Paige Searcy | Through the Shattered Lens

One thing that you can be sure about when you watch a Lifetime film is that even the poorest people in the film will still live in a huge house with a big front yard.

For instance, in Kidnapped By A Classmate, Hunter (Lucas Adams) is so desperate for money that he’s forced into a life of petty crime, mugging delivery men and murdering drug dealers. And yet, he lives in a really big and really nice house. I’m pretty sure I counted at least three stories and both the back and the front yards are absolutely huge. I mean, I’ve been told that my house is pretty nice but it’s nothing compared to where Hunter lives.

Still, Hunter needs money and he comes up with the bright idea of burglarizing a smaller house during the middle of the day. Unfortunately, Brooke (Paige Searcy) happens to be home when Hunter breaks in and, as a result, she ends up getting kidnapped and held for ransom. Making things even more awkward is the fact that Brooke goes to the same high school as Hunter’s younger brother, Corey (Pedro Correa). Corey was hoping to go on a date with Brooke but now she’s bound and gagged in his living room so this relationship is definitely not getting off to a good start. Also providing involuntary help with the kidnapping is Corey’s best friend, Eric (Rahul Aburri). Eric just wanted a ride home but now he’s kind of trapped in the middle of a felony.

Corey assures Eric that everything will be okay and that Brooke will be freed once Hunter gets his money. “Like the Lindbergh baby!” Corey says before Eric calls him out for not paying attention in history class. Eric has a point, of course. Obviously, everyone wants to help out their siblings but it’s smart to draw the line somewhere.

Paige’s mother, Shannon (Andrea Bogert), arrives home too late to save her daughter from being kidnapped. When Hunter subsequently demands that Shannon and her new husband pay a ransom, Shannon decides to save Brooke on her own. Helping Shannon out is Jade (Chloe Ray Warmoth), a streetkid who knows all about “tattoo gangs.”

Anyway, there’s a lot of drama in Kidnapped By My Classmate. A lot of that is due to Hunter being not only crazy but kind of stupid as well. Not only is he in debt but he can’t even pull off a proper kidnapping. Unfortunately, since Hunter’s a bit crazy, chances are that he’ll kill Brooke once it becomes obvious that he’s not going to get what he wants. It’s an interesting idea, to be honest. Hunter isn’t dangerous because he’s a master criminal. He’s dangerous because he’s so incompetent. (In fact, you could probably say the same thing about Bruno Hauptmann, the Lindbergh baby kidnapper….)

Kidnapped By A Classmate was, in many ways, a standard Lifetime kidnapping film. Daughters are always getting kidnapped on Lifetime and it usually falls on mom to save them. Kidnapped By A Classmate is a bit different because Brooke isn’t kidnapped because she refused to listen to her mom’s advice. Instead, Brooke just happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. In this film, the problem child is Jade, who has a terrible attitude but gets to redeem herself by helping Shannon look for her daughter. Andrea Bogert and Paige Searcy are believable as mother and daughter and Chloe Ray Warmoth does a good job with his frequently sarcastic dialogue. The film really is stolen by Rahul Aburri, who plays one of the most unluckiest people you’ll ever seen in a film like this. One minute, you need a ride home. The next minute, you’re taking part in a felony. It’s a mad world.

If there’s an Eye Rolling Hall of Fame, the recent Lifetime film Mommy, I Didn’t Do It definitely has earned inclusion.

Seriously, this film was full of some championship-level eye rolling. It’s a courtroom drama and a murder mystery. Ellen Plainview (Danica McKellar) is an attorney whose teenager daughter, Julie (Paige Searcy) is on trail for murdering one of her former teachers. When Julie is first arrested, Ellen rolls her eyes. When Ellen visits Julie in jail and explains that they don’t have the money to bail her out, Julie rolls her eyes and sighs. You can just tell she’s thinking, “My God, mom, you’re so lame!” When Detective Hamer (Jaleel White) explains why all the evidence points to Julie, Ellen again rolls her eyes and Detective Hamer counters her by rolling his own eyes. When Ellen approaches the dead man’s wife (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), the wife not only rolls her eyes but narrows them as well.

It gets even better once the trial begins. The prosecutor, Kimberly Bains (Jen Lilley), rolls her eyes whenever Ellen makes an objection. Whenever a witness testifies that Julie was obsessed with the victim, Ellen rolls her eyes and then Julie rolls her eyes at her mother rolling her eyes and then Kimberly rolls her eyes at both of them. When the weird boy who is obsessed with her tries to save Julie by confessing to the murder, the amount of eye rolling probably sets a world record. In the real world, of course, this type of courtroom behavior gets people cited for contempt but, in the world of Lifetime, it’s just the way that people communicate.

Don’t get me wrong. The film itself did not make me roll my eyes. Yes, it was totally implausible and it was full of silly scenes but it’s a Lifetime film. That’s what we expect Lifetime. Even more importantly, that’s what we want from Lifetime. When it comes to a quality Lifetime film, there’s really only two rules: 1) the more ludicrous, the better and 2) the more melodramatic, the more entertaining.

While the film’s story might be ludicrous, the mother-daughter relationship between Ellen and Julie felt very real and both Danica McKellar and Paige Searcy gave sincere and believable performances as mother and daughter, which went a long way towards explaining all the eye rolling. Seriously, when I was Julie Plainview’s age, I rolled my eyes for 24 hours a day and I wasn’t even accused of murder.

Mommy, I Didn’t Do It is actually a sequel to a previous Lifetime movie, The Wrong Woman. In that one, Ellen was wrongly accused of murder and was arrested by the same idiot detective who arrests her daughter in Mommy, I Didn’t Do It. (If nothing else, these two films show how vindictive authority figures can be.) As long as this is going to be a franchise, I’d like to suggest that the next installment could feature Eric Roberts, recreating his role from Stalked By My Doctor and its sequel. Maybe he could treat Julie while Ellen defend him in court.

Seriously, it sounds like a great idea to me.