Such a frustrating disappointment

A Major Disappointment

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is another amiable but undemanding entry to the Jane Doe series.Lea Thompson is comfortable in the role as Cathy, the housewife turned CIA agent who ends up investigating black op agents going on a killing spree through some kind of mind control and trigger words.Her partner Frank (Joe Penny) is also getting some uncomfortable flashbacks of his tour of duty in Afghanistan.The film has shades of The Manchurian Candidate but for a family audience. We have some red herrings such as a suspect who uses hypnosis so he can have an audience who can listen to his karaoke singing.This cable movie is pretty formulaic and by the numbers. There are side plots such as Cathy's husband trying to bag a tycoon as a client for his public relations firm, but the tycoon is obnoxious and he cannot see that. The family also has to deal with their son who has won money by illegal card games. These side plots just get in the way.

If you can accept the idea of a soccer mom/secret agent as we did in The Scarecrow and Mrs. King than this series shouldn't be too bad. But this particular film where we've got one group of CIA agents who were doing their Black Ops thing while under some hypnosis and another group of them who at the utterance of a control word start killing the ones who had been in Afghanistan than you'll accept anything.This is the particular mystery that our soccer mom agent Lea Thompson is asked to unravel. It hits close to home when her partner starts having Afghan flashbacks and another agent tries to shoot him as well.Of course Lea solves the case and goes back to the burbs and her husband William R. Moses and his more ordinary problems involving their town council. Lea's character is most engaging and I confess this is the first I saw of her series of films as agent Jane Doe. I do hope the others are better.

There are plenty of plot twists and fine performances by supporting characters to go around in this 2007 entry in Hallmark's Jane Doe Mystery series. The result is a very enjoyable 84 minutes.For those not familiar with the CSA agent whose cover is working for a puzzle company while being wife and mother of the typical American family, the agency intrigue here is much more multi-layered and provides a much broader spectrum of performances than in previous entries. Joe Penny, Scott Paulin, Erin Gray, Shashawnee Hall, Caroline WIlliams, and Steve Vinovich all provide solid characterizations with signature quirks in their roles in the mystery. THe extraordinary performances are added by the late Stanley Kamel whose misuse of a CSA protocol was a highlight of the film for me and Richard Libertini as the old scientist abandoned to live like a crazy man in the desert.The other interesting part here is the acting of the actor who played the son, relatively undistinguished in the earlier entries. Here, he gets something to do with a subplot on an unconventional and somewhat unethical way of making money and how he handles it in a way that is parents can live with. The fellow playing the corrupt developer is also quite good in giving his own signature to a hackneyed and stereotyped caricature.Overall, of course, we're talking about a TV murder mystery. The only reason we call it a movie instead of an episode of a TV series is that it happens to be longer than an hour. All that said, How TO FIre Your Boss is more novel, more interesting, and more amusing than most such entries.

When senior CSA boss Alana Delvin is shot in her office by one of her own team, the motives seem nonexistent. Things are made even more complex by the agent himself having no memory of shooting her or any idea why he would. Of course with such a mystery in play, special agent Cathy Davis (aka Jane Doe) is called in to consult. With links to an experimental series of CSA protocols working on the subconscious minds of the agents. Cathy tries to work out if this theory holds water but also who would have the access to use this programme to their own ends. While she investigates though another similar assassination occurs within the CSA and Frank Darnell himself starts to be plagued by nightmares about a war he was never in.The Jane Doe series of films isn't great; lets just agree that right now. They are not pushing Spielberg out of the multiplex, they don't get sold via Cable Box Office and they generally seem happy to be filling the afternoon schedules of safe, family television channels. So it is perhaps important not to come to the films thinking that you are walking into the favourite for next years' Best Picture Oscar. However this does not mean that you have to just accept whatever slop is served up to you and even those accepting this as a TVM standard are "allowed" to take issue when it is poor. I do watch this stuff with this in mind but, for example, the Mystery Woman series of films has become lazy and bland to the point of pain and the same thing can happen with Jane Doe.This film does at least try to prevent this slide into total mediocrity and here manages to at least have an interesting concept at its core, one that in some ways reminded me of aspects of both version of The Manchurian Candidate. Of course the quality is much lower across the board but it did just about enough to hold my interest and this is what prevents it from just being pointless and bland. Is it endlessly exciting, intelligent well of course it is not. The movement of characters from the back to the fore gives the game away, even if the various red herrings are used well enough to fill the time. As per usual the family side plots are pointless and just seem like they have been edited in from somewhere else like bad stock footage. Here we have Jack trying to win a job with an unpleasant property developer while his son wins thousands playing poker against other kids; of course it is nonsense and it is a shame that the film uses this stuff as the big finish. I suppose at least Jack knowing about his wife's job makes a bit of connection (she can talk about the plot to him – making the scenes serve some purpose at times) but still you have to wonder why they don't really put the work into making a strong mystery because I cannot imagine that anyone is tuning into these things to see what is happening to Cathy's snotty cute son.The cast offer TVM safety but nothing special or noteworthy. Thompson works best in her undemanding moments but here she is handed two or more moments where she has to express stronger emotions and frankly she cannot do it. For example she has to lose it with the developer, being stern when preparing to confront the suspects or being disgusted when the guilty party is exposed – all of these are laughable. Penny is his usual solid self despite some silly action/dream scenes. Moses and his acting children drift around the edges like soft shapeless ghost of tirelessly jolly people.Lets be clear - this is far from a brilliant film but as a TVM it works just about. You can see the areas where effort has been made to reduce the failings of previous films and to arrest the slide into mediocrity and utter blandness that this series and some similar films can easily get into. The mystery is OK and just about offers enough to move things forward even if the usual flaws are all evident to some degree.