Tag Archives: Lifetime

Lifetime Film Review: Danger on Party Island (dir by Danny J. Boyle)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

My best friend Evelyn and I have a long-standing pact.  If either one of us dies mysteriously or suddenly disappears, the surviving friend will investigate the crime and bring those responsible to justice.

It’s the type of pact that you make when you realize how much your best friend actually means to you.  Fortunately, I’ve never had to keep up my end of the pact because nothing has happened to my best friend.  The truth of the matter is that it seems like it would actually be very difficult to independently solve a crime.  I know that a lot of people thought that Michelle McNamara did that when she investigated the Golden State Killer but, if you actually read I’ll Be Gone In The Dark and then research the actual facts of the case, you can’t help but notice that all of McNamara’s theories were wrong.  It’s not easy investigating a crime without a crime lab or a search warrant or the power to arrest people.  There’s a reason why most crimes are solved by detectives and not by well-meaning civilians.  Add to that, with my ADHD, there’s no way I’d be able to keep track of whatever clues I did find.  Seriously, I fear that I would be useless in that situation.

If only life were a Lifetime movie!

In 2o24’s Danger of Party Island, Mel Dale (Lindsey Dresbach) is a lawyer who is stunned to learn that her carefree sister, Georgia (Andrea Prevatt), has apparently washed up dead on the island of Fang Key.  While her anxious mother waits for word in the States, Mel heads down to Fang Key and tries to figure what could have led to her sister’s death.  The local police suggests that Georgia was on drugs and trying to cliff dive.  Mel says that Georgia never drank or used drugs.  (Why would you go to a “party island” if you didn’t drink or use drugs?)  The police say that Mel should just go home and let them handle it.  Mel says that she has to discover the truth.  The police mention that Georgia’s best friend is missing too.  Around this time, Mel finally figures out that the police aren’t going to be much help.

Mel’s investigation leads her to darkest corners of a party island.  She befriends hunky club owner Jever (James Bobo), despite everyone telling her that Jever is actually bad news.  She comes to suspect that Georgia might not even be dead.  This suspicion seems to be confirmed when Georgia suddenly starts posting cheerful videos to her social media accounts.  Again, everyone tells Mel that she should just go home but Mel is convinced that someone is holding Georgia against her will.  Meanwhile, Mel and Georgia’s mother keeps threatening to come to the island and take over the investigation herself.

The cool thing about Danger on Party Island is that all Mel really needs to launch an investigation is a lap top and a good search engine.  That certainly gave me some hope because, if I ever do have to solve a crime, I know all of the best search engines.  The other good thing about Danger on Party Island is that the island was really pretty.  This was a film where the plot was so-so but the scenery was lovely. Director Danny J. Boyle did a good job of contrasting the beauty of the island with the darkness of some of the things going in the shadows.

I just wish that the film had been a little bit more fun.  This is a film that did indeed embrace the melodrama but I still found myself wishing that it had embraced it even more.  Instead, the film’s big finale felt anti-climatic and things just never got as over-the-top as they should have.  Danger On Party Island had a beautiful island but it still needed to be more of a party.

In the end, this Lifetime film held my attention.  It didn’t quite live up to the melodramatic promise of its name but at least it suggested that solving a crime isn’t as hard as it looks.

I can only hope!

Lifetime Film Review: Everyone Has Something To Hide (dir by Sean Cisterna)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Years ago, Kathy Waters (Emily Alatalo) escaped from her abusive husband, taking her young son Noah with her.  Now, Noah (Sam Ashe Arnold) is a senior in high school and a talented composer.  The school band even plays one of his compositions at a football game and everyone in the stands applaud.  It reminded of those old episodes of Degrassi where Marco would write some overwrought performance piece and all the students would respond by going, “Yeah, Marco!”

Unfortunately, Kathy and Noah are not getting along as well as they used to.  They’re fighting and arguing constantly.  Kathy is overprotective.  Noah is …. well, Noah’s kind of a creep.  Noah is always complaining about how his former best friend Ethan is now more popular than he is.  (Ethan plays football.  Noah …. composes orchestrual music.  You do the math.)  Ethan is  mad because Noah is now going out with Ethan’s ex-girlfriend, Maddie (Tori Barban).  At one point, Tori has to duck into a bathroom so she can throw up.  This is a Lifetime film and that means you don’t throw up unless you’re pregnant and trying to keep it a secret.

Kathy is a real estate agent.  That’s not a surprise as selling houses is right up there with owning a bakery or being a mommy vlogger as far as careers in Lifetime movies are concerned.  One morning, she gets a notification that someone has entered one of the empty houses that she’s selling.  Going to the house, she discovers the remains of a wild party.  She also finds Ethan dead in a nearby shed.

Noah becomes the number one suspect.  Soon, someone is spray-painting “MURDERER” across the front door of Kathy’s house.  Kathy’s friends are refusing to talk to her.  Detective Summers (Puja Uppal) is asking questions.  Noah claims that he’s innocent but even Kathy begins to have her doubts after she discovers just how angry Noah can get.  Noah’s father was abusivie.  Did Noah inherit the violence gene?

As I mentioned earlier, Noah is kind of a creep and it is easy to imagine circumstances in which he could be guilty.  The fact that Lifetime has lately featured several films featuring violent teenage boys also might lead one to suspect that Noah’s the killer.  Well, fear not.  This is a traditional Lifetime film and that means that Noah is not the murderer.  Instead, he’s just an obnoxious teenager who needs to treat his mom with more respect.  I will not spoil the movie by revealing the identity of the killer.  That said, you should be able to guess who it is because there’s not that many people in the movie.

“Everyone Has Something To Hide!” the title announces and, as far as this film is concerned, I guess that’s true.  Considering that Noah’s a musician, they could have made just a few adjustments to the script and called this movie While My Guitar Gently Weeps.  As for the film itself, it suffers from a lack of likable characters.  (When I say that Noah’s a creep, I mean he is really a creep!)  But the film does deserve credit for fully embracing the melodrama.  The film has it’s flaws but it still held my attention for 88 minutes.

Lifetime Film Review: The Man In The Window (dir by Richard Switzer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

After her husband is killed in a car accident, Sarah (Teri Polo) retreats to their gigantic suburban home.  She spends her time painting pictures and resisting the efforts of her daughter (Jonetta Kaiser) and her best friend (Jamie-Lynne Sigler) to get her to move on with her life.  To me, it seemed pretty obvious that Sarah was deeply depressed and everyone should really have just backed off and let her recover at her own pace.  However, in the film, six months have passed since her husband’s death and, in the world of Lifetime, that means that it’s time to get back on the dating scene.  Sarah’s daughter assures her that “Dad” would have wanted her to move on.

(Yes, I’m sure that Dad is sitting in the afterlife, thrilled at the idea of his widow finding a new lover less than a year after his death.)

Sarah accompanies her daughter to a speed-dating event.  She goes on 20 dates in two hours.  19 of those dates are duds.  But the twentieth — oh my God.  Jack (Dylan Walsh) is handsome and successful and, as a widower, he understands what Sarah is going through.  Even more importantly, Jack has just moved in across the street from Sarah!  What a romantic coincidence!  Soon, Sarah is falling for Jack and Jack appears to be falling for Sarah.

But then the neighbor turns up dead.

For reasons that aren’t really clear, Sarah doesn’t seem to have really liked Sylvia (Deborah Rennard) that much.  Sylvia was nosy, the type of neighbor who stood out on her balcony and kept an eye on what everyone else was doing.  Sarah and her daughter referred to Sylvia as being “the neighborhood watch” and they would go out of their way to avoid talking to Sylvia.  I think the film means for us to sympathize with Sarah but, seeing as how we only see Sylvia being polite and friendly to Sarah, it’s a bit difficult to really be on Sarah’s side.  If anything, in this case, Sarah seems like the bad and judgmental neighbor.  Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, though.  Someone breaks into Sylvia’s house and strangles her.  And Sarah comes to suspect that the culprit might have been …. JACK!

This Lifetime movie had a fairly interesting mystery.  I will admit that I figured out what was going on long before Sarah did but then again, I’ve probably watched a lot more Lifetime films than she has.  The best thing about the film is that everyone lived in an extremely big house.  It’s always nice to see that the Lifetime tradition of huge suburban houses is still alive.  I also liked the fact that Sarah had enough money that she could deal with her grief by painting for six months.  There’s no tragedy so great that it can’t lead to more leisure time.

That said, Sarah was not a particularly likable protagonist.  I think if the film had been set a year after her husband’s death, as opposed to just six months, I probably would have had more sympathy for both her and her daughter.  As it was, it seemed like Sarah’s daughter was trying to force her mom to move on too quickly and it also seemed like Sarah was constantly allowing herself to be pushed into a situation for which she wasn’t emotionally ready.  Jamie-Lynne Sigler’s character was actually far more interesting than Sarah’s.  Maybe Sigler and Teri Polo should have switched roles.  There’s no way Sigler would have allowed herself to be guilted into speed dating.

Oh well.  It may not have been a perfect film but at least the houses were lovely to look at.

 

Lifetime Film Review: Murder In Music City (dir by Dave Thomas)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The music industry!  It’s murder!

And if you have any doubt about whether or not that statement is true, just consider the recent Lifetime film, Murder In Music City.

Jimmy Stone (Ty Trumbo) is a handsome young singer/songwriter who is trying to make it big in Nashville.  When we first see him, he’s taking a shower because this is a movie that knows what its audience wants.  Jimmy then sits down and works on a song that he’s been writing about a woman named Stephanie.  It sounds …. well, actually it sounds terrible.  But it’s terrible in that way that gets stuck in your head, kind of like that “Take Me To Church” song by Hozier.  Hey, Jimmy might have a hit on his hands!  Unfortunately, Jimmy is then beaten death with a guitar.

Because Jimmy was a guest of country superstar Aiblene Tucker (Deena Dill), she is arrested for his murder.  Abilene’s estranged daughter, Caroline (Madison Crawford), comes to Nashville to try to prove that her mother is innocent.  Caroline’s investigation leads her to everyone from one of Abilene’s ex-husbands to the president of Abilene’s fan club.  It turns out that Abilene always had a lot of people around her and they all had a motive for killing Jimmy.  Working with Abilene is Jimmy’s brother, Kyle (Brigdon York).  Abilene starts to fall for Kyle but it turns out that Kyle has some secrets of his own.

This film features an unusual twist on the typical Lifetime plot by having someone get arrested for the murder about halfway through the film.  With the real murderer apparently in jail, Abilene is free to resume her life and prepare for her comeback special.  However, Caroline comes to suspect that perhaps the wrong person was arrested and that the real murderer is still out there.  It all leads to secrets being revealed and songs being sung.  There’s a lot of songs sung in this film.  Perhaps too many, to be absolutely honest.

Despite not being a country music fan, I have to say that I absolutely loved Murder In Music City.  It was a film that cheerfully embraced the melodrama and celebrated all the excess that went along with it.  It was the type of fun, “I don’t believe that just happened” film that used to dominate the Lifetime airwaves.  This is one of those films where you don’t really worry too much about narrative logic or whether or not all of the clues really add up.  Instead, you just enjoy the ride.  And it is a very enjoyable ride.  There’s nothing more fun that watching someone have to both solve a murder mystery and deal with an egocentric parent.

In the role of the self-absorbed Abilene, Deena Dill gives a wonderful performance.  She’s not going to let a little thing like being accused of murder get in the way of her lavish lifestyle and her upcoming show.  Deena Dill plays Abilene as a force of nature and she brings a lot of humor to the role.  Also giving a good performance is Madison Crawford, who is very likable and relatable as Caroline.  You can see how having a mother like Abilene has shaped her but you also see the inner strength that has allowed Caroline to build a life of her own.

A terrifically entertaining film, Murder In Music City is what Lifetime should be all about!

Lifetime Film Review: I Killed Him In My Sleep (dir by Katie Boland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Kelty Crawford (Abigail Breslin) is thirty years old and troubled.  She’s the epitome of almost every Generation Z cliche imaginable.  Haunted by a terrible accident and various guilt and mental issues, she currently has few career prospects, little money, and an upcoming wedding that is going to cost her a fortune.

She’s also having trouble sleeping.  She sleepwalks and, when she does wake up, she’s doing strange things like eating the toothpaste straight out of the tube.  Both to make some extra cash and to try to find out what is at the root of her sleepwalking, Kelty agrees to take part in a sleep study that is being conducted by the rather shady Dr. Baylour (Michael Eklund).  Baylour gives her a shot of a powerful drug.  Kelty falls into a deep sleep and she immediately has dreams about killing a man that she doesn’t know.

During her waking hours, Kelty is shocked to sees a news story about how the body of the man she dreamed of killing has recently been discovered.  Kelty fears that she killed the man in her sleep.  Kelty is also shocked when Dr. Baylour vanishes without paying her for taking part in his sleep study.  Hey, Dr. Baylour — she’s got a wedding to pay for!

I had high hopes for I Killed Him In My Sleep.  Abigail Breslin, who was just ten years old when she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Little Miss Sunshine, has developed into a good actress and she especially seems to be well-cast as people who are dealing with dark secrets.  The film’s premise sounded intriguing.  It sounded like I Killed Him In My Sleep would embrace the melodrama, much in the same way that Doug Campbell and Eric Roberts did with the Stalked By My Doctor series.  (Remember Stalked By My Doctor: A Sleepwalker’s Nightmare?  That was a classic!)  And, to give credit where credit is due, this film did feature one twist that actually did take me by surprise.

And yet, with all that in mind, I Killed Him In My Sleep fell flat for me.  A lot of it is because, instead of fully embracing the melodrama and cheerfully celebrating the excess that goes along with it, the film moves very slowly and seems to take itself very seriously.  With its muted cinematography and its overly talky characters, this is a film that tries so hard to be naturalistic that it instead ends up feeling even more fake than usual.  Abigail Breslin is a good actress and she probably does about as well as anyone could have with this role.  Unfortunately, her dialogue sounds more like a series of social media posts than an actual human being.  Kelty may not be a typical Lifetime heroine but that she’s also just not that interesting.

That said, the plot had potential and the nightmare scenes were well-directed.   The film captured the feeling of waking up disorientated and not being quite sure what you’ve just spent the last few hours doing.  A few nights ago, I dreamt that I had a job at a retirement community and that I did so well that everyone living there was happier than they had ever been.  That was a nice dream and far better than killing people.

Lifetime Film Review: Mama’s Little Murderer (dir by Andrew Parkes)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, this one is just strange.

Mama’s Little Murderer opens with twenty-something Anthony (Isaac Kragten) being abducted and taken, with a bag over his head, to a random wooded location.  Uh-oh, looks like Anthony is in trouble!  Suddenly, we flash back to Anthony getting suspended from college because of his fearsome tempter.  Then, a few weeks later, Anthony shows up at home where he is upset to discover that his mother, Constance (Sara Canning), is living with her boyfriend, Leo (Ian Kilburn).  Anthony is jealous and goes to extremes to try to break up Constance and Leo.

Because of the title, I assumed that this film would be about a mom discovering that her son is a murderer.  I also thought that the son would be much younger than he turned out to be.  You don’t really refer to a twenty-year old as being “mama’s little anything.”  Due to the title, I was expecting this to be a version of The Bad Seed.  Instead, it just became a film about a selfish and rather annoying college student who couldn’t accept the fact that his mom was moving on with her life.  Anthony went to extremes to try to break up Leo and his mom but, and please forgive the spoiler, he never murdered anyone.

While we’re watching Anthony act like a loser in the past, we’re also watching Constance and Leo trying to deal with him being kidnapped in the present.  Now, I will say that there was some suspense as to whether or not Anthony was in on the kidnapping. Or at least, there was initially.  But it soon became clear that, while Anthony was guilty of being a very bad son, he was not guilty of setting up his own kidnapping.  Indeed, the kidnapping had very little do with his efforts to break up his mother and Leo.

As I watched this movie, I found myself thinking about how much I hated The King of Staten Island.  That was the film that featured Pete Davidson as an annoying little jerk who got mad because his mother (Marisa Tomei) was dating a fireman (Bill Burr).  My main issue with that film was that everyone seemed to be way too forgiving of Davidson’s character.  The same thing happens here.  Anthony does some terrible things.  He doesn’t even tell his mom the truth about what happened at the college.  But, when all of his lies and his schemes are revealed, he just apologizes and everyone’s like, “Oh, okay, that’s cool.”  Whereas, in reality, they should have kicked him out of the house and had him committed somewhere.

(Needless to say, it’s never a good sign when a film makes you think about another film that you disliked.)

This was essentially two films in one. One film was about a mentally unstable son.  The other film was a standard kidnapping film.  Unfortunately, the two films didn’t really go together and neither one felt fully developed.  It’s a shame because Sara Canning was likable as Constance and you really did hope that she would find happiness with Leo.  It was hard not to feel that both Constance and Leo deserved better than having to deal with Anthony.  They should have let the kidnappers keep him.

Lifetime Film Review: Death At The Dinner Party (dir by Alain Desrochers)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s been a Death At The Dinner Party!

This Lifetime film has a title that makes it sound like it should be one of those British murder mysteries, set in the 1920s and featuring a Scotland Yard inspector limping around a mansion while trying to figure out who killed the notorious ne’er-do-well, Freddy Gibbs.  (The Inspector would limp because of the wound he received while fighting in the Great War.)  Was it the maid?  Was it the groundskeeper?  Was it the flighty flapper or the grand dame with the mysterious past?  Or was the murderer the shadowy visitor from America, the one who is rumored to be connected to bootleggers in Toronto.  Fear not!  Stanley of the Yard is on the case!

Where was I?  Oh yeah, I was creating a different movie in my head.  Anyway, let’s talk about the movie that I actually watched….

Andrea Gibbs (Candice Lidstone) is visiting her son, Ethan (Cameron Brodeur).  Ethan is a somewhat nerdy college student who is rooming with a platonic female friend who he is obviously in love with.  Andrea can tell that Ethan has been friend zoned and sweetly asks his roommate to let him down gently.  Ethan’s roommate later ends up dead at a dinner party that is attended by Ethan and Andrea.  The dinner party’s host is a psychology professor, Alan Jackson (Mark Day).  Jackson posts his fascistic lectures online and he has a loyal following of all-male students.  Gee, can you guess who was actually behind the murder?

(Last summer, Erin and I watched several episodes of an old show that featured Jim Hutton as Ellery Queen.  We loved it whenever Hutton would suddenly look at the camera and say, “Well, I’ve figured this one out!  Have you!?”  I have to admit that usually, I had not.  Erin was much better at figuring out who the murderer was than I was.  But, in the case of this film, I think Ellery probably would have looked straight at the camera before the murder even happened.)

There’s nothing particularly subtle about Death At The Dinner Party.  The film’s portrayal of dangerous, right-wing college professors gives the whole thing a dated feel, as if it should have aired ten years earlier than it did.  The film could have just as easily have been called Murder On The Intellectual Dark Web or Death At Evergreen College.  Today, I imagine that members of the angry dishrag brigade are a more realistic danger than a fight club of psych majors.  But the lack of subtlety and even the dated premise give this film a certain charm.  It’s over-the-top and it embraces the melodrama, just as every Lifetime film should.

Though she only appears to be a few years older than the actor playing her son, Candice Lidstone does a good job playing the mother who is rightly concerned about what her child is learning in college.  Indeed, the mother-child relationship was this film’s secret weapon. When I was in college, I never would have had the courage to invite my mom to a dinner party with any of my professors.  Then again, at my college, dinner with a professor usually meant a lot more alcohol and definitely a lot more weed.  However, there was also significantly less murder so everything evened out in the end.

Lifetime Film Review: Accused: The Karen Read Story (dir by Linda-Lisa Hayter)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2022, a Boston police officer named John O’Keefe was discovered unconscious on the snow-covered front lawn of a fellow police officer.  O’Keefe was taken to the hospital, where he subsequently passed away.  It was determined that he died not from spending the night lying in the snow but instead from blunt force trauma.  O’Keefe’s girlfriend, Karen Read, was arrested and charged with the crime.  Depending on who you asked, Karen Read was either a cold-hearted murderer or the victim of a frame-up.  Because O’Keefe was himself a member of the force, it was easy make the argument that the Boston PD was so eager to arrest someone for his murder and “protect one of their own,” that they neglected to follow the evidence while making their case against Karen Read.  Of course, one could also wonder if Karen Read would have received as much support from the public if she had been someone other than an attractive professional white woman.

It took two trials but eventually, Karen Read was acquitted.  At the time, her trials dominated social media.  It was not uncommon to see the second trial referred to as being “the trial of the century.”  I think most of us understood that was hyperbole.  The Karen Read trial was not “the trial of the century” as much as it was just “the trial of the moment.”  After she was acquitted, people spent another week talking about her, the trial, and the Boston PD and then everyone moved on.  There’s always a new murder to “solve” or a new trial to debate.  In another year or so, no one will remember which side of the Karen Read debate they were on.  That will probably include me as well.

(Online sleuthing is always entertaining but ultimately rather shallow.  Those of us who have grown up consuming true crime books and movies often expect things to be more dramatic than they actually are and we tend to gloss over the fact that, while an online sleuth can bring attention to a case, it’s rare that they ever actually solve anything.  As an example, for all the attention that was given to Michelle McNamara’s quest to identify the Golden State Killer, we tend to ignore the fact that most of her theories about his identity turned out to be incorrect.)

Still, the Karen Read case was prominent enough that everyone know that Lifetime would eventually make a movie about it.  Accused: The Karen Read Story asks the question, “Did Karen Read kill John O’Keefe?” and then it answers it by saying, “Of course she didn’t!  What are you, an idiot?”  That’s not necessarily a complaint.  As annoying as I sometimes found Karen Read’s most vehement online defenders to be, I actually agreed with them about her innocence.   It’s just that, if you’re looking for a film that offers up any hint of ambiguity about the case, this is not the film for you.  The film is firmly on the side of Karen Read, to the extent that the O’Keefe family is often presented as being villains.

It’s a well-made film, though.  In the roles of Karen Read and John O’Keefe, both Katie Cassidy and Luke Humphrey give good performances.  Humphrey is especially good in the role of O’Keefe and the film doesn’t shy away from portraying the tumultuous details of his relationship with Karen Read.  (The film also deserves some credit for not turning O’Keefe into a cardboard bad boyfriend during his arguments with Read.)  Linda-Lisa Hayter’s direction captures both the cold chill  of the snowy night and the insular atmosphere of big city law enforcement.  It’s a skillful film that will be best appreciated by people who are already convinced of Karen Read’s innocence.

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

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Lila (Ciarra Carter) has just broken up with her boyfriend and desperately needs a new job to take her mind off of things.  Luckily, her friend Robin (Vivica A. Fox) comes to the rescue.  Robin not only tells off Lila’s ex but she also gives Lila a job.  At work, Lila meets Mark (Matthew Pohlkamp).  One one night stand later, Lila is pregnant and moving into Mark’s surprisingly large house.  (It’s a David DeCoteau film.  All of the houses are surprisingly large.) Mark’s ex-wife, Julia (Jamie Bernadette), shows up and is surprisingly helpful.  Meanwhile, it seems like everyone who questions Mark’s motives either disappears or is discovered dead.  Is it all a coincidence or should Lila be worried?

Oh, you just have to love the Wrong films.  A lot has changed over the past few years and Lifetime’s programming and movies have changed as well.  Whether they’ve changed for the better or for the worse depends on how you look at things and what you prioritize.  For someone like me, who detests change and wishes that time could be frozen for just a few years or so, it can be difficult to accept that it’s not the 2010s anymore.  But the Wrong films have remained consistent for ten years.  David DeCoteau directs.  Handsome men of a certain age are not to be trusted.  Everyone lives in a big house that there’s no way they would be able to afford in real life.  The melodrama is embraced.  The violence is often bloodless.  The main character is usually a woman who really should know better.  Vivica A. Fox plays the no-nonsense authority figure who, in most cases, says the film’s title.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of Vivica A. Fox to these films.  Along with serving as an executive producer, she also serves as the voice of reason.  That she is usually as frustrated with the characters as the viewers is a very important thing.  Watching these films, it’s easy to wish that you could step into Vivica’s stylish and expensive shoes and say, “Girl, looks like you hired The Wrong Landscaper.”  Or, “Girl, looks you paid The Wrong Bill.  The lights are going to be off for a while.”  The secret is the way that Vivica delivers the line.  When Vivica says that someone was “the wrong whatever,” she leaves with you with little doubt that there’s no point in arguing.  Vivica knows wrong when she sees it and you don’t.

As for 2026’s The Wrong Baby Daddy, it has one of the best titles but it’s also actually a bit mild when compared to some of the other Wrong films.  It goes through the motions without ever going as gloriously over-the-top as some of the other installments in the series.  That said, it’s still a fun movie.  At this point, the familiarity of the plot is kind of the point.  The Wrong films are comfort food for the soul.  It doesn’t matter how bad of a day you’ve had or how negatives the news may be.  If hearing Vivica A. Fox call someone “the wrong baby daddy” doesn’t bring some light to your life, you have no soul.

Lifetime Film Review: I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco (dir by Heather Hawthorne-Doyle)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco is an example of one of the latest trends in Lifetime filmmaking.  The real Mary Jo Buttafuoco tells us her story in between scenes of it being reenacted by actors.

That’s not necessarily a bad idea.  Lifetime did something similar with Elizabeth Smart and it led to one of the most powerful films to ever appear on the network.  However, the Elizabeth Smart film benefitted from the fact that Smart is an articulate, intelligent, and insightful speaker in her own right.  She is someone who went through the worst and managed to come out of it not only stronger but also with the passion and articulateness of an genuine activist.

Mary Jo is not quite as compelling.  It brings me no joy to say that because Mary Jo really was put through Hell and, far too often, she has been treated as an afterthought in her own story.  For those who may have forgotten or who haven’t had seen any of the previous films made about what happened to her, Mary Jo Buttafuoco was the wife of Long Island mechanic Joey Buttafuoco.  She stood by Joey while he struggled with drug addiction and she supported him when he opened his own garage.  Joey rewarded her loyalty by having an affair with a teenager named Amy Fisher.  Fisher, who apparently believed that Mary Jo was the only thing standing in the way of her being with Joey forever, went to the Buttafuoco home and shot Mary Jo in the face.

The story was a media circus, with Amy Fisher being dubbed “the Long Island Lolita” and three made-for-TV movies being made, all in the same year, about the shooting.  Joey initially denied that he had ever touched Amy and Mary Jo, who miraculously survived, originally stood by Joey.  Unfortunately, in all the attention that was given to Amy and Joey (and really, the word “goombah” might as well appear with a picture of Joey in the dictionary), the fact that Mary Jo nearly died was often overlooked.  Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco became odd celebrities as a result of the crime.  Mary Jo was ridiculed for both not realizing that Joey was cheating on her and continuing to stand by her man for years after she was shot by his mistress.

There’s a great movie to be made about Mary Jo Buttafuoco.  (Considering that one of three previous films was told from Joey’s point of view, it only seems appropriate that there should have been a movie from Mary Jo’s.)  Unfortunately, having Mary Jo tell her own story doesn’t work as well as one might hope.  When you really want Mary Jo to go off on Joey, she instead goes off on being raised Catholic.  If only she hadn’t been raised in a Catholic family, she seems to be saying, she never would have married and stuck with Joey Buttafuoco.  Instead of really examining her marriage to Joey Buttafuoco, she instead blames her mother and her religion.  It feels like too convenient an excuse.

The film is a bit more compelling in the flashbacks, with Chloe Lanier giving a strong performance as Mary Jo and Madelyn Grace playing Amy Fisher as not being a Lolita but instead as being a neurotic and rather stupid brat.  In the end, what matters is that Mary Jo did eventually free herself from Joey and we should all be happy for that.