'Enough' or 'Sleeping With the Enemy'?
I mean, they are both so alike! I think this is a little more thrilling. I want to know what you think. Thanks!
shareSleeping with the enemy was a lot more true to the cycle of abuse than this movie is.
share
MovieChat Forums > Enough (2002) Discussion > 'Enough' or 'Sleeping With the Enemy'?
I think they are both awesome. I can't really decide! I guess if they were both on TV at the same time, I'd go with SWTE because I haven't seen it as much, but they are both awesome movies. I love movies with strong female leads :) I also love the love story component (after the women leave their husbands).
I think SWTE had a better "get away" plot (where she goes through that elaborate plan to fake her death). That's what makes it so much more thrilling when he finds out and tries to hunt her down. But I like that Gracie is in Enough, she adds some fun scenes, and is just a cutie pie :)
I think Julia Roberts is the better actress, but I like Jennifer Lopez's performance, too.
The husband in SWTE continues to be a psycho, where in this film I actually felt a little sorry for Mitch, he goes softer I think.
I think SWTE is better. The husband is always scarry and Mitch really is not in the climax scene.
swte is my fav film of always...more true to life and more realstic depiction of an abusive relationship as she was once so inlove with him and he was so tender and then he became so cruel...I think enough had too much action and violence in it...and prefer the open ending of swte..
incidentally when i got married to my husband we had the music of berlioz symphonie fantastique on our list...
fifth movement. dreams of the witches sabath...
"I'm not living with you, we just occupy the same cage, that's all!"
Sleeping with the Enemy all day long, and twice on Sundays!
"I've been turned down more times than the beds at the Holiday Inn; I still try"
I think they are basically the same movie. Other then the Julia Roberts character hadn't had any children yet and had a different identity a lot longer then Slim. I was going to start a thread that this movie (Enough)was a ripoff of Sleeping with the Enemy in many ways.
shareNeither are great movies and both are very flawed. They're both interesting in a lot of ways, too, and feature committed leading actresses who clearly believe in the material. But where both movies establish a good opening premise, particularly how powerful the first act of Sleeping With the Enemy is and how disarming Enough is, both, unfortunately, fall foul of trashy and contrived final acts. Sleeping With the Enemy resorts to haunted house and slasher tropes, whilst Enough turns on a dime to become an action movie. This strips away credibility and believability in both movies, and suggests the film-makers and writers had less faith in audiences accepting the straightforward aspects of such narratives when something less challenging than storytelling was at their disposal. Again, this is no critique on Roberts or Lopez, who are both better than their respective material; and that's not to say neither film is entertaining. But there's a narrative tug-of-war that doesn't work for the best in either movie. What's the better film? I prefer Enough, and that's mainly due to a nasty final act that I feel is more entertaining than the climax of Sleeping With the Enemy, which offers more initially but squanders a great set-up.
NOW TARZAN MAKE WAR!
Attention Spoilers!!!
SWTE is based on Nancy Price's novel with the same title. For me the movie is superior compared to the novel.
"Enough" supposedly is loosely based on "Black and Blue" by Anna Quindlen.
But there is also the Mary Stuart Masterson TV film "Black and Blue" (based more closely on Quindlen's novel, but with a different ending).
I watched SWTE more than 10 times (one of my favorite movies from all times and definitely Julia Roberts' best film) and watched "Enough" twice, but don't see too many similarities.
SWTE is about a battered wife who plans IN ADVANCE to leave her abusive husband and is able to rent a house from her own saved up income.
"Enough" is the story of a battered mother with a child. She wants to prevent her little daughter from growing up watching her mom being beaten up by her dad all the time.
She has help from several relatives/friends.
Overall she's a stronger woman than Julia Roberts' character in SWTE.
Just my 2 cents.
I liked both movies for various reasons, but I must say I loved the fact that in "Enough" she trained to protect herself and gave him back some of the physical abuse she had received. As a female and knowing men are stronger it looked really cool to know you can actually be capable of handling yourself if needed.
"You met me at a very strange time in my life"
That's what I liked about it too, Green-Eyed-Girl. Apparently, her self defense training is a real martial art developed for the Israeli army.
I also thought the director did a great job of raising the excitement when he needed to.
However, I think that Sleeping With the Enemy was the superior movie in most ways, so my vote goes to it.
Sleeping With the Enemy by far, but there is some preoccupation here with a couple of Julia Roberts movies. Someone mentioned that the husband's new house looks like the house on the beach in SWTL and the scene when she goes to see the lawyer; straight out of Pretty Woman. She pulls out a wad of crinkled up money, lays it on his desk and says to him that she has money, she can pay him. Remember Vivian and Mr. Barnard Thompson?
Did you ever work at Pizza Hut? No, but I ate there a lot.
I always notice that scene too, and it bugs me a little because it's so vastly better done in Pretty Woman. The similarity of the two scenes can't but intrude on the consciousness, jarring me momentarily out of my immersion in the story.
shareThe locations in SWTE (Figure Eight Island near Wilmington, NC, and Abbeville, SC) and the soundtrack in SWTE are unforgettable.
But both directors did a great job and I don't see too many flaws either in SWTE or in "Enough".
I took self-defense lessons way back in the early 1970's, so JLo has all my respect for doing that!
shareI liked them both for different reasons. I think the portrayal of an abuse victim was more realistic in SWTE. The character was abused physically and emotionally for 3 years, she was a broken woman on the inside and the film focused more indepth on her trying to find herself again and Julia Roberts was excellent i don't think Jlo could of pulled this off. In enough the character was only smacked about a few times before she decided to flee and it was more about the escape and fear from her crazy husband. However In Enough i loved how she learnt to fight back and kill him in the end and i think Jlo excelled in that part.
share"Sleeping With the Enemy" played it simpler and was the better for it in my opinion. I also thought the actors/characters in it were better.
Slim didn't do anything as silly as flush her wedding ring down the toilet and not even check that it flushed, but we were also supposed to believe that Slim had basically mastered a martial art within a month, so on the stupidity front it's basically a tie. I also thought Martin made a better abusive husband than Mitch, whose abusive nature I felt was more informed by the movie than really portrayed, beyond the obvious physical.
Har ring molassis abounding
Common lap kitch sardin a poor floundin.
Attention Spoilers!!!
The only scene in SWTE that I hate is that scene with her throwing away the ring.
WHY did she not sell that darn wedding ring in another town?
Later on (in the novel as well as in the film) the Julia Roberts character is so destitute (sorry, English is not my native language, so I hope it's indeed "destitute") that she starves and takes apples from her neighbor's backyard (apples have no protein and don't help much when you are really hungry).
If Laura would have sold the ring, she would have had enough money for food for weeks/months to bridge over the time until she'll have a job.
So throwing away the ring must have some special meaning for Laura (hopefully other abused women learn from this movie and sell their wedding rings once they'll get out of their abusive marriage).
And of course the story would end right there and then if
- Martin would not have walked barefoot in front of the beach house
- if Laura would have kept and later on sold her ring
- if she wouldn't have told her mother details about her new life
Same in "Black and Blue", the Mary Stuart Masterson character calls her sister and that's the beginning of the end.