifer Lopez plays her character as a stereotypical house wife. Slim is small, meek and too frightened to fight back against her increasingly physically abusive husband. After many attacks Slim decides that it is time to fight back and begins to take lessons of self defense. The final battle takes place as Slim herself provokes the fight, which cleverly blurs the line of gender. Slim wins; defeating her husband at his own physical game. The fight, however, is over the top and unbelievable at points. Again, I blame Apted for not choosing more realistic fight choreography. I believe if the fight looked more realistic that more viewers would be inspired rather than just entertained. Spousal abuse is an issue that should be dealt with a little more caution and a little less Hollywood sugar coating.

Rating:
Summary: Review for GERM 241
Review: Enough, directed by Michael Apted and starring Jennifer Lopez, was advertised as a movie about an abused woman's revenge on her evil husband. One would guess, then, that this movie would be inclined toward feminist principles; however, there is evidence of sexist representations of both men and women, and instances of the objectification of women. Before her husband is proved to be an unfaithful and abusive man, the film unfolds like a fairytale. Mitch, a wealthy contractor, meets Slim at her waitressing job and rescues her from her blue-collar world. They have the perfect wedding, the perfect house, the perfect daughter, and the perfect life. This first section of the film reinforces the stereotype that working-class women need a strong man to save them and give them the life they want.

The first dose of reality hits when Slim discovers Mitch is cheating on her; she protests, he hits her, and she determines to leave him. The fact that Slim is very strong in her decision to not wait for him to hit her again certainly sends a good message to women and girls about abuse. It seems for a moment that the stereotype of the fairytale romance will be subverted and that the woman will triumph. The reality of what happens next is just as questionable as the fairytale beginning to the story; Mitch becomes completely evil, like a villain from a comic book, while Slim becomes the self-sacrificing mother who would do anything for her child.

On the surface, Lopez's character appears to be a strong, independent woman who is capable of taking care of herself. However, throughout the film she proves to be dependent on men. Her adoptive father helps her escape from Mitch's house with her daughter and she turns to her biological father for financial help. She seeks shelter and support from her close friend, Joe, and she finally seeks training in fighting techniques from a man. Ginny, played by Juliette Lewis, is a female friend who does help her a great deal, but most of the people that helped to 'save' her were men. This reinforces the stereotype that women cannot really be strong on their own; they are never really safe without the help of men. Another stereotype of women supported in this film was that of the mother. Slim does absolutely everything for her daughter, Gracie. Never does she speak of leaving Mitch for her own good; Slim always speaks of the safety of her daughter. In other words, the filmmaker is essentially saying that women must remain mothers above all else.

In addition to the female stereotypes we see, the idea of a woman being surveyed by the male surveyor is seen several times in Enough. At the very beginning of the movie, Mitch sees Slim and finds her attractive; he is a wealthy man who observes a beautiful woman and wants her for his own, so he takes her. Later in the film, when Slim has changed her name and moved to the west coast, we see Mitch's henchman staring at her through the window, simply watching her sleep and get dressed. Then, when Mitch arrives to 'take back what is his,' he also observes her like someone watching a movie. He looks at her from afar like a man surveying his land; he clearly sees her as his property rather than an actual person.

Rating:
Summary: Moderately Entertaining In a Trainwreck Sort of Way
Review: I don't think that too many people will argue that "Enough" is high art or a deeply thoughtful and complex film. Even the Amazon.com review refers to it as a "guilty pleasure", so I'm not going to break any new ground by criticizing it. But I'll do it anyway because I'm a jerk like that.

Enough is not an altogether uninteresting premise, but it takes it in hackey, conventional b-movie thriller type directions. On top of those criticsms, there's also the treatment of Jennifer Lopez's Slim as a female character. Slim is presented as a supposedly strong female character who takes her fate into her own hands, but the film sets forth a different message. Firstly, Slim chooses to stay in an abusive relationship with her husband for a little while, before deciding that she's had "enough", rather than leaving at the first chance that she gets. From there, she spends a great deal on the film on the run, completely at the mercy of her rich, powerful husband, until finally taking a vigilante approach to achieving justice. All of this frames Slim as a weak character who is moved by fear for her life and her daughter's life, as opposed to her own wants and happiness.

On top of this, the film commodifies Jennifer Lopez as a sexy action hero, instead of allowing her character to be well rounded. For most of the film we see a weak, scared Slim. In the final act, Jennifer Lopez morphs into J-Lo, the multi-million dollar buttkicking star whol will destroy all that gets in her way (all the while the camera is disecting her and...accentuating certain parts of J-Lo's body). At this point she ceases to be a person, but rather a product.

I mean...it's just my opinion is all. :)