1st watched 6/1/2010 -- 3 out of 10(Dir-Allan Moyle): Silly drama/comedy with Penelope Ann Miller playing the title role of librarian Betty Lou from a small town in Missouri who finds a gun that just happened to be a murder weapon, and then lies -- saying she committed the murder to get attention. She's the quiet wife of a town cop who spends too much time at work and nobody else in the town takes her seriously, unfortunately. Once she lies though, she immediately gets the attention she wants and people listen to her and she enjoys this at first. A couple of thugs in jail then teach her the ways of being bad, which is supposed to be funny but isn't. She kind of becomes a female robin hood to the townsfolk, but eventually realizes she wants her husband back. She lost him because of all the lies, including an alleged affair. She then reveals the truth and the movie becomes a thriller with her having to save herself and her lawyer, played by Alfre Woodard(in a thankless role), from a local mobster. The main problem with this movie is that it didn't know what it wanted to be from the very beginning. If it would have picked something -- comedy, drama or thriller -- and tried to execute that -- it would have been much better. Instead we get a movie that didn't perform any of the elements very well and therefore the movie wasn't very enjoyable.
Review of The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag
