Lifetime Movie Review: The Wrong Life Coach (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2024’s The Wrong Life Coach, Morgan Bradley stars as Jordan Roberts, whose popularity as a high school cheerleader did little to prepare her for the pressures of adult life. Her career is going nowhere. Her boss (Vivica A. Fox) does not respect her. Her boyfriend (Hector David, Jr.) is bored with her and their vanilla sex life. Her mother (Tracy Nelson) is living with her and trying to control her life. Jordan needs someone to help her get her life together. She needs a life coach!

(Personally, I’ve never gotten the whole life coach thing but whatever. Apparently, it works for some people.)

A chance meeting with Liz Kimble (Allison McAtee) changes Jordan’s life. Though Jordan doesn’t really remember her, she and Liz went to high school together. And it turns out that Liz is now a life coach! Soon, Liz is encouraging Jordan to take sexy pictures, demand more from her career, and to stand up to her domineering mother!

At first, it all seems perfect. Except …. Liz is not a certified life coach! She’s just repeating a bunch of stuff that she heard from her own life coach, Rhonda (Meredith Thomas). It may sound like the start of a hilarious comedy but it turns out that Liz is a little bit crazy. Liz has never gotten over losing her spot on the cheerleading squad to Jordan and now, she’s determined to get revenge,

In quick order, Jordan loses her job, her relationship with her mother, and nearly her boyfriend as well! Plus, her best friend has gone missing! After Jordan tells Liz to get lost, Liz begins to obsessively stalk Jordan. What Jordan doesn’t know is that Liz has placed hidden cameras all over her house and she’s even hacked into Jordan’s email. Jordan thinks that she’s had a good job interview with Mr. Gordon. (Hey, it’s Eric Roberts!) But remember those lingerie-clad photos that Liz encouraged Jordan to send to her boyfriend? Well, those pictures end up getting sent to Mr. Gordon as well.

“I couldn’t hire you if I wanted to,” Mr. Gordon says. When even Eric Roberts refuses to work with you, you know you’ve asked the wrong person for advice!

“Girl, you listened the wrong life coach.”

She sure did!

I love the Lifetime “Wrong” films. The Wrong Life Coach is a tremendous amount of fun, from Allison McAtee’s over-the-top performance as Liz to the side-eye that Vivica A. Fox gives Jordan every time she makes a mistake. As always, with the “Wrong” films, director David DeCoteau fully embraces the melodrama and creates a film that’s so ludicrous that you can’t help but love it. Any director could make a film about a crazy life coach. But only David DeCoteau has the courage to have that life coach make her diabolical plans while wearing her old high school cheerleader uniform.

Watching this film reminded me of how much I love Lifetime and its demented films. I look forward to reviewing a lot more of them in 2025!

Hopefully, more than a few of them will feature Eric Roberts!

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Lifetime Film Review: The Wrong House Sitter (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on November 26, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Kirsten (Anna Marie Dobbins) is a professional house sitter who is looking for work.

Dan (Jason-Shane Scott) owns a house.

What could go wrong!?

Well, it turns out that quite a lot can go wrong. Kirsten may be a house sitter and she may have a few good references and she even shows up with a contract for Dan to sign, which seems very professional, but that doesn’t mean that Kirsten is the right house sitter. In fact, it turns out that she’s the wrong house sitter and that contract basically gives her the right to stay in the house for as long as she wants. Dan’s a writer and really, he should have known better than to sign a contract without actually reading it but …. well, he was in a hurry that morning.

So anyway, Kirsten is now living in Dan’s house and telling everyone that she is Dan’s girlfriend, despite the fact that Dan has a girlfriend named Mary (Ciarra Carter). (Dan also has an editor named Debbie, who is played by Vivica A. Fox. It’s not a Lifetime “wrong” movie without Vivica A. Fox in a supporting role.) Dan can either give up the house or he can stay in the house and hope that he finds a way to get Kirsten out of his life.

Really, Dan should have known better than to have hired Kirsten in the first place. When they first met, it was in a bookstore and Kirsten was talking about how much she loved Atlas Shrugged. Dan suggested that she check out The Fountainhead. I’m a libertarian and even I know that its time to run whenever someone says that Atlas Shrugged is their favorite book. Personally, I would have suggested that both he and Kirsten read Anthem, which gives you all the Ayn Rand you could want but which doesn’t require you to spend half a year reading it.

Regardless, Dan did hire Kirsten and now he’s stuck with her. And Kirsten really, really wants to make things work with Dan. In fact, she’s so determined to make things work that she’s willing to kill. It’s a Lifetime movie, folks. People are always willing to kill.

Anyway, our regular readers know that I like the “wrong” films, largely because they always seem to feature the nicest houses that one could hope to find in Canada. Dan’s house is really nice and you can understand why he wouldn’t want to give it up. The pool alone is worth a few murders. I mean, I would have totally been up to house sit that particular home and I wouldn’t have been as dangerous about it either. (Seriously, house sitting is a lot of fun! You get to sleep in a stranger’s bed without having to worry about seeing them in the morning.) Jason-Shane Scott has appeared in a few of these films and he brings his well-meaning charm to the role of Dan. Anna Marie Dobbins is appropriately crazed as the house sitter and Vivica A. Fox, as always, does good work as the no-nonsense authority figure.

Watch it the next time you’re tempted to let a stranger live in your house for a week.

Lifetime Film Review: The Wrong Mommy (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on July 20, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If there’s anything that I’ve learned from my long history of watching Lifetime films, it’s that having a real job just isn’t worth the trouble.

Just consider what Melanie (Jessica Morris) goes through in The Wrong Mommy. She’s got a real job. She also has a handsome husband (Jason-Shane Scott), an adorable daughter (Jillian Spitz), and a mother (Dee Wallace) who enjoys going on exotic cruises. Melanie also has a really nice and really big house, the type of house that would probably be the “slightly more than you’re willing to pay” house on an episode of House Hunters. But can she enjoy it? No, of course not! It’s all because she’s got a real job. She can’t pick up her daughter after school. She can’t go out at night. She can’t do anything because she’s got a real job.

However, during the first few minutes of The Wrong Mommy, Melanie gets some good news! She’s been promoted! She’s now a senior executive or whatever it is that you get promoted to when you’ve got a real job. Along with having real responsibilities, Melanie is also about to get a real assistant!

Here’s another thing that I’ve learned from my long history of watching Lifetime films, as well as from my own past experience in the administrative professional field. Be very careful about hiring an assistant. Especially if she only has one obscure reference on her resume. Even if she’s willing to babysit your daughter for you, be careful. Don’t look the other way when she flirts with your husband. And, for the love of everything holy in this world, don’t tell her the one secret that could lead to you losing a big account!

Unfortunately, Melanie doesn’t exercise caution about any of that and, as a result, she ends up hiring Phoebe (Ashlynn Yennie). Even before Phoebe shows up for her interview, we’ve already seen her following Melanie around town and spying on her. In fact, even before the opening credits conclude, Phoebe is breaking into Melanie’s house and planting spy cameras. We know better than to trust Phoebe and soon, Melanie discovers that she made a mistake hiring her. However, it may be too late to do anything about it….

Now, to the film’s credit, Phoebe isn’t just some random psycho bitch trying to ruin someone else’s life. It turns out that she has a backstory, one that actually does involve Melanie. I won’t spoil anything by revealing it but it’s a pretty good backstory. Ashley Yennie appears to be having a lot of fun in the role of Phoebe. If you’re going to be in a Lifetime movie, you definitely want to play the villain. They usually get all the good lines and get to wear all the pretty clothes.

Like most of Lifetime’s “Wrong” films, this one was directed by David DeCoteau, who know exactly the right tone to take for a film like this. He plays up the melodrama while never allowing the film to take itself too seriously. (Just check out the scene where Dee Wallace shouts out the film’s title.) As with all the “Wrong” films, Vivica A. Fox shows up as a no-nonsense authority figure. (This time, she plays Melanie’s boss.) The great Eric Roberts also shows up for a few minutes, playing a sleazy client. Roberts doesn’t have much screen time but, as usual, he makes memorable use of what he gets.

The Wrong Mommy is an enjoyably silly film. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and neither should you.