Plain Truth

So, Plain Truth. Set in a more primitive time (2004), Plain Truth is the story of a defense attorney who is sick and tired of representing smarmy white collar criminals. So, she does what any lawyer would do, represent an Amish girl charged with infanticide. It's a story as old as time.

The attorney, Ellie Harrison, is all-sorts of no-nonsense. Check out the DVD cover. Power suit? Check. Arms crossed? Yuppers! She's even played by Law & Order: SVU's Mariska Hargitay. She is what would happen if the personification of Hot and the personification of Stern had a baby.

I admit I appreciate seeing Ms. Hargitay in a Lifetime movie. Not just because of the hubba hubba factor. Those cheekbones are DARING Lifetime to put her in soft focus. Thank God Lifetime cuts the usual camera tricks and all of the actors look like normal people instead of people in a tampon commercial.

So there's this Amish girl, Katie. Some other Amish kids find a dead baby in some of Pennsylvania's famed marshlands and Katie is all, "Whuh?" Then the police ask her some questions so she faints. Not because of the stress though. Because of post-birth complications. They find a placenta and shit lying around. (ALWAYS EAT THE PLACENTA. LIKE A CAT.) The autopsy finds the baby died of asphyxiation and this should be an open-and-shut case. But perhaps there is more to this than meets the eye?

No, not really.

Katie needs to lawyer up. And that's where Ellie comes in. She decides to put off a two month vacation in Tuscany because her conscience won't let a person go unrepresented. Remember, she needs the vacation because she doesn't like representing guilty people (UGH) and KATIE IS PRETTY CLEARLY GUILTY. There is a lot of evidence that points to Katie being fucked in more ways than one, amiright, guys?

In the bail hearing, the judge, clearly a fan of sitcoms, decides that Katie can get out on bail as long as Ellie stays with her on the Amish dairy farm to keep watch. Hijinks ensue. Ellie doesn't get cell phone service and her laptop keeps running out of batteries. She can't provide adequate representation without technology, hahaha.

Katie's dad is an especially big asshole about it and won't allow any technology in the house. Even the Elders are a little put off by that. The stakes are too high!

So Katie's argument is that she is a virgin who was never pregnant. She's played by an actress named Alison Pill and that last name is very much appropriate because, ugh. She lies about being a virgin. She lies about being raped when it becomes clear that she had sex. She lies about not knowing the father's identity. Finally, she admits to giving birth but forgetting what happened afterwards. When Katie asks to testify on her own behalf, Ellie literally snorts at the prospect of this pathological liar on the stand. It was great.

(An aside: I love Lifetime. Katie totally invents a horrible rape accusation and when she gets caught in that crazy, a psychologist says it's ok because Katie is just trying to impress Ellie. Oh, Lifetime. Where mommy issues excuse lying about rape.)

(Aside #2: It is only a matter of time before I get Katie and Ellie mixed up in this review.)

It turns out that Katie has a secret brother living in the big city of Harrisburg, PA. He left the church to go to university and he got disowned for his troubles. Their mom secretly allowed Katie to visit Big Bro. Katie met a boy in a dorm and got knocked up. Katie doesn't tell anyone and eventually gives birth in that swamp.

For some reason, after all of the lying, Ellie goes all-in on the forgetting what happened story and gets an expert witness to say that the baby died of an infection caused by contact with animals. And it looks like she's winning! So she does what any sane lawyer would do and calls a surprise witness. The baby daddy!

The best is when Ellie calls a surprise witness and the prosecutor objects. When he finds out who the witness is, the actor almost falls over himself saying "OBJECTION WITHDRAWN." Well played, actor dude.

The baby daddy says that, in his "expert" opinion, Katie would never hurt a baby. The obvious response from the prosecutor is, "Did you think Katie would lie so goddamned much? Oh, you didn't? Good testimony, douche/statutory rapist."

Katie gets acquitted and hurray? Katie's mom goes to thank Ellie back at the farm and says she has a little something to give her. Then the low end of an organ appears on the soundtrack, and, uh-oh. Why what better gift for a victorious attorney than a pair of farm scissors covered in vagina blood. After losing her son, the mom couldn't bear to lose a daughter so she hid the pregnancy and took care of the evidence.

The End.

Oh, P.S., Ellie falls in love with the psychologist who is also her ex-boyfriend and who gives a shit.

AWESOMENESS: 16

Despite all the snark, the first half of the movie was kind of good. A little nonsensical, obvs, but a very breezy hour. Things took a detour into crazy town, but it was expected and appreciated. Seriously, watching this movie, it wasn't a case of if things would go nuts, it was when. And the film handled that well.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 5

I love Mariska Hargitay, FYI. But she isn't that famous. Kind of fun to see her Ordering instead of Lawing. Sam Waterston she is not!

Allison Pill was in Milk. And Katie's dad was in a personal favorite: Die Gottesanbeterin

LIFETIMENESS: 6

Well, there's a mother determined to keep her family together at all times. And there's the professional woman realizing that she needs to loosen up and date her ex. Both common themes.

The intuition was lacking however. The movie should have been called "Lie to Mariska Hargitay for Two Hours." And it always worked! It's kind of a casting fail since Hargitay is famous for one show where she sniffs out bullshit. It would be like casting Jerry Seinfeld as an action hero or Tina Fey as an ugly spinster.

GRAND TOTAL: 27

A thoroughly above average movie. Definitely worth the hour and forty-two minutes.

If you don't want to spend that much time on the movie, then I HIGHLY recommend a four minute clip of nothing but photos of Mariska Hargitay in Plain Truth set to the worst song by one of the worst bands ever. If this is supposed to be funny, it is genius.




Nickelback > Incubus. If you don't know, now you know.

A Little Thing Called Murder

HEY! This is IMPORTANT. There is a movie on Hulu that you need to watch right now. It expires in a week, so I consider it a civic duty to tell you about this before it's too late. Lifetime, Wow!: Always looking out for you.

True crime junkies may be familiar with the story of Sante and Kenny Kimes, a mother-son grifting duo that stole houses and cars, kept human slaves (more on that later) and murdered a handful of people before a grand theft auto charge took them down in the late 90s. If you don't know who they are, you're in luck! The "ripped from the headlines" TV movie vogue had hit it's height at this point, and there's a few surprisingly well made movies that tell their story. However, I say fuck those movies. As always, we're here to celebrate the shining of a far crazier diamond. "A Little Thing Called Murder" is a charming, campy, and horrifying portrait of evil people doing inexplicable things.



The movie kicks off with a fun little montage of people associated with the Kimes family, all baffled by the crimes they committed. The off-the-cuff interview style and slightly shaky camera made me think of a Christopher Guest movie about a batshit floozy that went too far. (Note: Someone with connections should ask Christopher Guest to remake House of Yes.) We then cut to sepia-toned musical sequence where a rumpshakin' Elizabeth Taylor clone walks down the street, winks over the top of her sunglasses, and steals a car from a dealership by hopping in the drivers seat and asking for the keys. Meet Sante Kimes!

Sante is a social climber who is obsessed with money, maintaining her looks, and fucking over everyone in her path in order to remain the queen of her insane fantasy kingdom. We first meet her through the eyes of her friend Beverly, who treats Sante more like a bottle rocket then an acquaintance- point her at a bitchy clerk or cheating spouse, light the fuse, and get away. She spends the first 20 minutes of the movie either chewing on the scenery or sweettalking people out of arresting her. While it's a pleasure to watch Sante get her bitch on versus the world at large, it's clear that there's more going on here then a forceful personality. Bev notices things- Sante pocketing saltshakers at a country club, the way the maids flinch when she walks by -but chooses not to speak up. Bev assures us that everyone around Sante isn't blind and stupid, but it's just easier to believe her lies then to call her on them. This is plausible. Most people want to believe that they're made of Keilor-grade moral fiber. But when it comes down to it, it's easier to look away when a friend shoplifts then to call over store security. Money and confidence can help you get away with some really crazy shit. Sante throws a hell of a party, and as long as you're on her good side, you tend to benefit from her sociopathy.

However, there are some crimes that are a little too big to ignore. Human slavery is a very real issue in America, but it's difficult to track and prosecute. At the time of this movie, only 2 private citizens had been successfully prosecuted for slavery since it was outlawed, and one of those people is Sante Kimes. We learn that Bev finally snapped when one of Sante's maids took her aside, confided that she was being kept against her will and beaten, and begged for her freedom. The ensuing trial reveals that the Kimes have a habit of picking up young Mexican women with the promise of money and citizenship, then imprison them and torture them until they manage to get away. Sante's common-law husband drops a dime on her to avoid jail time, and she goes away for 4 years.

Sante's family reacts to her imprisonment with relief. Particularly relieved is Kenny Kimes, Sante's son from a previous relationship. To call Sante's relationship with Kenny "creepy" does a great disservice to well-meaning creepy people everywhere. It's clear from the beginning that Sante is intent on using her son as a pawn in her crazy games. After a Nanny reads "The Boy That Cried Wolf" to Kenny, Sante physically assaults her and tells her to never teach her kids about morals again. (Good thing she didn't read "The Swan That Kept Human Slaves" to Kenny, or she would have been another notch on Sante's murder-stick.) When Sante is almost arrested for shoplifting, she gets out of it by smacking the shit out of Kenny and claiming that the store keeper assaulted her son. Later, she apologizes and lets him pinch her as retribution for bitch-smacking him out of a Sears. They're constantly uncomfortably close, hugging and kissing and adding fuel to the incest rumors that make this story so damn icky. (Well, that and the murder thing). In fact, the only time Kenny ever gets close to a woman who isn't his mom is when his mom talks a stewardess into sleeping with him. The following scene where he cheerfully expounds on his mom's abilities to get him laid is guaranteed to make your skin crawl. Whether Sante genuinely loves her son or is just very good at manipulating him is a question this movie is never quite ready to answer. It is, however, constantly ready to reassure us that whatever was going on there was CREEPY AS BALLS.

Sante comes back from jail, dead set on never going back. She continues to rely on her sleazy faux-hubby, but he is actually not awesome at the whole crime thing. They run a couple of small-time scams (fake checks, fake buisnesses, etc) and end up having to murder their overly-curious lawyer. Bummer for Sante. Things get worse when faux-hubby dies of a heart attack. He never married Sante because he was confident that he'd end up dead or broke within a year of the wedding, which is actually a fair point. This leaves Sante with no legal claim to her home or the money she's been so enjoying over the past 20 years. But now he's dead anyway, so Sante needs a new crimin' buddy. Since he's the most vulnerable to Sante's creepy charms, it will fall to Kenny to drop out of school and take over the family business. In my favorite scene, she picks Kenny up from college and tells him his father's in the backseat. Pan back to reveal an urn. Wackity-shmackity-doo!

Sante and Kenny team up to hide the death of the patriarch from the world until they can forge a new will and access enough money to keep them afloat. Of course, this progresses into another murder, a banker who had the unfortunate luck of being in charge of the Kimes's offshore bank accounts. Sante and Kenny drown him in a bathtub, then stuff him in a chest and send him out to sea. From there it's a rollercoaster ride of fraud, theft, and running from the law. it isn't hard for Sante to talk people into helping her, and the creepy muscle provided by her son is enough to silence most objection.

The film hits it's climax at the case that made the Kimes famous- the murder of socialite Irene Silverman. I won't recount this at great length, as it's been done before. I will say the film did a fine job of recounting this, giving us the bare bones of the crime while still allowing the actors a few scenes to shine. Long story short, Kenny and Sante killed an old woman in New York to try and steal her mansion, and it was the one crime they couldn't talk their way out of. We kind of lose steam near the end. The film milks a little more fun out of Sante's courtroom antics, and ends on a somber note that allows us to pity Kenny and Sante while being repulsed by their 10 year spree of murder and mayhem. And the fact that I got to type that sentence should tell you why this is my favorite Lifetime movie in a good long time.

Awesomeness: 20

Solid 20. There was nothing that was not awesome about this movie. It's the miracle baby of John Waters and Agatha Christie with a little bit of John Walsh thrown in for good measure.

Star Power: 7

10 of the awesome points up there belong in Judy Davis's pocket. Trashy made-for-TV movies can be real career killers, or at least grudging admissions that a career is dead. This often leaves the acting done in these films by established, talented people with a little to be desired. Ms. Davis defies this by going for broke with her portrayal of Sante. She obviously has a ball with the camp weirdness of the script, taking a clunky ripped-from-the-headlines script and elevating it to another level. Also notable for fans of Dead Like Me: George's mom and DOLORES HERBIG GETTING THINGS DONE. YES!

Lifetimeliness: 8

Seems like a 10 on first blush, but I'm docking it a few. While the movie focuses on a mother and son relationship, and is also charmingly insane, a perfect 10 would have explained why it was OK for Sante to murder someone to provide for her children. Also, for a campy masterpiece, we could have really used a sassy gay friend.

35! Finally, a movie that didn't make me want to die. I would watch this movie over and over again, and I wouldn't even have to be drunk the first couple of times. Do yourself a favor and check this one out before it's too late!

Her Only Child

Following up on the "crazy mom" theme from last week, I watched a film called Her Only Child (AKA Maternal Obsession). I was able to locate the trailer for it on YouTube, and it will give you a pretty good idea of how that shit went down. Check it out:



I'd like to note that "Good intentions were misdirected" will never be a threatening sentence, no matter how growly your voice is when you say it. Good effort, voiceover guy, but no dice.

So the eldest daughter from the Nanny is all grown up and living the sweet life as a mid-level insurance saleswoman named Lilly. She's successful at work, but her personal life sucks- unlucky in love and still living at home with mom in her mid-thirties. Now, living with your parents past a certain age is mildly embarrassing, but it isn't the end of the world. If you're lucky, your parents will give you your old room back and not charge you for utilities. If you're less fortunate, your mother will forget to take her tacklebox full of of anti-psychotic medications one morning and call you at work to come home and kill her hallucinations of giant spiders. Oh yes, Inez is a crazy person, and she reacts to her daughter's attempts to sever the apron strings like most people would react to...well, a giant spider hallucination. All flailing and yelling. Not pretty. In an opening scene, Lily attempts to not eat a cookie that her mother made for her. Her mother reacts by crying and throwing the cookies in the garbage. As always, Lifetime movies indulge foreshadowing with the subtle grace of the Killdozer.

Lily meets a dude at work named Larry. Larry seems like kind of a boring schmuck to me, but Lily goes out with him anyway. I guess dating just about anyone beats sitting at home with mom and helping her swat the flying elves away. Inez takes this about as well as you'd expect. She interrupts their first date by slicing a hunk out of her own arm (ew) and claiming it was an accident so Lily will come home. It's about this time that the movie reveals that Lily's boyfriends have a habit of mysteriously bailing on her just when things get serious. Lily continues to fail to connect the dots between Mommie Dearest and her vanishing paramours. You can't help but feel a little bad for Lily, whose admirable devotion to her clearly disturbed mother blinds her to the obvious.

Of course, it is also possible that Lily is stupid. The Lily Is Stupid theory receives some additional support when Inez runs a background check on Larry and discovers he is secretly married. You know what? I don't care how nice he is, a secret family should be a dealbreaker. Lily snubs him for a while but eventually allows him to cry a bunch over dinner and explain that his wife is holding up the divorce, he doesn't love her, blah blah blah. She doesn't question his ridonkulously flimsy explanation and their relationship is back on. LILY YOU ARE SO STUPID. I can kind of see why your mom is so overprotective. Without an overly-devoted caretaker, I can see you following the promise of a stranger's candy to your doom.

Fueled by this latest evidence that Lily can't make decisions on her own, Inez begins to take more drastic steps to break her up with Larry. When Lily and Larry take off for a romantic weekend, Inez attempts to make their adorable dog eat rat poison. The dog is smarter then Inez and Lily combined, so it doesn't work, but I was still worried. Inez then convinces him to eat a bucket of chocolate frosting. Not cool, Inez. I don't care if you kill your daughter and her stupid boyfriend, but you leave that terrier out of it. Lily does not go home, but her mother's incredibly stupid explanation for how the dog nearly died is finally enough to get her wondering exactly why every boyfriend she's had since high school has mysteriously vanished off of the face of the earth. She tracks down the last dude to bail on her, and he politely explains that he was going to propose to her, but a bunch of armed thugs tackled him and threatened to kill him if he didn't break off all contact with her. I shit you not. He also says that he was going to tell her about it, but he didn't want to make a big deal out of it.

Public Service Announcement: If you are ever dating someone, and armed thugs order you to stop, you should probably make a big deal out of it.

Lily goes home and screams at her mom for a while about how she needs to stop being so goddamn crazy. She also packs all her stuff up and flees to Larry's house. Inez does the logical thing and resolves to make her daughter move back in with her at gunpoint. She steals a gun from her office (?!), shows up at Larry's house, and threatens to shoot them all if Lily doesn't come home with her. Lily stands firm, so mom locks herself in the bathroom and tries to overdose on her anti-psychotic medication. Heartwarming!

In the end, Inez ends up in sort of a minimum-security hotel for crazy people. This is not actually what happens when you have a psychotic break, but god forbid that TV movie writers do any sort of research about the main plots of their films. Inez and Lily chat about Inez coming home soon, I guess we have a happy ending, and as far as I know the dog lives to see another day. Well done.

AWESOMENESS 7 (out of 20)

5 points for being relatively entertaining and super-weird. It wasn't amazing, but it was wacky enough to keep my interest. I'd like to give it a higher score, but it was mostly just derivative of other psycho obsession films that did it way better. As always, I reward any movie that has a cute dog in it some bonus points. You think Rusty's grading scale is arbitrary? Ha!

STAR POWER 2 (out of 10)

I love the Nanny, but Nicolette Tom is not famous. Nor is a dude that was on F/X (whatever the hell that is). The woman who plays Inez had a bit part in everything ever, so that's why she is so irritatingly familiar looking to you.

LIFETIMELINESS 5 (out of 10)

On first glance, this is incredibly Lifetime-y. It's all about mother-daughter relationships with some troubled romance for good measure. However, this is the only time in the history of Lifetime films that an overbearing mother was the problem in the film and not the solution. 5 points.

14. Sounds about right. Meh score for a meh film.

Sins of the Mother

Happy Black History Month! To celebrate, Lifetime has given us Sins of the Mother, a film about an insufferable college student who refuses to forgive anyone for anything. Insufferable protagonists make for insufferable movies, and this was no exception.

Our protagonist goes by Shay. Or Le'Shay. If someone calls her one name, she demands to be called the other. She gets so righteous about it that, at one point, she interrupts a church service to yell at people for calling her the wrong name. Shay is having some trouble at college. She has some stress disorder where she is pulling out all of her hair. Her brand of crazy is freaking out her profs so they ask her to take a leave of absence.

Shay is such an awful person that she has no friends to turn to. So she flees to Washington to live with her mother, Nona. They haven't seen each other in five years. Apparently Nona had a hella drinking problem. When Shay gets to her mom's house, she finds a reformed woman who replaced booze with gardening. A woman who is active in her church, her community, and her work at a hospital. An amazing recovery!

Shay then makes peace with her mom and The End.

Just kidding! Despite getting her food cooked for her and living rent free, Shay takes the time to yell at her mom every chance she gets. Nona's sponsor and sponsee are coming over for coffee? Well fuck them! Look at Nona's stupid 12 Steps book. Hahahah! Nona reads cliched quotes for inspiration? What a rube!

Shay is the worst.

Shay doesn't deserve a love interest, but she gets one in a college dude who works at a record store. They both like Nina Simone. They also like to have sex. Shay was a virgin, so of course as soon as she even thinks about sex, she gets wicked pregnant.

On the Nona front, Nona's sponsee is backsliding and she drunkenly assaults Shay by pulling off the headdress she uses to cover her insane person scalp. The Sponsee keeps backsliding and eventually burns down Nona's garden.

Are you notcing this movie has no goddamned plot?

So, at a friend's wedding, Shay is all, "I don't like coffee anymore." And her boyfriend, at a fucking wedding, says, "Oh, you must be pregnant. I forgot to tell you that when I took your virginity that the condom tore off." Oh.

Shay spent the entire movie talking about not wanting kids, so of course she almost immediately dismisses abortion as an option. After all, the movie explicitly says "Black women do not get abortions." Jesus H. Christ.

The pregnancy gives Shay an immediate personality transplant. She suddenly loves her mother again and goes back to college in Iowa knowing that she is happy and knocked up.

AWESOMENESS: 0

That's right. Zero. Fuck this stupid movie. I see a lot of Lifetime movies where people refuse to get abortions. But those movies had some semblance of a plot. They had some kind of redeeming quality. This movie has no such thing.

Now, obviously I like the silly Lifetime movies more than the serious ones. I'm in this for the irony, man. Serious Lifetime movies are at a distinct disadvantage in my stupid, subjective ranking system.

I don't care. This movie was balls. Not the balls. Just balls. Big, sweaty, hairy nuts.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 1

This movie starred Jill Scott. The singer. She does not count. I don't listen to R&B stations. The one point is for Mimi Rodgers, the woman who was gracious enough to introduce her husband to Scientology and set off 25 years of hilarity.

LIFETIMENESS: 4

I am getting sick and tired of reviewing all of this anti-choice shit. But, it's a theme, so it's worth Lifetimeness points.

GRAND TOTAL: 5

The worst reviewed movie? Probably! Too lazy to double check!

This movie is brand new so it will be all over Lifetime. Avoid it. It's terrible.

Tribute

Tribute is based on a book by Nora Roberts, an author I'm not familiar with but I know I hate. I DVRed this piece of crap because it starred Brittany Murphy, formerly of Clueless and Drop Dead Gorgeous and currently of an L.A. toxicology report. This is one of her last movies, so why not check it out?

If Brittany Murphy never died, I never would have watched this. So you could say I'm taking her death particularly hard.

Murphy stars as Cilla McGowan, a former child actress living off residual checks. Cilla's grandmother was a big time singer and actress who won a bunch of Oscars before killing herself via vodka and sleeping pills. Cilla is moving back to her Grandma's Virginia estate to fix it up. No explanation given.

McGowan's neighbor is a hunky creep who writes graphic novels for a living. When some mysterious assailant cuts up Cilla's trees, leaves dolls lying around with knives in their back, and assaults Cilla's ex-husband (who tries - in a friendly way - to sleep with Cilla ONE SCENE before he tells Hunky Creep that he loves her like a sister) with a blow to the head, Hunky Creep demands that he spend the night in Cilla's bedroom for protection. He won't take "no" for an answer. How charming.

Naturally this asshole is the hero of the story. He proposes to Cilla after two weeks and manages to control every aspect of Cilla's life in that time and he is the good guy that every woman should want.

Ok, back to the assaults.

Cilla talks to her dead Grandma (who she has never met) in a series of soft focus dream sequences. My favorite is the one where Cilla falls down some weird bottomless pit.

Pictured: Rusty not exaggerating

None of this is interesting or important. The bad guy turns out to be the wife of some guy in town who was fucking Grandma. Wifey killed Grandma and now, FOR NO REASON, is going to kill Cilla to finish the job.

But that attempted murder scene is holy fuck crazy. Wifey spikes Cilla's drink and tells her that people will think she killed herself or accidentally overdosed.

THE CLIMAX OF THIS MOVIE IS BRITTANY MURPHY WRITHING AND GASPING LIKE A FISH WHILE A BAD GUY TAUNTS HER BECAUSE EVERY ONE WILL THINK SHE ONLY OVERDOSED.

Why would Lifetime show that!?!? That's like showing Limp Bizkit's Rolling video on 9/12/01.

Oh yeah, Cilla gets rescued and lives happily ever after with a dude who deserves a restraining order.

AWESOMENESS: 7

The movie started slow and never made much sense, but those dream sequences where something special.

And I like my humor dark and black, but that ending... sheesh.

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 4

No one famous except Murphy. I mentioned Drop Dead Gorgeous at the beginning of this review and it deserves a second mention. That movie is awesome. If you think Brittany Murphy suffering through an overdose in a film released months before her real life overdose is hilarious, you will LOVE Drop Dead Gorgeous.

LIFETIMENESS: 4

Harmony mentioned that the male love interests in Lifetime movies are often controlling assholes who would be portrayed as sociopaths by a sane television channel. Lifetime is very much unsane. Points there.

There was a startling lack of women's intuition though. Cilla only figured out who the bad guy was after Wifey was all, "Oh, bee-tee-dub, I just gave you the same poison I gave your grandmother! EFF-TEE-DUB!"

GRAND TOTAL: 15

The end of this movie was like a Family Guy joke. Mean-spirited and non-sensical. Tai deserves better.

MAY SHE GO ROLLIN' WITH HER HOMIES IN THIS LIFE AND THE NEXT

The Pregnancy Pact

Once upon a time, people paid me to write. Not just any people either. The Center for American Progress. Getting my first check from CAP was a proud moment. Unfortunately, the project didn't quite work. The project, a youth issues blog called Pushback, never took off. There were a lot of writers and I think "youth issues" was just a bit too broad. Ten people blogging about whatever the Hell they want was not a good recipe for success.

Two of the things I always wanted to write about were Massachusetts and the media. Both combined into a neat little package when Time published a hideously irresponsible article about a pregnancy pact between teenage girls in the sleepy fishing village of Gloucester (correctly pronounced Gloss-tah). So, hey, two posts from back in the day by me about the pregnancy pact. One. Two. Now you know my thoughts on this ridiculousness.

Imagine my delight when this pregnancy pact story got wrapped up in the third thing I like to write about: Lifetime movies.

So, The Pregnancy Pact. The story of how some girls decided to get pregnant even though there is no evidence that any agreement was made.

The film opens with a disclaimer saying that the movie is a fictionalized account of the story. This is bullshit. The movie has news footage of actual Gloucester residents (including the mayor) giving actual interviews. Then, at the end of the movie, a video blogger (seriously) says they were all wrong and the debunked myths were all true. Not very responsible, Lifetime.

I was wondering how Thora Birch got to be the lead in this movie. She can't play a kid anymore (Hocus Pocus in the house!) and she can't play a moody teenager. So, she can play a video blogger for Teen Up! (dot net) in New York City. Yes, somehow this vlogger has her own office and employees in New York City. And she has a budget where she can go to Gloucester on a whim and stay there for two weeks.

Vloggers are awful.

Our vlogger, Sidney, actually has a past in Gloucester. She lived there for two years and got knocked up and had that thing scripped out. She's interested in why none of the 18 pregnant teenagers in Gloucester are getting schma-schmortions.

Because these are good Catholics in Gloucester, you New York City heathen!

The girl we spend most of our time focusing on is Sara Dougan. She is 15 and is in love with her boyfriend, the star pitcher at Gloucester High. Sorry casting dudes, but Sara Dougan is not quite attractive enough to be dating a star athlete a year older than her. Of course, star athlete needs to get it where he can, so he knocks up Sara. Sara is pleased with this development because this means her boyfriend will stay in Gloucester and she already made an agreement with her pregnant friends to get knocked up. Not so much an agreement really as a - wait for it - PACT.

And, el oh el, Sara's mom, played by Lifetime staple Nancy Travis, is in charge of some family values committee that has fought to keep condoms out of the schools. How embarrassing!

So there all these pregnant chicks and Sidney interviews all of them. One of them looks enough like Mena Suvari to be legitimately unnerving whenever she's in the same frame as Thora Birch. Sidney is all like, what's the deal, you guys? Pregnancy is hard? You still have a choice! And the girls are all, like, "Whatever, Thora Birch."

Gloucester's principal then gives an interview to Time's Kathleen Kingsbury and claims there's a pregnancy pact. And now the national media is on the case! Thankfully, Sidney is young and hip and is TEENING UP (dot net) and gets the inside scoop from the pregnant hos. THERE IS A PACT.

Eventually Sara's baby daddy walks in on a confidential interview between Sara and Sidney and he freaks out because he got tricked into impregnating someone. Hey, dude, there was no trick. You are 16 and should know what happens when you skeet into fertile soil. Dumbass.

And, yes, this is a pattern in the movie. None of the pregnancies are any of the boys' faults. They were all tricked by devious ladies!

Sara's boyfriend bails because she lied about the pact and he gets a new girlfriend. Sara responds to this by getting toe up wasted at some high school kegger. She gets alcohol poisoning and needs a trip to the emergency room to make sure her fetus doesn't have flippers now. All the while everyone is falling over themselves talking about how Sara is such a good kid. Well, the evidence points to the contrary. Fifteen-year-olds who get pregnant and get alcohol poisoning are the very definition of bad kids. I don't see what one can do as a 15-year-old that could be worse besides mass murder. Basically, here's the bad kid order:

T1. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
3. Sara from The Pregnancy Pact.

With Sara getting out of the hospital, Sidney decides that she has had enough teening up (dot net) and gets ready to book it out of Dodge. But first she meets with her ex-boyfriend. The one who knocked her up. They haven't spoken since the 'bortion because he wanted her to keep it and she ended up moving away.

In what I would describe as the most reprehensible scene in Lifetime history, Sidney admits that she didn't really have an abortion but that she gave the child up for adoption and listed the father as "unknown" so this dude couldn't try and get custody. Ho-lee shit. This guy wanted the kid. Why not give him the kid!? And, what?

But it gets worse! The ex-boyfriend looks at Sidney and declares her a better person than he thought because only bad people get abortions.

THE MOTHERFUCKING END. SHIT JUST GOT REAL.

AWESOMENESS: 5

Every point of awesomeness is because TEEN UP! (dot net) is going to be an ongoing joke in my life. I might have given this more but that revelation at the end and the implications of it...I can't support this. Maybe Lifetime deserves a boycott or something?

HEY! IT'S THAT GUY!: 8

Poor Thora Birch needs a new agent. And nice to see Lifetime regulars Nancy Travis and Camryn Manheim get in on the action. I would have liked it if there was just one more person in this. Like, someone you'd be surprised to see on Lifetime. The only surprise with Thora Birch is that she still exists.

So, I was going to give this a six, but, Thora Birch. Did you know that Now and Then is one of the greatest movies ever made? So, two point bonus.

LIFETIMENESS: 9

MORAL PANIC WITH DISGUSTINGLY RETRO ATTITUDES TOWARDS CHOICE.

If you read that totally out of context, you'd still think it was a Lifetime movie, right?

I'm taking away a point because the beginning of the movie pointed out that teen pregnancy had been dropping since World War II but had started to plateau and even rise a bit. This is true. But now I want an apology on behalf of Fifteen and Pregnant fans everywhere who were fed a bunch of bullshit about the "epidemic" of teen pregnancy. They lied!

GRAND TOTAL: 22

Middle of the road. It would have been so much better if Sara died of alcohol poisoning instead of focusing on a decade old adoption/abortion record. I hate it when Lifetime tries to play it coy by not murdering off every character who sips alcohol before they're 21.

And If There's a New Way!!! **guitar** I'll Be The First in Line!!!

Fantastic quiz here. Lifetime Movie or Megadeth Song. I only got six out of ten.

Also, please listen to Holy Wars. Right now.

The unannounced sabbatical ends this weekend. Would have ended sooner if Terri didn't accidentally delete all of my DVR'ed movies.

Hope everyone's excited for The Pregnancy Pact!