Never mind! Fine! Just - fine!

I'm giving in. To myself. It's not like anyone actually was, like, "Why are you fighting it? Just go there," and I was, like, "No! I shouldn't! I shouldn't!" That argument was completely in my mind. So, fuck it.

Let me start by saying I recognize the bloom is long off ol' Julia, and the days are long gone when everyone would swoon whenever she spread her big yawp to bark out some loving anecdote about Mel Gibson, but, rather like a weird sloppy cousin with impetigo who shows up to Thanksgiving with an expired can of cranberry sauce, you just have to deal. I'm of that generation which asks the world, "You work on commission, right? Big mistake. BIG. HUGE." I will always have Julia's back. That, and I'm also a redhead, so, solidarity.

However, I acknowledge that part of Julia's charm is in having made all that shit back in the nineties, when Hollywood was all "How many blockbuster movies can we make that involve her hair and a 60s song/dance number!?!?11?!"  'Sleeping with the Enemy" is part of that oeuvre; in fact, it's the alpha and the omega. You might argue that the earlier 'Mystic Pizza' has a couple of 60s song/dance numbers, and it does, but that is an ensemble movie, just like 'Satisfaction.' Which is one nonstop song/dance number. Oh my god. Maybe I should teach a Learning Annex class about 80s and 90s Julia Roberts movies. Hang on, lemme go write that down. While I'm doing that, check this out, because, cowbell:

Unsurprisingly, I digress. 'Sleeping with the Enemy' is a real piece of crap dressed up as A REAL FILM, which it is definitely not. It's apparently based on a book that you can get from Amazon for $.01, so maybe you should hurry and grab yourself a copy. In this movie, Julia plays AN ABUSED WOMAN GASP married to that dude who was an IRA terrorist in that one Harrison Ford movie about IRA terrorists. He does a pretty good American asshole accent here, I'll give him that, plus his porn stache is style! The whole story is about her escaping him, finally getting a proper snog and then murdering him. OK, now to the good stuff.

Some enterprising soul has very thoughtfully compiled all of Julia's 'Sleeping with the Enemy' hair into one JPEG for us (except that critical boy wig is missing...hmm). This is some NSA-level investigation, people. Shall we?

You can use this as a key to refer back to whenever you need to get a sense of Julia's emotional state at any given time. In the beginning, when she lets the terrorist tell her what White House/Black Market dress to wear and when the bulk of her dialogue is about baby peas, she has straightened extensions to illustrate how sad she is. We also learn what a nightmare he is because of the towels. The towels, you guys. Just this morning I was hanging a towel on the oven door handle and I was, all, in my mind, What if I don't hang this evenly enough? An entire generation of women paranoid about towels. That's what this movie did to us.

Julia has good reason to be afraid of the terrorist. That guy has a backhand like Bjorn Borg. Seriously, I can't wait for her to murder him! First, he's going to play some Berlioz ("...and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy...") and basically rape her, gross. That creepy-assed Berlioz will come in handy later on, when we need to be hit over the head with meaning, btw, so pay attention. Julia's finally had enough, so she cleverly escapes him, but as she does, she does THE ONE DUMB THING THAT WE KNOW IS GOING TO BE HER UNDOING WHY THE FUCK DID SHE THROW HER RING IN THE TOILET. I don't get it, I really don't. Symbolism be damned, take the ring and throw it out the window of the bus you're taking across the country when you go across a bridge spanning a raging river! What the fuck is wrong with you? Don't you know it won't go down the bendy pipe? Clearly Julia has not tried to flush enough heavy things down her toilet.

During this interlude Julia wears that broke Louise Brooks wig that makes her look like a comparative lit adjunct at Smith in the early 1980s.

But thank god she goes to a flyover state, where the light is always golden and there's a conveniently furnished Victorian house just lying around on every corner waiting to be rented for like four dollars a month. The Theatre Nerd who lives next door is such a fucking early 90s cliche, I can't. He has similarly big hair, a sculpted beard, rolls his sleeves up over his elbows, does fun girly shit like picnic and go to parades, and he gives Julia the opportunity for the following:

That mess of an Armani is THE WORST, as is that brown Clinique lipstick I totally wore to dances at camp because all the cool prep school girls were into it. The point is, I was looking for the picture with the biggest hair, because through osmosis Julia's hair gets big around the Theatre Nerd, so we know he's the guy for her. But wait, there's more that Theatre Nerd provides:

Sister to the Gettin' It Together montage, the Wacky Closet Dance montage is a staple of the 80s and 90s, and Julia is a fucking Grand Master at it. Cue the Van Morrison! Here she is in an outfit that reminds us of Kim Basinger fingering herself in '9 1/2 Weeks.' Her hair is so big in this sequence that it needs its own zip code.

The terrorist finds her, BECAUSE SHE DIDN'T GET RID OF THE RING PROPERLY, and he sneaks through her house organizing her towels, because that's what terrorists do. Once that Berlioz starts playing from a boombox inconveniently placed in the middle of the hall, we know:

The Theatre Nerd is essentially useless in the end, which is good, because we're rooting for Julia's hair to take the terrorist out, and it doesn't disappoint! We then get that 'Fatal Attraction' ending where the dead terrorist comes back to life to fuck with us, but Julia puts that baby in the corner.

And then the last shot of the movie is the ring. The fucking ring! WHY did you not properly dispose of the ring. It's a worse cinematic offense than going down in the basement because you hear a noise and there's probably a rapist zombie or Cthulu down there that you just want to check out. Come ON!

But, you know, at the end of the day I don't even care. I love this piece of shit movie like a schoolboy loves his bag. It's one of my go-to Netflix Instants when I need noise in the background while I'm exfoliating or whatever. Julia always delivers!