Welcome to A-Z Movie Reviews. Every Sunday, for the next several months, I will be posting a review of a film in my home movie collection. How it works is, I will be reviewing movies in alphabetical order until I get to the letter Z (Yes, I do have a film that ends in Z). Now I realize there are many ways to alphabetize a film collection, but this is mine so don’t judge me. This is simply for fun.
Growing up we had no shortage of campy films. I’m talking bordering on a Lifetime movie type of campy. Swimfan starring Jesse Bradford, Erika Christensen, and Shiri Appelby is one of the campiest.
What it’s about:
A high school senior with a promising swimming career has a one-night stand with consequences.
There is not too much that I can really say about Swimfan. The plot is self-explanatory. It’s one of those films that makes you question who is wrong or right as you watch it. In my opinion I always thought Ben (Bradford) was in the wrong. He had his sweet girlfriend Amy (Appleby) who loved him, and he ruined it by hooking up with Madison (Christensen) some random chick he had just met.
He made lots of bad choices and all I kept thinking was, there is always a moment to do the right thing and Ben never had his. When he met Madison and helped her out, once he realized she was starting to flirt with him, he could have continued to remind her he had a girlfriend.
He definitely did not have to hook up with her either. Most importantly, he should have never told her he loved her when she asked him to. That moment was the one that lead to his downfall. Just because a girl asks you to tell her you love her, doesn’t mean you should if you don’t mean it. That should have immediately made him stop. While Ben made a lot of mistakes, Madison wasn’t innocent either.
Madison knew Ben had a girlfriend, so she didn’t have to keep flirting with him. She also never should have asked him to say he loved her. When he reacted with shock when she asked him to, she should have known when he said it to her, he didn’t mean it.
After all, she told him that he didn’t have to mean it. Madison had lots of issues and she destroyed Ben’s life in a lot of ways but at the same time, I cannot really fault her. I don’t agree with the things she did other than maybe telling Amy that they hooked up.
One of the things that still bothers me about Swimfan is the storyline with Madison’s old boyfriend Jake. I think they should have thrown in a flashback of her and Jake when they were together instead of just showing him to us later when he’s in a hospital bed.
I mean, the film doesn’t really explain to us why Madison is the way that she is or what lead to her fixation on athletes because that seems to be what she likes. Jake played baseball and Ben was a swimmer. I would have liked a bit more backstory. I mean even Lifetime movies give us something to go on.
Like I said, Swimfan is campy but for the year 2002, it was something that people my age at the time found interesting because we hadn’t seen a movie like it before.
Other Thoughts
- Never tell a stranger about your past criminal history, you’re just giving them ammo to destroy you later.
- Don’t tell someone you love them if you don’t mean it.
- Ben, never leave your med cart unattended.
- Ben, you always check your medications before you administer them.
- It’s never okay to put your hands on a woman no matter what she’s done.
- Watching Swimfan always reminds me of how old our technology was.
- Today if you’re trying to avoid someone, unlike Ben saying “you’re gonna stop paging me, you’re gonna stop visiting me,” now you’d have to say “you’re gonna stop face timing me, sending me snaps, liking my Instagram posts, tweeting me, you get the idea.
- Still wondering how the hell Madison got Ben’s car keys to run Amy down.
- Also, Ben didn’t hear a commotion in the kitchen before he found his mom knocked out in there?
Do you want to watch this movie? Feel free to share with us in the comments below!
Swimfan is available to stream on Hulu.
