Richard and Priscilla Parker's lives take a turn for the better when Eddy and Kay move into the house next door. Eddy's a risk taker and shows his new neighbours how to enjoy life at the expense of a rule or convention or two. What Richard doesn't realise is that Eddy's little games are just a prelude to something that's intended to destroy his neighbours' lives...The film tries really too hard to be a Hitchcockian thriller, and it does really well up until a point, but then like most movies like this released in the early Nineties, it goes all fatal Attraction and has the normal friend go all nuts at the end.If they had left out the murders, which ruined the film and any plausibility it had, and concentrated more on the fraud part of the film, this could have been an entire different beast.But no, people in the nineties were really asking for more eroticism out of their thrillers, or so Basic Instinct told us, so it goes for the wife swapping route, which ruins it.Kline is great as always, and it's always funny to see Spacey in trash like this, before he met Keyser Soxe.So all in all, it had so much potential, but spoils it all by almost going to the audience 'Phwooar' get some of that Mrs...

Richard and Priscilla Parker are a happily married couple. He works writing jingles for different products, as we meet him. Priscilla, who is also seen while he works at a recording studio, appears to be the one that handles the financial aspect. They have a teen aged daughter who is attending a boarding school. Their home is set in a well to do division in the suburb of Atlanta. They seem to have it all.Little do they know their life is about to change drastically when their new neighbors buy the house next to them. Eddy and Kay Otis are an attractive couple about the same age as the Parkers, but with no children. Eddy shows all the signs of being a fast operator. Kay, on the other hand, is the quiet one. Eddy is a glib man that gives the impression of being a con man, if there were ever one. The new arrivals latch on to the Parkers, as they become friends.Richard and Priscilla's marriage has seen better days. He works at home late into the night. Richard cannot help but to notice the beautiful Kay next door preparing for bed, or getting out of the bathtub with nothing on. He begins acting like a peeping tom. Eddy pulls a fast one when he is hit by Richard's car. He offers the settlement check to his friends, who at first, are reluctant to do so. The Parkers begin having second thoughts about their neighbors.One day, out of the blue, Eddy has an interesting proposal for Richard. How about switching wives, but not in the obvious way. Eddy wants to be subtle about it. One night, Richard, who cannot resist spending some time in the sack with Kay, comes down during the night. He is to go to the Otises, where Kay will be sleeping, have sex with her, and just return back home. Eddy is expected to do the same with Priscilla. Wrong decision, indeed. When Kay is found dead, all suspicions fall on Richard, the last one to have sex with her. But was that so? Richard's life goes into a tail spin as he tries to prove his innocence, only to get a lot of complications along the way."Consenting Adults" came almost at the end of Mr. Pakula's life. He met a horrible death. As a film director, Mr. Pakula enjoyed a good career in Hollywood, and even if this film was flawed, he showed he was the man that got good performances from actors that worked for him. As written by Matthew Chapman, the film holds a good promise up until the Kay's horrible death. After that, the film does not make much sense the way it was written, which leaves a lot of questions in the viewer's mind. Best thing in the film is Kevin Spacey at his weirdest. He is the most interesting character that contrasts with the more reserved Kevin Kline, whose Richard shows a high libido gone wrong, while Spacey's Eddy is a cunning evil man that has an ulterior motive to capitalize on Kay's murder. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Rebecca Miller, who is also a good director, play second fiddles to their high profiled husbands.

The only implausible part of the movie was when Kevin Kline's character chose to leave the character played by Rebecca Miller alone on the rooftop to answer the "fake call" by the character played by Forest Whitaker. Had I been in a similar circumstance, I cannot imagine I would leave her alone after finally finding her.But as far as the movie was concerned, I found it otherwise entirely plausible and believable. And even my implausible criticism mentioned in the first paragraph could very easily have happened given the emotional response that the protagonist may have experienced.This was well crafted and well acted. Anyone that has a problem with this movie's plausibility factor is being way too critical and ridiculous.

This movie is both unlikely and unlikeable. It is unlikely that good actors would sign on to such a ridiculous and implausible screenplay. Perhaps neither Kline nor Spacey read the script before agreeing to do this film. That seems the most plausible explanation.At some point one would imagine that someone would have asked the director just why the audience should give a flying flip about the fate of the alleged protagonist. He is a man being framed for the murder of his neighbor, when he was only guilty of raping her. (I should also note that he had also arranged to have his own wife raped by the husband of his victim, but that man, the alleged antagonist, did not follow through. Instead he killed the woman Kline's character had assaulted and set out to frame him for it.) The women in this movie are as vapid as the men are vile. The framed character's wife ultimately forgives him when he is cleared of the murder without any regard for the fact that he had snuck over to their neighbor's house in the middle of the night to have sex with another woman without her consent. She also doesn't seem to mind that he had volunteered her for the same treatment.