Sony has released Nora Roberts' Tribute, one of the four telemovies based on the best-selling author's works that were produced and released in 2009 for Lifetime (the other three made-for-TV movies are out on disc, and I'll be reviewing them, as well). As an unapologetic fan of the Lifetime Movie Channel (when I want melodrama, I don't want to screw around), I've seen my fair share of these cable romance-mystery/suspense/ghost/revenge melodramas, and unfortunately, Nora Roberts' Tribute doesn't stack up favorably to even the most average offering found on that must-see channel - with the chief offender here being an unintentionally hilarious performance by Brittany Murphy.

Down South, where antebellum mansions decay and molder with a reserved, gentile sigh, former child actress Cilla McGowan (Brittany Murphy) has escaped her dead-end Hollywood career and moved to her beloved grandmother's plantation, where she hopes to hone her newly-acquire house-flipping skills by renovating the mansion and getting her contractor's license. Her grandmother, Janet Hardy (Tiffany Morgan), was a two-time Oscar winner as well as something of a...slut, because apparently she ruined many lives in her pursuit of good times during the heyday of the Age of Aquarious. However, those feel-good times came to a crashing halt when Janet took her life from an overdose of pills in 1971 - a fact that becomes anything but concrete when Cilla begins to converse with her grandmother in her dreams. Cilla, clearing out the trash left in the house, finds a stash of love letters indicating Janet was having an affair with a married man, a man who shared a secret with Janet that could have prompted Janet's murder. Offering much-needed attention next door is hunky, sensitive neighbor, Ford Sawyer (Jason Lewis), a graphic novelist (please don't call them cartoons) who wants to use Cilla as a model for his latest work (uh...yeah). Initially puzzled by Cilla's aggressive standoffishness, Ford soon becomes jealous when Cilla's ex-husand, Steve (Christian Oliver) shows up to help Cilla renovate the mansion. Very rapidly, however, things start to go bump in the night, and it becomes evident that someone either wants Cilla gone...or dead.

SPOILERS ALERT!

I'm not going to spend paragraph after paragraph (something I've been known to do) going over the finer (or rather, the crudely misshapened) elements of Nora Roberts' Tribute because, quite frankly, it's not good enough or important enough to warrant such a comprehensive review. This is cheap-jack filler melodrama, not at all distinguished in any way from countless other examples of the genre (except for some serviceable lighting here and there, and one or two nice compositions), and marred by a truly regrettable performance by Brittany Murphy. Anyone who's seen just a handful of these types of romance mysteries will have sussed-out the killer way before dreamweaver Brittany Murphy finally gets a clue from SpiritGranny - mainly because the red herrings are so obvious (and the writing so simplistic), it becomes a simple process of mathematics: poor scripting times a clichéd plot to the second factor, divided by the quotient of ludicrous acting to somnobulent sleepwalking, equals Diana Scarwid. This ginned-up story with its subtext of dream-induced ESP married to the world's oldest revenge plot, wouldn't have passed muster on a Matt Huston table read. I won't comment on the fact that one-time promising director Martha Coolidge was the helmer of this dreck...but if I did, I'd say her flashback sequences were slightly less annoying than the other parts, while the direction of the actors must have been through semaphore. I don't mind the anonymous actors that populate the backgrounds of Nora Roberts' Tribute; they're to be expected in these relatively cheap TV outings (Jason Lewis at least has the decency to look...perplexed, shall we say, when confronted with a sprawling Brittany Murphy during their modeling session). I do mind that an accomplished actress like Tippi Hedren (who also carries a lot of genre cache from Hitchcock's The Birds that is totally wasted here) shows up for all of about 35 seconds; what, was her part chopped away in the herky-jerky editing?

However, there can be no excuse for a performance such as the one given by lead Brittany Murphy. No editor ruined her turn; she's in virtually every scene, and she's almost supernaturally annoying here. Trying to put my finger on what exactly went wrong, I realized about a third of the way through that she constantly has a smug, self-serving, utterly obnoxious smirk on her face - regardless of the situation or context of her lines - that looks as if she's the only one hearing some private put-down whispered into her ear. Is she trying to put up a dash of bravado to cover the fact that she's doing Lifetime movies now? I honestly don't know, but it's rare to see a performance this ill-advised in this kind of film. And if the grotesque grimaces aren't enough, the line-readings slay you (check her out when she hysterically screams, "Somebody call 911!"). My personal favorite - and you can chalk it up to not only Murphy's clueless delivery but also a script writer with zero sense of irony - occurs when she visits her ex-husband Steve in the hospital, and she brightly intones, "It's a no-brainer," when he's suffering from a coma. She's not the only offender here (Scarwid, in her hysterically over-the-top final scene, looks like she's been watching Dunaway again in their film, Mommie Dearest...and finding the turn too low-key), but it could also be the fault of the individual scenes that seem pitched for an unintentionally comedic effect (when Murphy confronts one of the suspects for the first time, and he savagely spits in her face without so much as a "Howdeedo," I was hopelessly, helplessly in stitches). His aim was true, god bless him; it's just a pity he left out so many other deserving targets here in Nora Roberts' Tribute.

The DVD

The Video
To its credit (as with all of these Nora Roberts titles), Nora Roberts' Tribute looked clean and crisp in this sharp, anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 widescreen transfer. Colors are spot-on, and no compression issues were present. A very nice looking image for a rather crappy little movie.

The Audio
As well as the video, the audio for Nora Roberts' Tribute is much stronger than one would expect for such a nothing. The Dolby Digital English 5.1 audio track is crystal clear, with minimal separation effects, and an agreeably strong recording level. Subtitles are available in English and French, with close-captions, as well.

The Extras
There are no extras for Nora Roberts' Tribute.

Final Thoughts
Utterly forgettable, with an unbelieveably bad performance by Brittany Murphy in this brain-dead romance mystery. When it comes on Lifetime Movie Channel again, switch over to Bravo for whatever Real Housewives episode they're running for the umpteenth time. You can skip Nora Roberts' Tribute.