The Mainland/Hong Kong co-production Curse of Lola is billed as a thriller, but its' plodding storytelling style and melodramatic acting make the film about as thrilling as your average Lifetime movie of the week starring whatever washed-up 80's TV star they pulled away from signing autographs at the World of Wheels.

Curse of Lola takes place in the not-so-exciting world of dance, where a troupe's lighting director (Francis Ng) romances the young ladies vying for the starring role. When one of them is poisoned, suspicions rise and accusations fly as to who the culprit is. Is it the plucky newcomer? Is it the star past her prime? Is it the rebel dancer who was ejected from the troupe? Will you even care when the killer is revealed? Like the good old trusty 8-ball says, all signs point to no.

Despite the negatively-toned clumsy prose running through many of the reviews featured on this site, it might surprise some of the twelve readers out there that I do indeed try to find the positive aspects of any movie. But with a release like Curse of Lola, that is really an exercise in futility. This is simply film-making on auto-pilot. No one, from the director to the screenwriters to the actors, come off like they were putting in any thing other than the bare minimum effort needed just to finish this picture off with the hopes that some people out there might just be bored enough to actually watch their end product.

Curse of Lola is the sort of film that is innocuous enough that you're not going to be raving about how terrible it is. But, in a twisted way, that almost makes matters worse, because that means the movie is just plain boring. If you ever do find yourself face-to-face with this DVD, you're not even going to have any fun ripping on this picture Mystery Science Theater style. It's more going to be a matter of constantly checking the time stamp to see just how much longer you have to sit through the movie until you have the joy of hitting the eject button.

RATING: 4