There's spoilers in this message, so let's see if this works. Highlight the blank space s below with your mouse to see the text.

Overview: Rachael gives another great performance, this time as a victim of statutory rape. The movie is about 100 minutes long and the first 75 minutes or so are all about Rachael. The last 25 don't feature her as prominantly until the last few scenes.

Synopsis: At the beginning of the movie, Rachael's character, Emma, has just turned 15 years old. She's been raised by her grandfather all her life after her mother left her when she was only an infant. She gets the opportunity to visit her mother for the first time and takes it. Her mother doesn't give a crap about Emma, leaving her alone with Ray, her live-in boyfriend. Ray quickly takes advantage of her, getting her drunk and rapes her. Emma goes home and finds out that she's pregnant. With full support of her grandfather and the townspeople, she decides to have the baby.

After the fastest TV pregnancy in history, Emma gives birth to Matthew, who unfornately has a very serious case of asthma that requires frequent hospitalization. The only way to pay for it is to let her grandfather adopt Matthew and use his health insurance. The adoption requires both parents' permission, but Ray won't give it. Instead, he uses Emma's willingness to give up her baby for adoption to get custody of Matthew.

In order to keep Ray from getting her baby, Emma has her grandfather take Matthew away. He enlists the help of his coal-mining and trucker buddies to run around the state, dodging the sheriff by mere minutes every time they're about to find them. They eventually catch up with them when Matthew has to be taken to the hospital for emergency care.

Meanwhile, the custody case gets to court. Emma gives an emotion speach to the judge, he sympathizes with her, she wins back her baby, Ray goes away, and everyone (including Emma's mom) live happily ever after.

Impressions: Rachael was great in this movie, as she always is. Unfortunately, she doesn't have the script to back up her performance. Rachael is really convicing as a young mother who deeply cars for her child. She looks great too with shoulder-length dark brown hair, especially in the black cocktail dress Ray gives her. You also get an idea of how tiny she really is when she stands opposite her co-stars. She also takes on a Southern accent in this film, but honestly it isn't very convincing and it seems to fade in and out during the movie.

The supporting cast is good too. George C. Scott is excellent as the loving grandfather. Ally Sheedy as Emma's loser mother was also effective. Don Diamont as Ray plays the slime-ball part very well.

What I didn't like was how they tried to cram too many huge emotional issues into one movie. There's the issue of child abandonment. There's statutory rape. There's teen pregancy. There's health insurance matters. There's adoption and custody battles. While all of it was necessary for the movie's story to work, a lot of things go glossed over that takes the viewer out of the movie.

Depending on your views, you will probably question why abortion wasn't even seriously considered. You'll wonder why people would be so unconditionally supportive of a 15 year old having a child. You'll question why Ray really even wants custody of the child, as it isn't made clear what his motives are. You'll yell at Rachael's character for not filing rape charges against Ray, especially when it will strengthen her court case. In the end, the movie essentially silences the rape victim. The bad guy goes free, losing nothing that he didn't have before. Not a good message to send.

Also, I didn't like how everything was resolved literally the last 5 minutes of the movie. It brings attention to how much of the movie was expendable. For example, while the scenes where Emma's grandfather evades the sheriffs are funny, they go on for too long. The story may have been resolved at the end, but it felt really abrupt.

Conclusion: A mediocre made-for-TV movie with a happy ending, but an ambiguous moral message. Great performance by Rachael, effective supporting cast, weak story.

[Edited by Dodge This on June 23, 2001]

A couple of caps





















[Edited by sugarfist on June 24, 2001]

Ooooh! It hard to see this synopsis, Dodge This.

You have to highlight the empty spaces with your mouse...just click and scroll down to see the text. It is done so that people who want to avoid spoilers can do so easily

I hope I'm not the only idiot who's thinking this, but that was impressive! I would have never figured out how to disguise a message like that!

Nah, I also think Dodge This' tech was pretty sweet

I saw that on mIRC a while ago, where the dude types in white ink etc...

(= RLC4L! =)

Hehe...Thanks peeps But I must admit I that I stole the idea from another message board. They even have a UBB spoiler tag enabled so you don't have to write in the HTML yourself.

[spoiler]Let's see if this works.[/spoiler]

Hehe...guess not!

[Edited by Dodge This on June 25, 2001]

Yup, it was a nice touch Dodge!

And no, it is not in the script for this board

If you want to learn the html that Dodge used though just hit the edit button on his post and poof...there you have it

Awesome! That was really cool and thanks for the great caps. CJ is one of my favourite RLC movies!