Middle-aged creep auto body shop owner Joey Buttafuoco (Marinaro) aggressively pursues a sexual relationship with sixteen year old customer Amy Fisher - a crude yet curvaceous airhead, after doing work on her car. She inexplicably reciprocates the sinister older man's feelings resulting in a sordid and ill-fated affair that concludes with her shooting Buttafuoco's wife Mary-Jo in the face and being imprisoned for it.
Based on a true story which was tabloid fodder back in the early 1990s this is a cheap exploration of a sequence of events which exhibited the quintessence of tackiness and seediness of late 20th century North American culture. It would all have had little resonance except for the violence of its conclusion. For those who look down upon others there was yet another evident justification for their reasons why.
For those who look down upon American television and specifically made-for-TV movies this production appeared to offer definitive justification. The lack of imagination shown in crafting a teleplay gleaned straight from supermarket broadsheet headlines generally makes for poor screen writing. Worse, the requisite attention to the facts of the case limited access to any creative avenues which might have proved entertaining.
The emphasis in productions like this is on capitalizing upon the tabloid mileage and commensurate word-of-mouth which captures the attention of potential viewers. Hastily produced so that its release coincides with the time in which the news item remains topical the finished product can be haphazard in quality. It can also come off as garish opportunism and pandering on the part of the network which broadcasts it. Yet there were multiple TV movie productions closely based upon the same news item.
The only creativity readily evident here was in the absurd casting. Ivy League educated ex-pro football player Ed Marinaro - an Italian-American Ken doll portrayed thuggish lech Joey Buttafuoco. One of the most arresting things about the case was the fact that Buttafuoco looked like what he was - a crass, predatory and noticeably out of shape scuzzo. Marinaro, a romantic ideal for some women was not equipped to portray that effectively.
