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The Boy She Met Online

What ho, true believers! Haven’t done one of these in a while. We now have another fantastic writer to supplement Rusty’s sporadic bursts of productivity, so the pressure is off ol’ Liz Lemon to do this with anything even resembling consistency. Oh well, let’s give it a try. For my bi-annual contribution to the blog, I chose to confront a primal horror of mothers everywhere: the internet.



The Boy She Met Online starts with our teenaged protagonist Cami studying a computer monitor, then making a printout of a profile from a dating site called Insta-Mail.net. My boyfriend-- who, full disclosure, was an eBay purchase --didn't understand why she needed a copy of a screen she was looking at, and could presumably look at again in the future. Obviously, when you are dating someone online, you print their profile off and carry it with you like a lock of hair from your civil war beau. Printoffs of dating profiles from a website that sounds like an email service for seniors? As always, Lifetime has their thumb on the pulse of teenupsmanship.

Cami seems to have struck gold with her inter-dude Jake: he’s hot, good at writing lame kissy-kissy emails, and an achiever at some college somewhere. But her dude has a deep secret: he isn’t in college, HE'S IN JAIL! You may think that whatever he did couldn’t have been that bad since he still has internet access, but you’d be wrong. DEAD WRONG. Also, the prison doesn’t seem to be that good at being a prison. There is some bullshit story about how he got framed for something and he’s a really good guy in his dumb little heart, but you don’t care about that. Do you? Because I don’t care enough to try and remember it, so you’re out of luck.

Meanwhile, Cami’s mom Tori is struggling to reconnect with her amid the hormonal monsoon of her teenaged years. She tries everything- yelling, whining, yelling and whining, sulking -with no luck. Since none of that works, she resigns herself to being a frumpy gargoyle in the background of her child’s life, scowling in judgment of all she says and does. Oh, and there’s a woman named Kendra who just hangs around for some reason. I’d say that will be important later, but its not, which really begs the question as to why Kendra is even in this stupid thing.

In the chokey, Jake’s luck goes from bad to worse. First his sister shows up to tell him hes not welcome in the house when he's out of jail, then a time conflict in the prison computer lab makes him miss a cyber-date with Cami. His decision to punch the guy that is using the computer he wants lands him in solitaire, a move the movie seems to argue is unfair for some unfathomable reason. His sentence finally ends, and before you can say "unemployable ex-offender", he's on the streets and at loose ends with only an old friend who happens to be a drug dealer to give him shelter.

Being utterly out of options, he makes the classic decision of the mid-twenties slacker and decides to channel his energies into a highly dramatic relationship with a hot moron that is doomed to fail. He moves enough dope to buy a fancy suit and asks his girl if they can finally meet face-to-face. They agree to meet up at a local coffeeshop, and off we go on a whirlwind of romance! I don’t know if you've ever been on a date with someone you met on the internet, but
no matter what you two lovebirds are bringing to the table, it's gonna be awkward as shit. And that’s if you aren’t lying about your criminal background. Despite all that, they still hit it off and manage a shmoopy moment, followed up with the promise of further shmoopiness. Im going to be honest, I just zoned the fuck out whenever they talked to each other unless one of them started crying.

The really uncomfortable thing about it is that these guys cry a lot. Every time they have more then 5 minutes on screen together, Jake manages to either yell at his girlfriend for being a naive child or share some kind of horrific story about his life. This always results in Cami stoically accepting his abuse, which is horrible, or escalating intimacy, which is worse. This effect culminates in an implied sex scene after he tells her that he was actually in jail instead of at a kegger for the last 2 years. It's kind of ironic that he went to such length to hide his identity from her since emotionally unstable criminals are apparently such a turn-on. Oh well. Thats love!

Tori is getting more and more suspicious of her daughter's behavior, and with the help of Kendra the Spy, she learns that Jake isn’t the teen dream Cami portrays him as. This leads to numerous dramatic conversations that crescendo in shrieking and general misunderstandings. We’ve watched about 3 billion of these goddamned films together, so I shall summarize the next 4 hours of it as follows:

Mom: Why did I find a condom full of coke in your gym bag?
Girl: OMG I AM AN ADULT WHY DON'T YOU TRUST ME I WILL NEVER LOVE YOU
AGAIN BLAAAARGH *vomits Arbor Mist and shame all over the living room*
Mom: WTF, grounded forever.

Blah fucking blah, you know the drill. On the more interesting side of the story, Jake’s cellmate Dawayne makes bail and comes to stay with the worlds tiniest apartment-based crime syndicate. They don’t have much manpower, but those kids are scrappy! Which is good, because it isn’t long before Cami inadvertently witnesses a drug deal gone wrong and they’re all targets of a rival gang. In a sequence I can only call Scoobyesque, Dawayne walks into a darkened house and is brained by a big ol' dude with a baseball bat. After Jake and Cami drop him at the emergency room and contemplate revenge, it is decided that the best option is for the dummies to flee to a cabin in the woods and wait for shit to blow over. Fine. Whatever. Moving on.

Since its a Lifetime movie, it is now time for the traditional 3rd act women's intuition gambit. Smug mothers are the Chekov’s Gun of Lifetime movies, and it only takes a matter of time before they get to say “I told you so” to whomever they rescue from the brink of death. Tori manages to get the location of the cabin where the kids are hiding from Jake's sister, and speeds up there to rescue Cami from her lame boyfriend. Unfortunately, the guy that messed up Dawayne’s brainpan has the same idea, and there is a showdown in the works!

Things go all Reservoir Dogs in the cabin, and things end about how you’d expect. The mom gets shot, natch. The evil guy dies, somehow. Jake goes back to jail, and Cami and Tori bond over the whole mess. The movie ends with Cami and Kendra having a fun party and Tori slicing cake with one arm in a sling. It’s like the weird continuity re-set at the end of a sit-com, except nobody got shot in Boy Meets World. That I am aware of.

Awesomeness: 15
I am going to give this movie some credit for a really awesome concept, and the best worst-case-scenario I’ve ever seen in one of these scared suburban mom movies. Obviously, if you daughter meets someone online, he is a criminal and you will get you shot. Why not? It was also overwrought and cheesy in the best ways. However, all of the interactions between Cami and Jake creeped me out. I kind of wanted to see the movie ending with her taking a self defense class. Since it ended with a birthday party instead, -5.

Star Power: 4
Alexandra Paul (Tori) was on Baywatch, which explains why she has been reduced to this now. Thea Gill (Kendra) had major roles in Queer as Folk and some show called Dante’s Cove that looks absolutely AMAZING. Jake was in Saw 3D, so the jury is out on whether this score will be increased when I watch that shit at the dollar theater. That’s about it.

Lifetimeliness: 10
A-yup. Mothers, lock up your daughters. Only you can save them from the marauding dudes of the internet.

29 seems fair. I'd DVR it if I were you. Lemon out.

The House Next Door: House with an E

Rusty already wrote about this movie, but he said I could write about it again after I begged him to let me not have watched this in vain. Holy crap. From Hulu's description of this movie, I was expecting campy horror and lots of ill-advised scenes of Lara Flynn Boyle trying to kiss Zack from Saved by the Bell with her malformed mouth. I got what I anticipated, but I also got super depressing scenes of a mother grieving for her dead son and eventually hanging herself while her husband is upstairs playing tonsil hockey with the neighbor lady.

I'm getting ahead of myself (and I just wanted to use the phrase "tonsil hockey"). The movie starts with Lara Flynn Boyle's weirdly elderly-sounding voiceover announcing that the house next door is evil or something. Honestly, I couldn't focus on what she was saying, because her narration was done as if she was doing an impression of herself as a 90 year old. "Maybe it's like Titanic," said my boyfriend, before he left the room in disgust.

Anyway, Cole (whose name is later revealed to be either Col or Kohl, in truly the only shocking twist the movie has to offer) and Walker Kennedy are super bummed that someone is building a house next door to them, but they are friendly and go to meet the architect anyway. The architect, who is named Kim because everyone in this movie has a ridiculous name, is excited to finally be building a house. His last project fell through when his client had a stroke, he casually mentions.. Cole/Col/Kohl lets him shower in her house because the water is turned off next door, which leads her husband to make some lame joke about how she totally wants to bone Kim/Zack Morris.

After the extremely ugly house is built, Col goes over to hang out with her new neighbor, Pie, who is expecting her first child with her adoring husband. Pie shows off the new puppy her sweet husband bought her, because housebreaking a puppy is exactly what you want to be doing when you have a newborn. From the second the puppy comes out of his carrier, you know he's going to die, but it's surprising how fast it happens. I felt like thirty seconds elapsed between meeting the puppy and seeing it with its face torn off.

Pie and her husband then have a housewarming party, which ends with Walker accusing Col of getting too cozy with the architect and Pie's loving husband pushing her down the stairs. Pie miscarries, then moves away from the creepy house. Her husband is in jail or something.

Here's part of the house, by the way. It's got like seven garages.

About three days later, an adorable middle-aged couple moves in.Col goes over to welcome them, and the lady mentions they have a son named Toby in Iraq. Watching this part, I was thinking, “oh, he’s going to die, just like the puppy.”

I wish that’s what had happened. Instead, at the housewarming party, Toby’s mom, Anita, opens the front door to see her son standing there in his uniform. “Toby’s home!” she shouts with joy.

“Honey,” her husband says, “Toby’s dead, remember?”

Anita screams, and the vision of Toby transforms into the pizza delivery guy, who is taking this way better than you’d expect. It’s a huge bummer.

Shit gets way more devastating when a new TV is delivered, and the only channel that comes in is just video of Toby screaming for help and then dying. Anita just sits in front of the TV and drinks all day in her bathrobe. She doesn’t even open the door to get the mail, so of course Col has to barge in to her living room. It’s the neighborly thing to do.

Col can’t get Anita to stop crying and drinking, so instead of getting help for her, she decides to snoop around upstairs, where she immediately sees her neighbor Virginia sadly ripping the clothes off Anita’s husband.

Oh, did I mention that five minutes earlier, it was loudly pointed out that Virginia has only ever slept with her husband? Virginia cries and looks horrified as Anita’s husband sucks on her neck, and Col stands there and watches for a little bit.

Then they all go downstairs to see that Anita has hanged herself. Virginia threatens to kill Col if she tells anyone about her tearstained affair.

Col tells her husband that she thinks the house is evil, and he tells her she’s just being stereotypically female and Irish(!). Obviously, this means it’s time for Col and Walker to go on a little vacation at their beach house. Oh, and they bring their cat, because cats love to travel.

Walker mentions how happy he is that Col is painting again. Oh, I guess she’s supposed to be an artist who just does interior decorating to pay the bills, but I forgot for most of the movie because she spends most of her time spying on the neighbors.

Of course, when Walker looks at his wife’s painting, he sees that it is just a lousy depiction of the creepy house next door.

When they go back home, Col and Walker are accosted by their redheaded neighbor, who is pissed that they left without telling her. She says she hasn’t heard from Virginia or her husband, and that nobody knows where they went. When Col won’t tell her what happened to Virginia, she flips out and storms off. This whole fight could have been resolved by Col saying that she didn’t know where Virginia went, or that Virginia told her something in confidence, but instead these two are enemies for the rest of the movie. This does nothing to further the plot, and is even more unrealistic than the concept of an evil house.

Kim the architect comes back, and he and Col share a bottle of wine as he tells her a charming story about a photographer blinded by an exploding light. Col tells him that she thinks the house is evil, so Kim reveals that he knows the security codes and they go in to search for the source of the evil or whatever. The evil house makes them super hot for each other.

Walker comes home, see the two wine glasses, and naturally assumes that his wife is over at the house next door. When he sees his wife on top of Kim, he grabs a knife from the kitchen, kicks the architect in the head, and attacks Col. It is insane that Col and Walker fight and she survives. Seriously, you can’t cast Lara Flynn Boyle if you want a realistic fight scene. A strong breeze could knock that chick over. Once outside, the couple realize that all of that infidelity and attempted murder was caused by the house, and Walker finally believes Col. The viewer is left to assume that Kim decides against pressing charges when he regains consciousness.

A preppy couple with a young daughter move into the house next, and while Walker just wants to move away, Col insists on trying to help. She helps by arranging a meeting with the other neighbors so that they can laugh at her when she tells them the house is evil, and by bringing over banana nut bread. It is during the banana nut bread scene that we catch a glimpse of the worst outfit possible.

Here’s another picture, so you can fully understand the awfulness of this ensemble.

Col and Walker invite the new new neighbors over, and Norman, the father of the little girl, turns out to be a total douche. He keeps referring to himself as Norman-Greene-Greene-with-an-E, and he won’t let his daughter leave the table to go throw up. This is a stupid decision, since she just ends up puking on the patio. Rusty mentions in his review that little Belinda pees herself later on, but it was this scene that made me laugh out loud.

I am including this picture because I want to note that Rusty dressed exactly like Norman Greene with an E in high school.

Later that night, Norman berates his wife, Suzannah, for messing up the invitations for their housewarming party, then tells her it’s too late to fix them, and orders her to mail them. She opens a drawer in the kitchen to get stamps.

What, are you surprised that there’s a gun in that drawer? The drawer where she keeps her stamps? The unlocked kitchen drawer, easily accessible to her young daughter? I’m mostly surprised that she has more than one book of stamps in there. These people are crazy rich.

After the party, where Norman insults Suzannah and their neighbors and shouts his own name a few times and Belinda pees on the floor, he gets out his kitchen gun and attempts to teach his wife how to put things in the fridge. Belinda is freaked out and runs next door into the arms of Col. Walker heads out to talk to her parents, but it’s too late: Suzannah has grabbed the gun and shot her husband and herself.

As soon as the blood has been mopped up, architect Kim and his new girlfriend move in. Col tells Kim that it’s him that’s evil, not the house, but he just puts on his sunglasses and goes inside.

So, Col and Walker decide to blow the house up. They go inside and turn on the gas, but then Col is haunted by disturbing visions of herself with Kim. The best is when vision-Kim stops kissing vision-Col just long enough to look at real Col with an expression of hilarious evil.

Real Col and real Kim start kissing, and I’m not sure if Col is kissing him to try to distract him or if the house is making her crazy horny again, but it all works out for the best: Walker comes in, shoots at Kim, and the house blows up.

Cut to Col and Walker on the beach with their new adopted daughter, Belinda, talking about how they murdered Kim. What a happy ending!

Oops, except for the last scene: a couple looking to build a house are shown the plans for the evil house! And they love it! “It’s magical,” the woman says to her husband, “It’s like it’s alive.” Nobody would ever talk about a house like that, especially this blocky monstrosity, but hey, at least the movie’s over.

 

AWESOMENESS: 13

This movie would have been hilarious and awesomely campy if not for the Anita-and-her-dead-son part. I felt like that was a total bummer. It was not bad enough to be funny, so it was just depressing.

The rest of the movie was better, and I loved how super-obvious the foreshadowing was, and Norman Greene with an E was AMAZING.

 

HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 10

I only watched this because Lara Flynn Boyle was in it, and I spent the next morning in the bathroom mirror trying to move my lips the way she does, and I totally can’t. And I have big lips! How does she do that? I hate everything about her, including but not limited to her politics and the two sets of earrings she alternated wearing throughout the movie and the weird freckles that start halfway down her chest. I know that it makes me a horrible person to judge her based on her looks, and I tell myself that really I just hate her because she’s a Republican, but I know deep down inside that it’s her stupid floppy mouth that makes me hate her.

Also, Zack Morris and the guy from Eureka.

 

LIFETIMENESS: 10

Walker was way too supportive and reasonable for a dude in a Lifetime movie, but ten points just for Norman Greene with an E, plus there was also women’s intuition, men not believing women’s intuition, mentions of an ancient Irish curse, and catty remarks about fertility. Oh! And when Anita’s husband cheats, Walker says that’s “just what men do.”

 

GRAND TOTAL: 33

This movie is worth it just for everything that happens after the last family moves in.

Not Like Everyone Else

I was a sophomore in high school when Columbine went down. I guess I was sort of lucky because it happened right before our April vacation. We were out for a whole week, so a lot of the crazy immediate fear had passed by the time we got back. Nothing had changed. No increased security. I’ve never had a locker, but no one was searching our home room cubbies (yes, seriously). No one confiscated students’ Marilyn Manson CDs. (I had already gotten rid of mine because, obviously, Marilyn Manson isn’t very good. I expect a ridiculous counter-argument from Kate in the comments. She paid money for Holy Wood.)

That obviously wasn’t the typical experience for the American high school. Score another one for the coastal elites, I guess. As soon as I got the Internet, I set my home page to ACLU.org (you DEFINITELY wanted to be my friend in high school, no nerdo) and freaked out about the INJUSTICES being done to my fellow students across the country. Tinker v. Des Moines, amiright?

And that brings us to Not Like Everyone Else, a movie about post-Columbine hysteria leading to the suspension of a student who is just a little bit different.

That student is Brandi Blackbear, played by cutie-patootie Alia Shawkat (aka Maeby/Shirley Funke from Arrested Development). Brandi is one of those gothy creative types. Her hair is raven black. There is too much eyeliner. She writes about the lemmings that make up the popular kids at school. ANGST!

Jesus. Tone it down. We get it.

The movie opens with a media circus as the Blackbear family appears at a courthouse. They are suing the bejesus out of the school district for suspending Brandi for witchcraft. It looks like the population is on Team School District.

What kind of backwoods place would suspend a girl for witchcraft and have that be celebrated by a bunch of backwood yokels?

Oklahoma? Ok. That makes sense.

Bonus! I watched this movie with a real life American Indian from Oklahoma. I got the inside scoop on what it’s really like in the Oh Kay. Apparently the Lifetime version of Oklahoma has a lot more black people than the reality.

So we flash back to April, 1999, immediately after Columbine. The high school is installing security cameras and metal detectors. Brandi does not approve. The popular kids – for no reason other than this is what popular kids do, I guess – do not approve of Brandi. They go to the principal and accuse Brandi of having a hit list. The principal thinks this is pretty dumb but needs to look into it since all those kids just got murdered.

It’s weird that they introduce the principal as sympathetic considering he spends the rest of the movie acting like a supervillain.

Brandi has her bag searched and they find some poetry or lame short story that mentions killing something or other. Angst, angst, angst. Brandi is suspended for an entire semester.

Life ain’t so grand for Brandi at home either. The folks are behind on the mortgage and are picking up extra shifts left and right. The mom is ok but the dad is a real asshole. He forces Brandi to cook for the family when mom is working the late shift at the diner. He doesn’t allow Brandi to talk on the phone and won’t make eye contact with her. Some real Evil Stepmother type stuff. He won’t even take her to the Medicine Man! He only takes his son.

So Brandi is out of school and then she goes back. But everyone thinks she’s evil. When she starts checking out books from the school library about Wicca, more trouble starts. She gets accused of being a witch. She reacts by sarcastically yelling at her tormentors that she was indeed a witch and had cast a spell that put her teacher in the hospital.

Suspended again.

The ACLU takes notice and goes all, “No, You Didn’t!” They sue for every last cent that the school district has to spare. That school will be so poor, the cafeteria will depend on the services of Rose of Sharon to feed its students.

In some kind of disposition type dealie, Brandi admits that she still has her friends and is doing ok. That is not a good thing to say when you are suing for emotional distress and loss of friendship. Case over.

But it’s ok since Brandi’s evil dad read her diaries when she was asleep and totally gets her now. They are buds. He takes her to the Medicine Man. Because that’s exactly how you make your kid feel happy and accepted. You drag their ass to church.

AWESOMENESS: 6

The two hours flew by faster than a normal Lifetime movie, but that’s kind of damning with faint praise. There are no chuckles to be had here. And a lot of the movie is Brandi sitting around being suspended. It’s far too low impact to be considered awesome.

HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 4

This got DVRed because of the presence of Ms. Shawkat. I got pissed when I saw The Runaways in the theater because she didn’t get enough lines. Also, the movie was terrible. But it could have been saved by Alia Shawkat. Please ignore the irony that she couldn’t save this piece of shit.

Brandi’s mom is played by Illeana Douglas, an actress who I really like despite not seeing in her in anything other than 15 seconds of Goodfellas.

LIFETIMENESS: 3

The movie doesn’t really fit the Lifetime template. I guess the women in the family are fantastic and wonderful while the men are cretins. I guess that’s something?

GRAND TOTAL: 13

Woof. But don't fret, I watched this as a double bill with Harmony. She gets to write about a way better movie. Coming soon, kids!

The Party Never Stops: Diary of a Binge Drinker

If you get drunk in college, you will become a huge slut and/or die. That’s what I learned from The Party Never Stops.

The movie starts with our all-American heroine, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesse Brenner, typing forlornly at her laptop, trying to figure out where it all went so wrong. We’re then transported back in time nine months to see Jesse moving in on her first day of college. She’s sad to leave her mother and her little sister, and she’s concerned that everyone will think she’s a dork, even though she’s a super cute track star.

Jesse’s roommate is Shanna, a bubbly brunette who sleeps under a giant poster of herself. Shanna introduces her to some drunk floozies who share their champagne, then introduce Jesse to a cute boy named Keith. Jesse is traumatized by her awkward conversation with Keith, so she goes home to type “loser-dork-loser-dork-loser-dork-loser-dork” in her secret computer diary. Shanna cheers her up by taking her to a club and getting her totally smashed.

Hurrying to class after she oversleeps the next morning, she meets Colin, a sensitive, floppy haired musician who kicks the back of her chair to keep her awake during the lecture. I love Colin. He is a cheesy caricature, with his torn jeans and his messenger bag and his lousy acoustic guitar music, but I love him.

Jesse does not love him. He dedicates a song to her at a bar, but Jesse goes home with Keith and everything ominously goes slow motion before she bones him.

“I can’t believe I got so wasted that I slept with a guy on the first date!” Jesse laments. “Who does that?” Um, like, everyone in college?

Predictably, Keith doesn’t call Jesse for a week, and then, when they finally go on a date, some chick in the bathroom tells her that Keith has a steady girlfriend. Bathroom Chick tells Jesse he’s taking advantage of her.

“What if I’m taking advantage of him?” Jesse retorts.

“Well, that would make you a skanky little ho, now, wouldn’t it?” says Bathroom Chick, who is a huge bitch.

Jesse storms out of the restaurant. Meanwhile, Shanna has found herself a sweet boyfriend (who she most certainly did not sleep with on the first date), but still spends plenty of time partying and listening to Jesse. She even stays at school with her when Jesse is to sick to go home for Thanksgiving break.

Jesse’s mom and Colin keep calling her, but she blows them off so she can go drink all night. After sleeping with some dude who forgets her name, she continues to party all the time. She crashes a car into a fire hydrant because some thirty-five year old guy in a Hawaiian shirt asked her to park it for him. She returns drunk to her dorm one day to find her mother sitting on her bed. Jesse is so rude to her mother that Mom runs home to sadly fondle her late husband’s clothes. This movie is a huge bummer.

And it gets worse. Colin comes to watch her try out for the track team, but Jesse’s drinking has taken its toll, and she’s not fast enough. Then, she goes on spring break, wears a dorky shell necklace, and flashes her boobs to Joe Francis. Her boobs become an internet sensation, and everyone knows what a huge drunken slut she has become.

Now that the world has seen her topless, Jesse tries to get sober, with the help of ultra-sensitive, guitar strumming Colin. It turns out Colin ruined his life drinking, too! Hooray! They’re perfect for each other and will never be tempted to drink again! They even leave Shanna and the floozies behind at the big end-of-the-semester bash, and go to Colin’s apartment to drink tea and read poetry instead.

After a hot night of not having sex with Colin, because dudes who respect you never want to see you naked ever, Jesse goes to check on Shanna. Shanna’s not in her bed, though. She’s not with her loving boyfriend, either.

Shanna is dead of alcohol poisoning on a couch at a frat house. Of course she is. Of course the one character who isn’t totally one-dimensional is dead. Of course the girl who has a normal relationship with her boyfriend, is a loyal friend, and who parties but still gets to class on time, is totally dead. I hope everyone now understands that this could HAPPEN TO ANYONE. Except the main character.

 

AWESOMENESS: 10

This had its funny moments, intentional and otherwise, but it was nothing too special, and none of the “cute guys” were very cute. I did laugh out loud at the “skanky little ho” line, though. I almost wish a stranger would insult me in the bathroom of a Mexican restaurant.

 

HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 3

I don’t know who any of these people are, but Rusty says Nancy Travis deserves a 3 for So I Married an Axe Murderer, and I trust Rusty more than anyone else when it comes to campy movies.

 

LIFETIMENESS: 10

Oh man. The moral panic, the girls who call each other “girlfriend” and borrow each others’ clothes-- but especially, the way every guy who sleeps with a girl right away is a complete douche and every guy who refuses to put out is marriage material—make this one seriously Lifetimey Lifetime movie.

 

OVERALL: 23

While watching this, I misplaced a glass of wine. My boyfriend discovered it on top of the record shelf hours later.

She's Too Young

Spoiler alert: No she's not!


Back when I lived in DC, I wrote a more successful blog called Why I Hate DC. The irony now is that I want to move back to DC since Columbus ain't working out. ANYWAYS, one of my self-selected beats on that website was Laura Sessions Stepp. I wrote about her a lot. She is (was?) a Washington Post reporter that specialized in moral panics about the teenagers. They don't date! They have sex parties! They're dancing suggestively! She even got a book published out of it. I lost my signed copy. Damn.

I would bet you a million dollars that LSS has seen She's Too Young.

Well, I hadn't. But I had seen the Frontline special that the movie wasn't based on. An affluent high school had a syphilis outbreak. My religion teacher played that documentary for us. I believe it was the first time I had heard about rainbow parties (of which there has never been a documented case). This was in my marriage class where they taught us about taking vaginal mucus and temperature samples to perfect the rhythm method. A fun class!

So! The movie! Hannah is a 14 or 15 year old girl. She and her friends are getting more popular because it turns out they may be tasty pieces. I don't know if they are or not since they are teenagers. But it's not like some movies where the high school girls are played by buxom sexpots. These actresses are clearly actually 14 or 15 (or look 14 and 15) and that adds a lot of sleaze to the proceedings.

It's good sleaze though since the viewer should, theoretically, be grossed out by 14-year-olds making with the intercourse.

Hannah is ready to start going on dates. Dad is ok with it. Mom is not. Mom loses this argument. Hannah has been doing great in school and great in her cello lessons. Hasn't she earned our trust?

Actually, so far, yeah she has. She goes out for ice cream with a bunch of clearly sexually active people. When they all go have sex, Hannah abstains and calls her mom to get a rescue ride. Trish says that Hannah can always call no questions asked and then she starts asking questions. They don't go anywhere.

Let me be clear here: I think Trish, aka Marcia Gay Harden is a fine actress. I've only seen her in Mystic River, The Mist, and, uh, The First Wives' Club. Please don't judge me regarding the latter. I saw that in theaters. No matter! Ms. Harden is a fine actress but she is horrible to look at. I don't mean that in a sexist or objective way. I need to make that clear after writing a review that talked about J-Love's boobs and used her previous tv show as a euphemism for masturbation. This is not about that. It's about Marcia Gay Harden being so god damned stern looking. You see her and you think angry. And that may be the point, but it's no good for viewing. It's like she's judging me for watching Lifetime when this blog is between me and my God.

So those ice cream sexually active people...two are besties who like to bone all the time. The other is a boy that Hannah is in love with. Eventually, that boy, Nick, asks Hannah out. Yeah, he may have a reputation, but he just wants to be with someone special.

After two dates, Hannah blows him.

Hannah's bestie, Dawn, is not having such a fun time. She used to be the girl blowing Nick. Now? Now she's just the girl who used to have sex with Nick and now has sores in her mouth because, oops, syphilis. When Dawn goes to the school nurse to get treated, she admits to having had sex with 15-20 boys.

From here on out, the movie goes out if its way to show a bunch of young high schoolers and a bunch of local property. Let's be honest here: The real name of this movie should be "She's Too White." There isn't a single black character here save for a nurse. All the panic here is class-based. "We never expected this when we moved here." And since there are no black students in the entire school, one just HAS to think that this shit was on purpose.

I have watched a lot of Lifetime. This is the most racist, at least by omission.

Hannah and Nick's third date doesn't go as well. Nick pressures her into an orgy and Hannah is appropriately skeeved. That's basically the end of the relationship.

Anyways, the nurse realizes that there is a syph outbreak afoot and asks Nick, Patient Zero, to get tested. A commenter named Kim mentioned this scene in some older comments.

"The skeezy guy who gives everyone syphilis goes to the school nurse to get his vaccination and says, "You better stick 'em all. Because I sure did." And then his friends give him high fives the nurse is PWN3D!1!!!1"

That is EXACTLY what happens and it is great.

So people get their syph shots and it should be no big deal but for some reason Hannah and Dawn dip into the latter's mom's liquor cabinet and go to town. When they pass out drunk and get busted, Hannah's folks freak out. To prove a point about not being such a good girl, Hannah drunkenly announces her sexually transmitted disease. But she also makes it clear that it's not, like, a real sexually transmitted disease since it was only in her mouth. Because that is bound to make a parent feel better.

Trish decides to take this news and run with it. She goes family to family to tell them that chances are their children are also slutty, but not as slutty as Hannah since she only went as far as oral. Parents don't really want to be hearing this and Trish doesn't get anywhere.

Well, she gets somewhere. She turns Hannah into a pariah. Her classmates take to the AIM to torture Hannah and accuse her of being a narc. Oh, did I say "AIM"? Whoops! In the sexy, sexy, world of She's Too Young, the instant messaging software is called Teen Playa. Because why not?

Hannah doesn't like being grounded for mouth love, so she runs off to a big hootenanny party even though no one likes her. She almost gets raped but is rescued by her obviously gay best friend who has been in love with her for years. Nick (not the almost rapist) feels bad about the almost rape. Maybe he will change his sticking ways?

Trish ends up at the same party looking for Hannah and sees marijuana and public sex. She looks as stern as always.

Hannah is super happy that her "straight" artsy friend saved her. She's also happy that he has a creepy stalker wall covered in Hannah pictures. Because stalking is more romantic than oral sex, you see. Hannah tries rewarding him with intercourse, going as far as to tell him "it's been two weeks since my syphilis shot so I should be clean by now."

Gay Dude refuses Hannah's advances, waits for her to pass out on his couch, and then he calls her parents to pick her up. AND THE END. THIS IS OUR HAPPY ENDING.

AWESOMENESS: 16

I should probably refer you back to the "sticking" dialogue. God, that was great.

This movie comes from the same writer and the same director as Cyber Seduction. I liked this one more. Porn is definitely funnier than syphilis (there isn't a syphilis version of the Golden Girls...yet), but this movie is funnier than Cyber Secudtion. Intentionally, I mean. There are fun little flourishes like Dawn stumbling around drunk or ridiculous snarky remarks about threesomes with 14-year-old girls. Really wonderful.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 6

It's nice to have an Oscar winner, but you need more.

LIFETIMENESS: 10

Boom goes the dynamite. I love how the father is villainized for being reasonable about dating and then is villainized for being too harsh for grounding his daughter for being drunk with syphilis. I also like how whenever someone mentions that Hannah is a good daughter, they cut to her singing along to a sexually explicit rap song. Little known personal fact: I lost my virginity the first time I heard hip-hop. I mean, not at that exact moment, but it was definitely the start of a downward spiral into promiscuous sex and drug use.

GRAND TOTAL: 32

A high score for a great movie. And it's available on Youtube! Alarmists of the world unite!