4/10
Depress fest
3 October 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Jennie Garth's Lifetime movie was scandalizing me more and more with every campy, trailer-trashy minute (she's only 16, the age for statutory rape in Pennsylvania in 1981 was 14, and the Ted Bundy-looking love interest paid her step-father $500 for her!), but, as is usually the case, the naïve, teen, falling in love stuff was my favorite part (her rebellious makeover consisted solely of taking off her headband), and then it became increasingly un-fun as Jennie's 44-year-old boyfriend becomes less humorously abusive (shoving her nose in her messes, and telling her to diet so he doesn't have to trade her in for a younger model, which would make the new girl about 8), and more and more of an intolerable monster. It was only hurt by the fact that Jennie can act. It delved into an even darker place as Alexis Arquette (not in drag) confessed to a teen friend that while he was in jail he was passed around and raped every day! Then, my 8-year-old theory comes true when Ted Bundy starts molesting the young girls that Jennie baby-sits! Then, Jennie gets pregnant and doesn't want an abortion, so Ted Bundy threatens "to take a coat hanger to it"! Once Ted is murdered, Alexis takes the stand to tell about the game they played called 101 Ways to Kill Bruce Kellogg, and Jennie gets 25 years in prison. Woman-hating-judge.

The only positive thing I can say for this movie is that I have never seen people go to the skating rink so much, and since skating rinks represent complete and total bliss to me, skate Jennie, skate! This was not the laughing at other people's misery and stupidity fest that I hoped it would be, and I think Cinnamon Toast Crunch is thinking the same thing, because listening to a detailed description of a husband threatening to beat his children (one of whom happened to be Haley Joel Osment) to death then fading to a commercial that declares, "This program is brought to you by Cinnamon Toast Crunch," doesn't make me crave cinnamon and sugar. My theory is CTC's company General Mills thought this was the story of a member of the Kellogg's Cereal family, and they were trying to be subversive by advertising during it. Boy, did that backfire.

Musical montages: none, a sure sign that a "film" means to be taken seriously. Boooooo
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