LoginDiane (Demi Moore) and David (Woody Harrelson) are a married couple who spend a night in Las Vegas when they encounter a billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford). Because they are broke and jobless, they make a deal with John that they get $1 million for the mortgage and life savings in exchange for Diane. Indecent Proposal, the book, in which the movie is based on, isn’t just a morality tale about marriage and monetary greed. It’s a tackle on more complex ideas, such as religious quarrel, biblical temptation, spirituality versus greed, and skill versus luck. However, for the movie, Adrian Lyne and Sherry Lansing dumb down the book’s interesting themes in favor of a generic blockbuster with big names, happy ending and other romantic movie tropes that would have been laughed off from The Player. For instance, the movie drops out the Arab and Jewish tensions from the Faustian love triangle, hence abandoning any religious significance. They switch locations from Atlantic City to Las Vegas, probably because it was dirt-cheap and more convenient for Hollywood. Finally, the couple was never high school sweethearts in the novel, whereas in the book the wife, Joan, was already married when the two met and the husband, Josh, was a Holocaust survivor. Although changes have to be made for an adaptation to work as a film, the ones in Indecent Proposal made the project look formulaic and generic. With the remake about to be in progress soon, I just hope that it’s more faithful to the book than its predecessor.
(2 Kissing Hippos out of 5)
Indecent Proposal Reviews
Indecent Proposal review
Posted : 3 years, 10 months ago on 12 June 2020 05:58
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An average movie
Posted : 8 years, 4 months ago on 6 January 2016 10:13
I remember it quite well when this movie was released. Indeed, there was quite some buzz about it above all because of its rather steamy concept. Eventually, even though it did rather well at the box-office, it didn’t get much love but I thought it was not bad at all. Indeed, even though the subject was rather controversial and quite exploitative, I thought it was a fascinating concept and, on top of that, the cast was just spot on (Robert Redford, Demi Moore, Woody Harrelson). Indeed, I thought it was quite believable that a rich man would think of spending 1 million dollars to spend a night with Demi Moore and I remember that my sister argued that many women would be actually quite eager to have some casual sex with someone like Robert Redford even for free. So, all these ingredients were quite intriguing and Adrian Lyne managed to play rather well with this ‘forbidden’ fantasy. Unfortunately, in the second half, I thought that the whole thing started to loose its focus. Indeed, to have Demi Moore and Robert Redford going for a steady relationship was a bad idea and it didn’t mix well with the whole fantasy set-up. Anyway, to conclude, even though it was nothing really amazing, I thought it was a decent steamy thriller and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.
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