The Under 700 Club: The Ultimate Lie (1996)
There are probably worse lies, if we're being honest.
The Under 700 Club: Reviews in under 700 words for movies with less than 700 logs on Letterboxd (log count as of this publication: 101)
I'm always on the hunt for new movies to feature in this column - the private Letterboxd list I use to track future entries grows almost daily. When I stumbled upon The Ultimate Lie, however, it shot straight to the top of the list.
This movie, a 1996 tv-movie that aired on NBC, stars Kristin Davis and the tagline explains it all: SHE’S A HIGH-CLASS HOOKER SHOCKED TO SEE HER NEXT CLIENT. HER FATHER!
It's a difficult film to track down and I couldn't right away, so I reached out to the same channels that found The Gentleman Bandit for me, where I was actually met with the question, "Why would you want to watch this?"
Why would I want to watch this! It stars Kristin Davis as a high-class hooker shocked to see her next client - her father! Why wouldn't I want to watch this! As a huge Sex in the City fan (Charlotte will always be my favorite), this seemed like essential viewing.
I suppose I can see why, for others, this might not seem very interesting. The elevator pitch is promising, but trashy. In the right hands, like an Adrian Lyne, it could be a steamy thriller. Can you imagine the cat-and-mouse at play? The bubbling build-up to the reveal when he opens his hotel room door? The tension at home? The blackmail? The trash noir tropes? It's about as ripe as a premise can get.
Unfortunately, in the hands of Larry Shaw (whose most well-known film credit is Cadet Kelly, but whose work as director and producer on Desperate Housewives is much more closely aligned to this film), it comes across as more of an Afterschool Special than anything else.
Dad opens his hotel room door about fifteen minutes into the movie and the rest of the film is dad-daughter lesson time, as they insist on teaching each other the ethics of sex work. For example, Dad is appalled that Kristin is a prostitute, but doesn't understand why it's an issue that he called for one. Kristin, above all, takes issue with the fact that he's cheating on her mother, which leads to the biggest thesis-stating argument in the film:
“I just wanna know one thing: why? You’ve got everything in the world going for you. Everything a person could want. Why?”
"You go first, Dad. Why?”
But in his eyes, he's not doing anything wrong. He's a successful law school dean just trying to blow off some steam. His wife was a successful attorney, and his son is following in their footsteps - Kristin is the problem child. His only tactic is to blame it on her:
“Do you have any idea what it would do to your mother if she found out about this? Haven’t you caused enough trouble around here for 19 long years? She will never find out about this, do you understand? Never!”
Kristin doesn't hide it for long, filling Mom in as she moves out:
“Have you ever wondered why Dad has been so mad at me lately? Or how I know that he’s been cheating on you? It’s because I’m a prostitute. Now I’ll give you three guesses how Daddy found out about that.”
And that, at the thirty-four-minute mark, is where the movie goes south. All of the suspense is sucked out of the room. The stakes have flat-lined for everyone. Kristin already hates Dad, Dad is already disappointed in Kristin, and there's nothing left for the final hour. It does take an interesting stance regarding who's right and who's wrong that I didn't expect from a 1996 tv-movie, but that's only found in the final ten minutes.
In the US the film was called The Ultimate Lie, but there are probably worse lies, if we're being honest. In the UK, it was known as Extreme Behaviour (with a "u", of course - and with a ten-second edited-in sex scene featuring a woman that looks nothing like Kristin Davis!), but no one's behaviour is particularly extreme. The whole thing, from title to concept, is one big letdown. It's saved by having Kristin play our lead, but I can't help but imagine how good this could have been.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn't exist.