Monroe Cline | Through the Shattered Lens

Divorcee Renee (Tammin Sursok) is so upset when her teenage daughter Cherie (Monroe Cline) moves in with her father that, despite being nearly 40, Renee enrolls in high school and becomes a cheerleader.

PARENTS! DO NOT DO THIS!

This was based on a true story. A 30 year-old mother imitated her 13 year-old daughter, enrolled in a middle school and spent a day there, posting to social media. She was eventually arrested for trespassing and tampering with government records. She said she was doing it to make a point about school’s not being secure enough and she certainly did that. But, even if the real mother did make her point, I repeat:

PARENTS! DO NOT DO THIS!

DO NOT EVER EVER DO THIS!

Your children will never forgive you if you do. High school is not your place. Your place is drinking wine and talking to your girlfriends about how much you love Andy Cohen.

In this film, Renee looks a lot older than 30 and she also manages to stay enrolled in the school for nearly an entire semester. She becomes a cheerleader! She dates a student! A teacher get uncomfortable when she flirts with him because she’s too young. She kills people to hide her secret because she’s having so much fun in school. But she looks like she’s closer to 50 than 40. It takes more than getting bangs to erase those age lines. Is everyone at the school blind?

It’s not a very plausible movie but, when I was a cheerleader in high school, there were a lot of cheer moms who would have loved to have enrolled in the school and taken their daughter’s place on the squad. None of them were crazy enough to try it, though. Instead, they would just sit in on practice and make everyone uncomfortable.

Luckily, this movie is a comedy and it made me laugh enough for me recommend it. Renee just went to such extremes to try to reclaim her high school years. Cheer moms are crazy. You have to laugh.

When it Rains In LA features Eric Roberts as Nate.

Nate is a happy man who lives in a big house and who obviously has a lot of money. He’s even got a much younger trophy wife, a Russian named Sasha (Monroe Cline). One day, Nate receives an odd package, a box that contains a rather hideous mask. Nate looks at the mask and then takes a sip of tea. He promptly drops dead.

After Nate’s funeral, the suddenly widowed Sasha flies to Los Angeles to see her friends from college. (Or, at least, that’s how I assume she met these people. At times, it’s difficult to really keep track of how anyone in this film actually knows anyone else.) Though she’s just buried her husband, she still flirts with the pilot of her airplane, the likably dorky Harry (Tom Gipson). She also meets a mysterious woman named Anna (Leslie Stratton) and doesn’t seem to notice that she’s being watched by a mysterious, bearded man (Mike Ferguson) who continually hides his face inside of his hoodie.

From the minute that Sasha lands in Los Angeles, it starts to rain. Everyone that Sasha meets mentions how strange it is that it’s raining in Los Angeles. Some people say the rain is probably no big deal. Other people act as if the rain has some sort of secret meaning. Sasha keeps her opinions to herself.

Her friends seem to be curiously unconcerned with Sasha suddenly being a widow. One of them won’t stop talking about the death of his former lover. They go to a club, where the bartender gives out free drinks and the owner seems to be strangely hostile. Sasha meets Harry. Characters appear and then disappear without anyone seeming to notice. Everyone comments on the strangeness of rain in Los Angeles. People start to die in brutal ways but again no one seems to really care. It’s a slasher film where societal detachment is the biggest threat.

It’s an odd film. The budget was obviously low and the majority of the performances are a bit amateurish but, whether it was intentional on the part of the filmmakers or not, the film often plays out like a surreal dream. Sometimes, the film moved at an almost rushed pace and then other times, a heavy sense of ennui seems to descend over the action and the characters. Characters repeatedly do things that don’t make any sense but they do it with such determination that it becomes rather fascinating to watch. The film’s final moments are surprisingly effective, certainly more effective than you might expect from all the moments that came before them. Visually, this low-budget film has moments of almost ghostly beauty. The scenes of the rain falling in Los Angeles are effectively atmospheric and ominous. In the end, the film qualifies almost as a work of outsider art.

And, let’s not forget, Eric Roberts is in it! This was the first Eric Roberts film to be released in 2025. Nate dies before the opening credits and Eric still gets top billing. I imagine it will be the first of many.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed: