I watched one final film today as a part of my effort to clean out my DVR. Mother Of All Lies premiered on the Lifetime Movie Network on September 12th and I’m not really sure why I decided just to record it, as opposed to actually watching it. Perhaps I actually had a life on the night of the 12th. Who knows?
Anyway, much as in Girl Missing, Francesca Eastwood plays a young woman who discovers the identity of her birth mother and decides that she wants to see her. In this case, Eastwood is playing Sara Caskie, an intelligent but rebellious teenager (a common character type when it comes to Lifetime movies). Though Sara has a comfortable life with her adopted parents, she wonders about her biological mother, Abby (Jennifer Copping). It turns out that Abby is in prison, convicted of a robbery gone wrong. Over the warnings of her adopted parents, Sara writes a letter to the parole board and is so persuasive that her mother is released from prison!
After being told that she shouldn’t contact her biological mother, Sara does exactly what I would have done. She find out where her mother is living, sneaks out of the house, and then drives off to find her. It turns out that Abby is living in an isolated cousin with her scuzzy boyfriend. At first, Abby is shocked when Sara shows up but Abby eventually allows Sara to stay at the cabin. And that’s a good thing because, once Abby ends up killing her boyfriend, it’s good to have Sara around to help cover the crime up.
The boyfriend’s criminal associates are trying to track him down and soon, they are hanging out around the cabin and generally making things even more trashy. Meanwhile, Sara is starting to doubt whether she really wants to get to know anything else about her mother and Sara’s adoptive parents are frantically searching for her and calling the police.
Mother Of All Lies is one of the less impressive of the many films to premiere on Lifetime and LMN this year. Other then one brilliantly executed nightmare sequence, it’s just not a very memorable film. However, the film is partially redeemed by the heartfelt performances of Francesca Eastwood and Jennifer Copping. Francesca Eastwood — and yes, she is Clint’s daughter — has actually had a pretty good Lifetime run this year. Not only did she star in this film and Girl Missing but she also had a key supporting role in Wuthering High School. Francesca Eastwood is great at playing good-hearted but troubled characters. Meanwhile, Jennifer Copping actually makes her character both poignant and frightening. Whatever other flaws that Mother Of All Lies may have, it is worth watching for their performances.