User Reviews

I enjoyed the acting and general plot -- it's always good to begin with a compliment. The area of disturbance for me was the stereotypes that seethed from every visible pore of this movie. Here's what I learned:

1) Most men are cheaters, no matter how sweet and thoughtful. 2) If a man is not a cheater, he's assisting another cheating man. 3) If a man cheats, you must leave him. (pretty much every male in the film) 4) If a woman cheats, you must reconcile (one female in the film that we never got to know) 5) Being a housewife and/or raising children is not rewarding or valuable to society. 6) Women don't need men. 7) Cheating should be countered by robbing a man's bank account.

Note: #7 only holds if cheater is male, otherwise reconcile.

This is the story of the birth of a sleuth in housewife Tess McCall, who becomes a private investigator specializing in collecting evidence on unfaithful husbands.

Tess starts out in assisting her sister Denise (Neesie), who suspects her husband of infidelity. Tess proves herself to be so skillful that she is retained by a law firm, then opens her own office. Supply and demand figure prominently in any capitalistic enterprise, and it soon becomes apparent that business is booming for Tess McCall!

The film opens with a twenty-year renewal of wedding vows of Tess and her husband Craig, a longstanding police detective. Craig is apprehensive about Tess's new work, but she proves so capable that she puts her skills to good use in investigating her own husband.

In a weakly developed subplot, the Sophie (Soph), the daughter of Tess and Craig, is deliberating on whether to go to the Sorbonne to complete her studies or to marry Brett. Along the way, Tess blunders in on Soph and Brett who are doing it. It was never made clear why that incident made Tess so angry.

There were numerous clues that finally tipped Tess of about her philandering husband. But the clincher was when acquired a telephone recording device that permitted her to tap Craig's phone conversations. She learned that he was meeting "Linda" in room 116 of the Newton Motel. Tess moves into action to a stakeout of the motel. She checks into room 117 and bores a hole in the wall. She then video records one of Craig's trysts.

There was an inherent dishonesty in the film's conclusion that showed Craig continuing to show up in Tess's life, even after she busted him and cleaned out their joint bank account. Craig casually walks into the family home and chats with his son Josh. He also meets Tess at the airport to see their daughter Soph off to the Sorbonne. While Craig was a serial adulterer, the strange decision made by the filmmakers at the end of "When Husbands Cheat" is that Tess is will to simply let bygones be bygones. Astonishingly, Tess even assumes part of the blame for decades of cheating by her husband.

The film was made in 1998, and, to put it mildly, it has not stood the test of time after the passing of twenty years!

I absolutely loved this movie. Since it came out almost three weeks ago, I have watched it every day(because I taped it). Patricia Kalembar and Tom Irwin were fantastic, state of the art actors also. Tom is someone I'll look forward to seeing on other shows and movies. He's great! In the introduction, it stated this was a fictionalized story based on actual events. Who and what were these events composed of? If someone could tell me, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you. Please bring more movies as this!! Superstars who were just starting out as actors, are nice to see years later on, so I would like to see them too. Since I just love Tom Irwin now, be sure to bring on more movies with him too. He's just so convincing, so handsome, and so real!