Rent-A-Pal

I actually clicked on it as a joke. Had not looked it up, but told my husband it had really good ratings. Lol. He totally didn't believe me but acted like he did. Game on. It was supposed to be terrible.... like instantly terrible. 5 minutes. 15 minutes. 30 minutes. Omg we can't stop watching this show!

What is the best way for a 40-ish man to stay single? To let it be known that he lives in the basement of his mother's home. Brian Landis Folkins is really superb as 40-ish single man David. His mother is 73 (actually pretty young, I say) and suffers from dementia so he takes care of her. That is his job, they live off Social Security and maybe some inheritance from his musician father that died almost 10 years earlier. David is lonely and joins a matchmaking service, where you make a video (this is 1990) and look at videos of others. While at the office he comes across a tape "Rent-a-Pal" by Wil Wheaton as Andy. At some point it seems that Andy is not just a tape with appropriate pauses to let questions be answered, instead he comes to start interacting with David. Of course that would take some sort of magic, so I prefer to look at it as David's mind starting to trick him, Andy is no longer to him just an image and voice on tape. The more the movie goes the more twisted it gets. At one point David in fact meets a female that seems to like him but he breaks off a date when Andy reminds him they are supposed to play cards, "go fish", that night. Anyway as things progress it gets to a point of no return, things don't end well for any of the characters. But it is entertaining for those of us who enjoy a quite different story. I watched it at home on DVD from my public library, my wife skipped.

This was much better than I had expected, given a simple premise and low budget. The acting was excellent and it is well-paced. It is a journey of a gentle, caregiver's descent into madness when life becomes more than he can handle. We see a kind, gentle, incredibly lonely man who spends his days taking good care of his dementia-ridden, potty-mouthed mother. The movie takes place in the 80's which is pretty cool. We watch his angst escalate as well as his loneliness. He "befriends" a man on a tape, that is how lonely he is. This turns out to not be a healthy 'relationship', as one can imagine. Things get very, very dark from there. This is very suspenseful movie, but quite dark. If you are okay with that, I recommend it.

Rent-A-Pal Very cool story with a freaky ending. Could watch it over and over. Not too scary but a good thriller. Makes you wonder if things like this actually could happen. 10/10