Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime film, The Preacher’s Sin!

Why Was I Watching It?

What else was I going to watch?  The Democratic debate?  Not likely…

Seriously, though, everyone knows how much I love Lifetime!  Plus, the title of the film promised a sinning preacher and Lifetime has a pretty good track record when it comes to sinning preachers.

What Was It About?

Evan Tanning (JR Bourne) is a successful and popular preacher.  He has his own radio show, where he gives advice on how to raise a family.  Much like Will Ferrell in A Deadly Adoption, he is popular on the book tour circuit.  As the movie opens, he has just signed a contract with Bill Traggert (Bill Lake) and his show is about be nationally syndicated.  Sure, Bill might be a little bit sleazy but it looks like everything’s perfect in Evan’s life…

Except, of course, it isn’t.  Evan has just discovered that he has an illegitimate son (Demi Oliver) and, once Bill finds out, Evan finds himself being blackmailed.  Add to that, Evan is the legal guardian of his niece Jamie (Allie Gonino), a rebellious teenager who has recently been arrested for driving drunk.  When Jamie gets arrested a second time, Evan struggles to try to figure out how to deal with her.

What Evan doesn’t realize is that Jamie was set up by Bill’s evil daughter, Tinsley (Stephanie La Rochelle).  When Tinsley escalates her bullying of Jamie, Evan is forced to take a stand and confront his past.

What Worked

The film was well-acted and it definitely had an intriguing first hour.  JR Bourne did a good job as the preacher and so did Allie Gonino as Jamie.  (Add to that, I really liked Jamie’s hair.)  There’s been a lot of bitchy mean girls on Lifetime but few of them have been played with the amount of sociopathic panache that Stephanie La Rochelle brought to the role of Tinsley.

What Did Not Work

So, here’s the thing: with a title like The Preacher’s Sin, I was expecting the film to feature the preaching sinning.  I mean, okay — he did have an extramarital affair but that was before he even became a preacher.  He never knew that he had a son and, once he found out, Evan went out of his way to accept and help him out..

To be honest, a better title for the film would have been Tinsley’s Sin because Tinsley was the one who kept doing the wrong thing.  As a lot of people on twitter pointed out, the final 30 minutes of the film — which were pretty much dominated by Tinsley’s sins — felt like they were happening in a totally different movie.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

Oh my God, I so related to Jamie!  It’s not just that we were both rebellious teenagers who had to deal with jealous haters.  It was also the fact that she was judged for having better hair than everyone else.  I have red hair and Jamie had green hair.  Judging from this movie, the only thing more difficult than being a redhead is being a greenhead.

Lessons Learned

It’s not easy being green.