Rob Lowe tars in a movie of the week thriller......

Bart Corbin's wife Jenn dies at home, apparently suicide, as the police believe.

While he and his children moves in with his brother Bobby, his wife's sister Heather starts a relentless campaign, without any clue, to make the police believe Bart must have murdered her and have an affair with practice secretary Dara.

However PC data shows Jenn was the one who has an Internet affair with a Chris, who turned out to be a lesbian's alias.

I don't mean to sound big headed, but if you do not know the outcome of this film in the first twenty minutes, and the fact that the cover art of the DVD shouts spoiler, you really need to stop watching films, as this is blindingly obvious from the get go.

Lowe goes from charming to evil in 0 to 120mph, and other than wearing a sign above his head saying 'It was me', the rest of the cast think there maybe something wrong with him, but he's so smooth with it, he just slides away from all the alarm bells calling.

But knowing the outcome so early in the film, makes it more of a comedy, as we see Lowe morph into this strange psycho-lite dentist. Instead of becoming more menacing, he gets more of a puppy dog look as the film progresses, and in doing this, he surprisingly becomes more of a protagonist than an antagonistic.

Which makes it a really curious watch.

With its movie of the week sheen, this narcissistic thriller has a daytime soap feel to it, which makes it all the more hilarious.

Anne Rule is a first-rate true-crime writer, both concise and colorful, and she wrote the book this TV movie is based on. It's too bad that the people behind this movie, anxious for a buck, rush to Canada and shoot the story so carelessly for Lifetime Movies.

The story itself isn't exactly epic. A narcissistic dentist (Lowe) shoots his wife and sets it up as a suicide. The wife's sister is convinced that it was murder and eggs the local police on. (Nice performance by Michelle Hurd as the determined but straight-laced cop.) A lengthy investigation brings out the fact that one of the dentist's girl friends in college wound up dead in the same manner. Okay, Doc, open wide now.

The director, Norma Bailey, tries some original camera angles. Sometimes they work -- a couple of overhead shots that break up the predictable parade of images -- and sometimes they don't. It doesn't add much to a scene of a couple walking down a hallway and having an ordinary conversation when you tilt the camera thirty degrees. There are situations that call for such striking effects, but a chat in a hallways isn't one of them.

Rob Lowe is Rob Lowe. Everyone says he's handsome so I suppose he's handsome but there are times when I could be convinced that his character's love of self is entirely real. You know when the audience is first tipped off that there's something queer about the grieving husband? When he shows up to answer questions at the police station, says he's ready to be taken to the interrogation room, and says politely, to nobody in particular, "Coffee black, no cream," and one of the detectives stares after him, stupefied. And he insists on being addressed as "doctor," whereas most non-MDs get that behind them when they're out of their professional settings.

When I think of all the pain inflicted on me over the years by those sadists in white coats -- you know the patter, "This may sting a little," and "I'm going to have to be a bad boy now," -- I was glad to see him convicted. You hear me? -- GLAD! I hope that prison has a dentist who is a ham-handed oaf at his job and who suffers from a perpetual hangover. Immanent justice. It was good enough for Aristotle.

I was caught up watching this right away, reading on the screen this was a true story, which immediately takes off with a neighbor opening th front door after a knock one late night, finding the neighboring kid with bare feet covered in blood. The blood is from the mother, which seems to have shot herself. Then the film tells both the continuation of the effect this has on the relatives and friends, as we also neatly are told in retrospect what happened up to the tragic event of finding her shot on the bed.

The film is very good hand work, and the acting is excellent, especially from Rob Lowe, playing the dentist husband Bart Corbin is excellent. No wonder his career is back on track. This shows his acting skills. Stephanie von Pfetten, which plays the dead woman which we also get to know retrospectively does great. Her sister is played by Lauren Holley, also doing that role great. We're neatly introduced to the fact of a family not functioning, with the parents blaming each other.

The good hand work is showed in the film's pace, the storytelling and even in the narration and music. We also find the story building up suspension about what happened up to her death, where several is involved. The sister believes Bart killed her. And a female detective, played by Michele Hurd, is doing a great investigative job. We follow the investigation in an interesting way, unveiling the story.

When I went to rate this on IMDb I was really baffled by the low score. I expected this to have a rating of 6 or 7, but 4,8??? I really think the ratings here tend to be very right, but this is an exception of the rule. I think this might be due to no dramatic ending. Well, this is a drama, not a fictional crime story. Well, it's far better than this rating in all aspects, and is well worth a watch. A good TV- movie about a true story.