Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

A man walks into a smoky nightclub and sees a woman. Feeling bold, he approaches her. He orders a club soda, maybe feeling confident that he’s going to be behind the wheel real soon and doesn’t want to be impaired as the pair engages in a cryptic conversation revolving around love, sex and music. These crazy kids are married couple Angelica (Keena Ferguson) and Terrence (Siaka Massaquoi) and they like to play silly games. So in writer / director Paul D. Hannah’s film ‘Consinsual’, with this opening and the trailer that I checked out, I thought I was getting some kind of sexually charged, Skinemax themed, Zane-esque styled potboiler. Didn’t get that. What I did get was a lot yak combined with a healthy dose of confusion. With a lot of nice music playing in the background. But that’s what my IPod is for.

So Angelica and Terrance get home all hot and bothered but Angelica hears something upstairs. Terrence suggests they flee, Angelica wants to check it out. A burglar hanging out up the stairs snatches Angelica and Terrence, being the hero, runs like a sissy. That was really funny. Eventually Angelica gets herself free and smashes this criminal on the head with a vase causing him to stumble away in the night, but this little event has not cast Terrence in the best light in regards to his wife.

A month passes and Angelica is still pissed off at Terrance. At a dinner party Angelica tells her sister Jasmine (Kathryn Taylor) that her husband is a bitch and she expects more. Terrence admits to being a bitch but wants his wife to accept his weak bitch-assness. Terrance’s boy Dillon (Bryan Keith), who’s kicking it with Jasmine, thinks that Angelica is a whack job. Angelica’s good friend Tara (Alexis Zibolis)… well… Tara doesn’t really do much of anything in this movie except provide some diversity.

Terrence wants a way to let his wife know that he’s the man she needs, considering he can feel her slipping away. Angelica’s sister Jasmine has some advice for Terrance. In the history of bad advice, this might be the worst. This absolutely terrible advice that Jasmine gave Terrance is what this movie is actually about, that being the ramifications of raping your wife. Hey, that’s what Jasmine told this fool to do.

Needless to say getting raped by her husband didn’t make Jasmine very happy, to the point where she brings charges against the man. The officer in charge imagines this to be a ‘misunderstanding’ which sets Angelica off. Get used to seeing that if you choose to watch this movie. Then Angelica asks this cop if he likes to smack his wife’s ass, among other things. Angelica… I tell you.

But this whole thing gets way more complicated than the rape issue. Apparently everybody has a plan. Jasmine has a plan because she hates her sister, Angelica has a plan because she wants to be rich and Terrence has some kind of plan while being caught in the middle of these psychos. Alas I can’t say I was ever completely sure of the details of any of these plans. Hopefully you will fare better than I.

My friends, I’m in a quandary here with this movie ‘Consinsual’. You see I enjoyed this movie, but I enjoyed it for all the wrong reasons. The spousal rape issue didn’t do anything for me and I’m not completely sure what stance writer Hannah was taking on the issue exactly. One minute Terrance is forcing himself on his reluctant wife, the next minute she’s a quivering mass of orgasmic jelly. What is this telling me? The dialog, of which there was plenty, was sometimes interesting, often times dragged on and almost never sounded like anything that comes out of the mouths of actual human beings having a real conversation. And by the time we made it to our endgame big reveal, I had almost no clue what was going on. You know how movies have the talking killer? That character that holds the gun on you while explaining everything instead of just shooting you? This movie had a couple of those, but they talked just to cackle and didn’t actually explain jack.

True enough, ‘Consinsual’ had issues but I had to have laughed out loud six or seven times while watching this movie, and as such time just flew by while watching this movie. There are movies that bill themselves as comedies which weren’t as funny as this movie. Actor Siaka Massaquoi provided a lot of this humor with his character of Terrance because Terrance was a trip. Watch Terrance run from the burglar who has his wife, watch Terrance rape his wife because someone told him to, watch the cop choke Terrance – which I believe is against the law, watch Terrance rape his wife – again, because somebody told him to, watch Terrance cry and cower in fear and beg for his life. If John D. Hannah told his male lead that Terrance should be interpreted as a bitch, Siaka Massaquoi took it to heart.

All of the actors are very appealing in this movie, particularly Kathryn Taylor who was an awful lot of fun to look at. Ms. Taylor and Keena Ferguson seemed to be locked in a battle to see who could overact and maniacally cackle the most and damn if I can’t pick a winner. The sibling rivalry aspect of this movie was one of the more confusing one’s since it looks like the character of Jasmine hated her sister Angelica because… and I could wrong here, and I actually hope I’m wrong here… but because Angelica got sexually assaulted by their father and she didn’t. It’s crazy I know, but that’s what I got out this.

‘Consinsual’ is unwieldy, overly verbose and confusing. But it does look and sounds very good, is reasonably well acted and it did make me laugh. And if you ask a friend for advice and that advice involves raping somebody, I’m thinking that’s not a real friend.