User Reviews

Watched this on a plane and I kind of regret doing so.

The story was quite slow, she's not a likeable character and as much as her poor writing, her plan was terrible full of plot holes What made her think she could get away with it?

I get it, that's is a real story, but pretty bad to take it to cinema then!

This could have been a 3 mins tiktok video and it would have cause the same effect. I always wondered if actors notice how bad a project is while they are filming it.

If in doubt, give this a hard pass

It's like reality and cinema coincide and made boring and unlikeable characters for both.

I first heard of Dan and Nancy Brophy in the trailer for this, so I ended up going back and watching the live streams of the trial. You really kind of have to watch it, particularly Nancy's utterly disastrous testimony, to get a sense of who she is. Watch the video of her van driving to and from the area during the timeframe of the murder, even though she wants you to believe she was never there. Temporary amnesiac apparently. Not one single person who testified on either side had a bad thing to say about Dan...including Nancy's book group friends. Her own nephew-in-law got choked up on the stand talking about Dan. In fact, it seemed a bit like people came around because of Dan's cooking. Not saying that in a bad way, people seemed to like her, but he was clearly the hook and guests were eager to have their bellies full of his cuisine.

First off, in my opinion, they nailed it in that cold open. I got chills watching and just felt angry and sad for Dan all over again. There are a lot of little details that show that Lifetime actually put effort in this compared to their normal terrible movies...the scratch on Nancy's van, Dan calling her "Management," her cheesy Harlequin-esque writing, the fact that her writer friends were/are more successful, the mushrooms, the chickens!

Cybill is probably a bigger name than Nancy deserves. She's too Hollywood to pull off Nancy's "aw shucks,"manner of speaking, but she nails that seething vibe that N gave on the stand. I didn't even realize that was Steve Guttenberg at first. Lots of supporting actors that I recognized, even in the romance novel scenes.

The story itself was a little flat in the sense that everything in the movie leading up to the murder just happens. Taken as its own story, her obsession with spending all that money on insurance policies instead of IDK, paying off their expenses doesn't quite get shown. If this were not based on a true crime I'd been familiar with, I probably would not have picked up on the building tension. The House on Fire movie Lifetime did about Deborah Green was better in this regard in the sense that the breakdown of marriages, careers, relationships, emotional states was clearly shown. Maybe that's a result of the production just sticking to court transcripts, which I guess is better than their usual embellishments. I believe on the stand, no one said Dan ever really talked about any marriage issues or financial issues, so it would have been hard for SG to play that and no one knows what he actually felt about their mounting problems and any issues in the relationship that he noticed or worried about. But I think he did a very good job of portraying Dan's devotion to Nancy, his family, his students, his food, etc. Which no one disputed. I don't think the movie could have delved too deep because based on the trial, it seemed like no one saw it coming. No one saw them as an unhappy or unstable couple. So the emotional beats of the movie aren't really there.

I appreciate that they included Nancy's bold and incredulous interaction with the police where she wanted a letter to exonerate her. The "how to murder your husband" blog is real. I encourage anyone who watches the movie to watch some of the trial footage. Some of the outrageous behavior in the movie was actually testified to by the witnesses. IMO, they really captured how much she hated Dan's chickens. The scene of the actual murder is speculation, but also not hard to believe. She sometimes stopped by the school for quick bathroom breaks on her way to wherever, so it wasn't unusual for her to randomly stop by. It's horrifying to think that Dan could possibly have known she shot him. In both the movie and real life, it turned my stomach to see her pretend she had no idea what happened at the school to the point of making seriously inappropriate jokes for a situation where "in theory," she's waiting to find out why her husband was killed.

I also thought Lifetime was poking fun at her career. She does have some books that you can find online. Probably the only "humorous" thing about all of this is a lot of her books are called "The Wrong ______," which sounds designed for Lifetime. She should have pitched her stories to them instead of taking out her husband for insurance money. The book club scenes, imo, showed how much more successful her friends were at writing. I believe that came out on the stand as well. The romance scene inserts were an interesting add in, but felt oddly appropriate. Thankfully they were tastefully placed in the movie and didn't take away from the horror of the crime.

All in all, I say watch and judge for yourself. Take it with a grain of salt. While I obviously don't know anyone involved, I am glad Lifetime didn't take the liberty to make Dan a villain or "deserving" of his fate. They have done that several times to make the female killer seem justified or at least in a grey area re: her actions (ex. The Melanie McGuire and Jodi A movies). The man worked two jobs to try to make ends meet while Nancy got to "write" and have him bring her coffee in bed. His parents gave her that van. Like I said, even Nancy herself didn't utter a bad word about him. Rest in peace, Dan.

NCB has been in jail for four years, I believe, but was just convicted in 2022. On the one hand, Lifetime does not do trial scenes well, but she was such a train wreck on the stand, that some scenes of that might have driven home the type of person she is (especially the absurd reasoning for the van on camera and purchase of the ghost gun, real gun, and the extra barrel with her actual ebay account).

Not gonna say I enjoyed it because Dan lost his life, but it is watchable.

"How to Murder Your Husband" was a film that would have been shocking if it were a work of fiction. But the film is based on fact which makes it doubly disturbing.

Nancy Crampton-Brophy was discontented with her marriage due to the couple's precarious financial situation. Her husband Daniel was a skilled chef and instructor of culinary arts. He worked a second night job to help pay the bills. He was always cheerful and upbeat and felt that the couple could solve their money problems.

For her part, Nancy was a writer of fiction who had fallen hard times. For her latest book, she was unable to find either a publisher or a literary agent. So, she resorted to murdering her kind husband to collect on multiple life insurance policies.

Viewers will have to make up their own minds about why Daniel remained in a marriage with a woman who was clearly ungrateful for his efforts and provided little in the way of positive energy to the relationship. Was Daniel a saint? Or, was he simply not in touch with his wife's pathology?

In her twisted mind, Nancy believed she could commit the perfect crime. But it did not help her cause to publish a story entitled "How to Murder Your Husband." In possibly the best scene in the film, the detectives candidly inform Nancy of the flaws in her plan. Her errors were almost identical to the critique a successful writer gave Nancy about her book.

Nancy even had the audacity to write a book called "Plotting Your Story Arc, Workbook for Writers, Plotters, and Pantsers." (A pantser is a writer who works off the cuff, as opposed to careful planning; in other words, a perfect description of Nancy herself!) This Danielle Steel wannabe was clearly a hack. Tragically for her devoted husband, she was living out the fantasy of a character from one of her potboilers, as opposed to following the lead of her husband, who had the kind of values that are at the heart of the American Dream.