Change Your Image
poomyatta
Reviews
Channel Island Girls (1999)
For Jackie Lovell Fans Only
This relatively hard to find DVD from the soft core Vivid Studio probably isn't worth the effort of tracking down unless, like me, you're a fan of sexy and talented Jacqueline Lovell. The video was reportedly produced in 1996, just before Ms. Lovell became known as the star of several Full Moon / Surrender Cinema productions like Femalien, Head of the Family, and The Exotic House of Wax. She was working under the name Sara St. James at the time, though Vivid curiously spells her stage name "Sarah" St. James.
Channel Island Girls is perhaps slightly more explicit than most of the work Lovell did for Surrender, though still very much in the soft core range. Basically, she romps around fully nude, oils herself up with suntan lotion and sunbathes, models some lacy lingerie, takes a shower on the deck of a yacht, and at the climax of the video, gets cozy with her costar Selena for a steamy lesbian love scene. The plot, if you can call it that, consists of Selena introducing each segment by describing her vacation adventures to a friend over the phone. There are three other actresses / models in the video too, but Selena is the only cast member with a speaking part. Through most of the video, the soundtrack consists of the usual pulsing mood music. I was a bit disappointed Jacqueline didn't get any dialog since she's a perfectly competent actress - considerably more accomplished than the likes of Selena, I dare say. Of course I know most of the audience for this type of production could care less if there's any dialog at all and the video does deliver plenty of what viewers will want to see: lots of bare skin.
The DVD features an abundance of extras, including an entire second side of clips from other Vivid releases, mostly strip acts and a few other travelogue themed shoots like this one. There's also some amusing behind the scenes footage in which Lovell complains of being cold and having a bad hair day. Incidentally, during these out takes, the director and Selena both refer to her as "Jackie," not "Sara." Ah, the confusing lives of adult video actresses.
Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss (2004)
Sexy Flash with No Substance and a Poorly Cast Leading Lady
If you've never heard of Heidi Fleiss, the enterprising young woman who went from adolescent party girl to high profile prostitute and became Tinseltown's richest and most famous madame within the span of just a few years, this fast paced made for television drama will fill you in on all the sordid details. What it won't do is help you understand people like Fleiss or care in the least abut her or any of her associates. Norman Snider's script offers few insights into the madame's motivations, though to his credit, he wisely avoids the heavy handed moralizing I expected. Director Charles McDougall's constantly moving camera and slick, quick cuts make the movie look like a 90 minute music video. The combined result is a constantly interesting but rarely emotionally engaging tour through Fleiss's world of seduction and betrayal. The film often seems like little more than an excuse to show sexy babes modeling skimpy lingerie, lounging around the pool in their bikinis, or servicing clients in carefully edited softcore sex scenes. It's all entertaining fluff, but I found myself wishing for a bit more substance underneath all the superficial gloss.
The film's biggest problem can be summed up best in just three words: Jamie-Lynn DiScala. This young actress seems competent enough playing the pampered daughter of a mob boss on THE SOPRANOS, but then I doubt that role would be much of a stretch for a lady who was apparently so obsessed with her own appearance she suffered from a type of bulimia for years. To the best of my knowledge, the Fleiss character is DiScala's first serious adult role and I'm sorry to say she doesn't exactly rise to the challenge. Her idea of portraying a confident, calculating woman is to parade through the film wearing the same vapid smirk on her face in practically every single scene. Her performance is so staggeringly unconvincing it drags down the whole production to the dramatic level of a sixth grade classroom play. In an interview in TV GUIDE, DiScala herself openly admits she wasn't able to relate to the Fleiss character. She goes on to say she discussed the film's sexual content with the director and told him `I don't know how I'm going to be able to do this.' She also divulges that during one of the sex scenes, she broke into tears and had to be replaced by a body double, even though no on-screen nudity was required. These confessions are very sweet and precious, but they do beg the obvious question: why would she accept the leading role in a film about a prostitute if she was so nervous about doing erotic scenes? Did she even bother reading the script before signing the contract?
DiScala claims she trimmed down by 15 pounds for the part, an admittedly serious health risk for a former bulimic. But considering how awkward she looks throughout this movie, her torturous physical preparation for the role only reveals how utterly warped her priorities are as an actress. My advice to Ms. DiScala is skip the dieting in the future and instead concentrate on some acting method classes. Or better yet, stick to playing pouty adolescent princesses and leave the serious adult roles for real actresses.
In a way, though, I suppose DiScala's presence in this film is ultimately appropriate. Both she and the movie as a whole look extremely sexy but fail to display one iota of depth.
The Ramrodder (1969)
A minor nudie western classic
When softcore sex films first started to catch on back in the '50s, filmmakers began injecting nudity and sex into every type of plot they could think of. One of the most novel exploitation subgenres that resulted is the nudie western, a type of film that vividly illustrates just how wild the west really was. THE RAMRODDER is a relatively late but noteworthy entry in the realm of naughty westerns.
While returning home to his bride Lucy (Julia Blackburn) after finishing a cattle drive, rancher Rick (Jim Gentry) spies a group of gorgeous Indian maidens frolicking nude in a river. After a saddle-tramp bandit attacks him and leaves him for dead, one of the gals, the luscious Princess Tuwana (Kathy Williams), comes to his aid and befriends him. The two make love in a lake and fall for one another, even though Rick is engaged to Lucy and Tuwana is promised by tribal law to the chief's short-tempered son. When the same scoundrel who assaulted Rick rapes an Indian virgin, Rick gets blamed for the crime and a trio of rebellious young braves vow revenge on the entire white race. It all leads to more violence and an unexpectedly downbeat ending.
Fortunately, the plot never gets in the way of the frequent and mostly gratuitous exploitation scenes, during which Tuwana performs an erotic tribal `Dance of the Virgin' (before her fateful interlude with Rick, of course!), competes against her rival Lucy in a topless catfight, and gets strung up naked by her wrists and whipped. Director Ed Forsyth makes the most of all the nudity, too. During Tuwana's dance, he uses a low angle camera shot that stares straight up into her crotch, and when she wrestles with Lucy, he includes several close ups of the actresses bouncing their big breasts against one another.
Thanks to this fetishistic approach and the presence of Ms. Williams, who doesn't look at all Native American but is drop-dead gorgeous regardless, the movie is a minor exploitation classic. Adding to the film's notoriety, the bandit is played by Bobby Beausoliel, who was arrested in connection with the Manson murders shortly after appearing in this film.
`Ramrodder,' in case you're curious, is a now obscure term for a person who leads a cattle drive. Somehow, though, I have a sneaking suspicion Forsyth might have had more carnal connotations in mind when he chose the title.
Femmine in fuga (1984)
A decent WIP movie with one hot leading lady
This English dubbed Italian / Brazilian co-production opens with a title screen claiming that we're about to be told a true story.
Believing she'll receive a more lenient sentence, a young woman named Angela Duvall (Suzane Carvalho) takes the rap for her addicted brother after he murders a drug lord. We immediately realize Angela's exceptional beauty is going to cause her problems since even on the way to the slammer, a police officer in the prison transport truck lasciviously leers at her gorgeous thighs. She winds up in a Brazilian penitentiary hell hole where she's subjected to the obligatory strip search. The guards don't find any concealed weapons or narcotics on Angela's body, but they do learn from her obvious tan lines that she's apparently been spending a lot of time lately sunbathing in a very skimpy bikini. Naturally, she immediately attracts the unwanted attention of everybody from two feuding prison dykes to the lesbian head matron. During their first meeting, the prison official parts Angela's robe with her billy club to get an eyeful of her breasts, then purrs, `You're very different from the way the papers described you - much better.'
The first half of the plot follows the usual women-in-prison movie formula, with long-suffering Angela enduring an endless series of indignities while a concerned prison doctor (Henri Pagnoncelli) campaigns to prove her innocence. He's up against a tough obstacle, though: his boss, the Warden Bonifacio (Leonardo Jose), is affiliated with the same drug ring as the murder victim and he'll stop at nothing to silence Angela permanently. At one point, three gang members sneak into her cell and nearly succeed in hanging her before the good doctor comes to her rescue. With the help of a big and tough but sympathetic and maternal black inmate, Angela eventually escapes with seven other prisoners during a prison riot. The rest of the film plays out like TEN LITTLE INDIANS: the escapees are picked off one by one as they're pursued through the jungle by the vindictive warden.
Though the film doesn't offer much originality, the production values are a lot higher than you might expect from a foreign made B movie. The plot moves through a nice variety of locations from downtown city streets through tropical jungles to a seaside resort. Many scenes involve impressive numbers of extras, and during the prison break sequence, dozens of them are fully decked out in authentic looking police uniforms, helmets, and riot control shields. In the escape scene, a pair of tank-like vehicles equipped with water cannons show up, and later, the doctor searches for the escapees via helicopter.
But the real reason to watch WOMEN IN FURY is the virtually unknown but ultra-sultry Suzane Carvalho, who provides most of the film's nudity, usually in humiliating scenarios. During Angela's first night in the over-crowded prison cell, she's stripped by a dozen bunkmates and whipped with wet towels to soften her up for the butch queen bee, who then rapes her. When she later refuses to identify her attackers, she gets hosed down with high pressure water, which conveniently tears her robe open and leaves her dripping wet. The steamiest scene is an erotic lesbian encounter when the horny head matron ravishes Angela in her office. The sequence runs for several minutes in length and includes full nudity from both actresses and lots of passionate close-ups.
Fans impressed by Ms. Carvalho will also want to check out her only other known film appearance, STRANDED IN DINOSAUR VALLEY (another Italian / Brazilian co-production made the same year, 1985), which in spite of its title features no dinosaurs but more of Suzie's magnificent body.
Violenza in un carcere femminile (1982)
Lots of titles but not many thrills
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** This Italian made movie must have developed a serious identity crisis by now: over the years, it's been released in various edited versions under at least half a dozen titles, including `Chicks in Chains,' `Women's Penitentiary 4,' and `Caged Women,' a name shared by three other women in prison flicks to date. A couple of the titles, like `Emanuelle in Hell,' reveal what the others obscure: this is in fact another installment in the long running series of `Black Emanuelle' softcore sex flicks, all starring the Indonesian-born exotic beauty Laura Gemser. By the way, the original BLACK EMANUELLE (1975) itself was an attempt to cash in on the legendary adult classic EMMANUELLE (1974), which starred sexy Sylvia Kristel and spawned a string of its own sequels along with a few other racially varied imitations, including YELLOW EMANUELLE (1976).
Once again, Gemser plays our favorite globe-trotting, free-loving journalist, this time writing an expose on the harsh conditions in a notorious women's penitentiary. She deliberately has herself arrested and sentenced on fake drug charges so she can infiltrate the institution and get the inside scoop. She certainly has no problem gathering plenty of dirt for her report. The prison facilities are especially grungy and the kinky warden (lovely Australian actress Lorraine De Selle) gets off on watching the lesbian inmates have sex with one another. When they're not in the mood, she dispatches her guards to rape them. Unfortunately, Emanuelle has neglected to notify the authorities or anybody else of her plans, which isn't exactly the brightest of ideas. With no one to vouch for her innocence, she's left trapped with no way out just like the other pisoners.
In an ill-advised act of defiance, she dumps a bucket of sewage from the toilet on a guard and gets thrown in a dungeon where she's nibbled on by rats that inflict fake looking wounds. Later, the warden torments her with one of the weirdest torture techniques I've ever seen: a huge brass bell is lowered over her body and repeatedly clanged! In a standard cliche of the genre that dates back at least to 1971's THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, she's eventually befriended by the prison doctor (played by Gemser's regular co-star and real life husband, Gabriele Tinti). Oddly, there's also a portion of the prison reserved for men, where a shrill voiced gay prisoner provides stereotypical comic relief.
Throughout the '70, '80s, and '90s, Director Bruno Mattei pumped out a bunch of low rent exploitation quickies ranging from Nazi atrocities such as S.S. EXTERMINATION LOVE CAMP (1977) to splatter flicks like ZOMBIE INFERNO (1981). He had helmed a couple of previous Black Emanuelle sequels dating back to 1978 and was probably running out of steam for the series when he came up with the inspired idea of injecting the popular character into the time-tested women in prison scenario. A familiar heroine in a desperate situation should have been a winning exploitation combination but oddly, the film largely fails to deliver either the violence and suspense of most WIP movies or the eroticism of the typical Black Emanuelle film. Of course Ms. Gemser does show off her pert little body in several nude scenes, including one in which she's raped in the infirmary by the corrupt prison inspector, and De Selle contributes some partial nudity during a voyeuristic sex scene. Somehow, though, the rest of the film is a bit too low key to generate much excitement.
Nevertheless, Mattei apparently liked the approach well enough to repeat it practically verbatim the following year. Emanuelle winds up behind bars again (with Tinti and De Selle once more on hand) in the next installment of the series, WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE (1983). It's more violent than its predecessor but is probably the only film Gemser ever made in which she manages to keep her clothes on from start to finish.
Caged Heat (1974)
Possibly the all-time ultimate WIP movie classic
Arguably the finest women in prison (WIP) film ever made, CAGED HEAT proves that even a trash exploitation film can aspire to decent artistic values. Jackie (Erica Gavin), an accomplice in a drug related crime, is sent to a southern penitentiary run by an oppressive, wheelchair-bound warden (Barbara Steele). Jackie's cell mate Lavelle (Cheryl Rainbeuax Smith) suffers from suicidal nightmares while another prisoner, Pandora (Ella Reid), is reprimanded for entertaining her fellow inmates with a mildly lewd vaudeville act and placed in solitary confinement. Her loyal friend Belle (Roberta Collins) begins sneaking through the ventilation ducts to bring her food from the kitchen until she's caught when she surprises an elderly staff member who abruptly dies of a heart attack. Meanwhile, the prison bully Maggie (Juanita Brown) picks a fight with Jackie and gets them both in hot water. Though the warden is a bit stern, the real threat turns out to be the demented prison doctor (Warren Miller). He subjects Jackie and Maggie to illegal electric shock therapy and prescribes a more permanent `cure' for Belle: corrective brain surgery, which he intends to perform with a Black and Decker power drill (!). Jackie and Maggie finally work out their differences and manage to escape in a highjacked prison truck. But Jackie can't bring herself to abandon Lavelle, Pandora, and especially the doomed Belle. With Maggie's help, she plans a daring prison break to rescue her friends.
Jonathan Demme's script provides believable characters and several imaginative dream sequences, and his direction is filled with impressive camera angles and novel wipes and dissolves. He even commissioned an appropriately down and dirty soundtrack from blues legend John Cale. Because of these frequent artistic flourishes, CAGED HEAT is one of the few WIP movies to win the respect of critics. In spite of the abundant exploitation and nudity, the film unexpectedly also won the approval of some feminist groups who praised its positive depiction of `Woman Power.'
A hugely appealing cast helps the movie immeasurably. Ms. Steele earned a reputation as the original `Scream Queen' with her edgy performances in horror classics like Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY and Roger Corman's THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (both 1961). She's cast largely against type here as the prudish warden, but a dream sequence in which she performs a raucous Vegas style dance number wearing glittering tights and sheer stockings reveals her character's repressed eroticism, a quality Steele projected in all her roles. Leading lady Ms. Gavin made her screen debut several years earlier in one of the first hardcore adult features, Russ Meyer's VIXEN! (1968), which was a gutsy career move in an era when many actors were arrested for performing sex acts on film, then still a punishable crime. The petite Ms. Smith enjoyed a busy career in exploitation films during the '70s and early '80s; she tragically died of hepatitis in 2002. But beautiful blue-eyed Ms. Collins, who had already appeared in two previous WIP movies (THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and WOMEN IN CAGES, both made in 1971), steals the show as the endearingly faithful Belle. The character takes considerable personal risk to help her friend Pandora and ultimately suffers for her effort. When we see her molested by the perverted doctor and learn that she's scheduled to become his next lobotomy victim, the news is genuinely shocking and upsetting, which nicely sets up Jackie and Maggie's race against the clock to save her. In other words, Belle ultimately becomes the emotional focus of the entire plot, and Ms. Collins handles the pivotal role with winning charisma and grace. She went on to appear in countless more cult B movies, including a fourth WIP film, VENDETTA (1986).
Demme of course went on to even bigger and better things, becoming one of the most successful directors of his generation. He won a Best Director Academy Award in 1991 for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, which also won the Best Picture Oscar.
The Big Bird Cage (1972)
An amusing WIP film parody with Grier and Haig at their best
This was the third women in prison (WIP) movie produced by Roger Corman's New World Pictures within just two years, beginning with THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and WOMEN IN CAGES, both released in 1971. In spite of the similar titles, there's no narrative connection between BIRD CAGE and DOLL HOUSE, though the films were later shrewdly retitled `Women's Penitentiary I' and `II' by distributors who hoped each film would capitalize on the other's popularity. Director Jack Hill, who also helmed DOLL HOUSE, says Corman hired him to make a sequel, but since the WIP genre had already become formulaic and predictable, Hill played up the humor and delivered a parody instead. Like DOLL HOUSE, the film features Pam Grier and Sid Haig in prominent roles and was shot in the Philippines. This time, Hill makes much better use of both actors as well as the beautiful locations.
Perhaps the movie is best remembered as the screen debut of Anitra Ford, the exotically beautiful model who turned quite a few heads as well as price tags on television's THE PRICE IS RIGHT game show. She plays Terry, an American tourist visiting a Central American banana republic where her indiscreet flirtations with the prime minister get her in trouble with the governing party. She's sent to a bamboo shack prison for women staffed exclusively by gay guards and centered around a towering, archaic-looking sugar cane mill, the `big bird cage' of the title. The warden (Andy Centenera) designed the structure himself and is more than willing to sacrifice a few of his charges now and then to keep it in working order. At one point, an unfortunate prisoner is crushed to death when she's forced to crawl under the contraption to reposition a gigantic, misaligned cog.
Prisoners who lose their wits are permanently confined in a cage for `crazies' while those who attempt to escape are tracked down by attack dogs. Regardless, Terry makes a run for it and nearly gets gang raped in the process. When the effeminate head guard Rocco (Vic Diaz, who has been called `the Peter Lorre of the Philippines') catches up to her as she's being molested by half a dozen local men, he dryly comments, `Why doesn't that ever happen to me?' As punishment for her attempted escape, Terry's left hanging from a rope tied to her long, dark tresses. Talk about having a bad hair day!
The other inmates are the usual batch of rag tag stereotypes. There's the butch top dog (Teda Bracci), the sex starved nymph (Candice Roman), and a pathetic new kid (Marissa Delgado) who's befriended and championed by the heroine. The most original character is an Amazonian lesbian (Karen McKevic) who's supposedly so violent she must be chained to her bed, though she looks more like an unusually tall anorexic. She seems to have been included strictly for laughs: in one especially silly scene, she smears chicken fat over her body hoping to slip past her other cell mates so she can get her hands on a teasing tormentor.
Curiously, the most entertaining parts of the film don't involve the prisoners but rather a nearby group of revolutionaries led by Blossom (Grier) and Django (Haig). Neither actor has ever been more appealing in any role and they work brilliantly together. In the opening scene, they pose as musicians in a local band to burglarize a seedy nightclub and Grier actually sings on the soundtrack. Later, they wrestle in the mud before kissing and making up. As they noisily make love in a hut, another bandit ruefully comments, `What an army we could raise if we only had a lot of women.... Where could we find [so many] women to steal?' Thus are the unlikely seeds of a prison break sewn!
Haig is hilarious in the scenes where Django `camps it up' flirting with the guards to weasel his way into the prison staff and Grier leads the eventual riot with her usual gusto. The film features lots of action including a fiery finale. There's also quite a bit of nudity, though unfortunately only a few brief glimpses of foxy Ms. Ford in the buff. She shows a bit more skin in her next two films, INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS and STACEY (both 1973).
An Unexpected Love (2003)
A strong message delivered by a very weak drama
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I really wanted to like this movie about a mother and former wife named Kate (Leslie Hope) who falls in love with her female employer Mac (Wendy Crewson), forcing her to face her true emotions as well as the less than supportive reactions of family and friends. The film's message of tolerance is certainly timely and the production seemed to have a lot going for it. When the show aired on the Lifetime Channel (under the title AN UNEXPECTED LOVE), advertisements prominently mentioned Writer and Director Lee Rose, who is apparently highly respected from previous projects, though I haven't seen them. I have seen some of Ms. Crewson other films, though, and I think she's one of the most vastly underrated actresses in the business. I figured it would be a treat seeing her play a character so different from her typical roles and sure enough, she shines as usual. I had no problem seeing how anyone, male or female, could fall in love with the spunky but soft-hearted Mac. The problem is that it takes two to Tango, as they say. No story about any serious relationship can work without two characters we can believe in and identify with equally. Unfortunately, THIS MUCH I KNOW gives us only one. The character Kate, who carries the all important burden of making us feel what it's like to experience a homosexual attraction for the first time, is so poorly and unappealingly drawn nobody could possibly relate to her as a human being, let alone as a lesbian.
Sadly, the script utterly scuttles any empathy we might have felt for Kate long before the relationship even begins. Barely five minutes into the film, she announces to her husband that she wants a divorce. Though a few earlier scenes revealed him to be the standard stereotypical workaholic who never devotes enough time to his family, the couple seem to be on amiable terms. Because the script fails to show us any of the tension between the two or even a single attempt on Kate's part to work out the problems with her husband, we're left feeling her decision to end the marriage is impulsive and premature.
Though Kate briefly expresses concern for her two children, without hardly a pause she entrusts them by day to her stern mother who is so obnoxiously caustic we could easily imagine the plot evolving into a very different sort of message movie about abused children. Meanwhile, Kate concentrates on finding employment. We see her apply for two jobs, one in a fashion shop, the other in a beauty salon. Each time she's turned down for the unfortunate but perfectly understandable reason that she's got no experience, and each time she responds by personally insulting her interviewer. Finally, while sulking outside of a real estate office, a concerned employee approaches her, which triggers Kate to verbally assault her with an angry tirade about how she gave up so much to raise a family and is now unfairly being denied the chance to start a career. Instead of telling her to go sob on someone else's shoulder, the patient employee amazingly invites her in for a cup of coffee. Then even more incredibly, the office manager Mac offers her a job as a receptionist on the spot. Kate expresses her suspicion that she's being offered the job out of sympathy, but Mac insists that she really needed to hire a receptionist. Mere minutes later, though, we find out that big hearted Mac has been putting up with an obviously incompetent employee for years simply because he's the brother of a former lover who died. In other words, yes, Kate probably did get the job purely out of sympathy! Later, while Mac is trying to close a deal on a piece of property, Kate persuades the reluctant customers by making a vague comment about the house's inferior foundation, something she later says she picked up watching Bob Villa. This essentially underhanded tactic impresses Mac so much she insists that Kate complete a real estate exam then promptly promotes her to a full-time agent. So far, then, we've seen that our protagonist is shallow, self-pitying, and anxious to blame the entire world for her problems, yet she's not too proud to take advantage of a kind hearted soul who offers her a job out of pity and is perfectly willing to use deceptive techniques to advance her career - not exactly the most admirable heroine.
We finally get to the meat of the plot when Kate becomes depressed one evening as her children spend their first night away from home with her ex. She turns up on Mac's doorstep looking for moral support but suddenly becomes passionate. Up until this point in the film, Kate has expressed nothing but mild curiosity about Mac's sexual preference and her abrupt display of affection comes completely out of the blue. Even Mac seems to find the unexpected change of attitude unbelievable - she tries to convince Kate that she's simply upset and mistakenly confusing a need for compassion for genuine passion. Eventually, though, Kate convinces her boss that she's sincere and the two finally become lovers. The rest of the plot focuses on her attempts to deal with all the expected obstacles: the negative reaction of her friends, the confusion of her daughter, the frustration of her ex-husband, and the outspoken disapproval of her mother when they learn of the relationship. The ex even threatens legal action to take custody of the children away from her and the mother practically disowns her. These developments would have been powerfully disturbing if the script had succeeded in establishing Kate as a likeable, sympathetic character. As it stands, though, the obstacles she faces are only frustrating in principle. They don't resonate with the viewer emotionally because the character failed to make any emotional connections.
********SPOLIER ALERT*********
The script makes one last misstep by superficially resolving the problems just in time for a happy ending. The ex-husband suddenly has a change of heart and drops his legal actions, the daughter works out her confusion and accepts Kate's decision, and even the frigid mother grudgingly comes around, at least a bit. Too bad real life isn't like the movies, where everybody always lives happily ever after. On the other hand, maybe it's more of a shame that films claiming to deal seriously with socially difficult issues ultimately cop out and paint a rosy but false picture of the situation.
Much of the problem with the film, I'm sorry to say, is an extremely uneven performance by Leslie Hope. She's fairly convincing when the script requires her to boldly express defiance or rebellion, as during the angry speech outside the realty office. But in the scenes that require some sensitivity or passion, she projects all the warmth and intimacy of a box of frozen fish sticks. It's almost as if somebody told Ms. Hope she was making a socially important film and she responded by focusing exclusively on the message while neglecting to get in touch with or understand her character as a human being. I never believed for a moment that Kate really felt anything for Mac, or even her children, or anyone else for that matter. She comes across as a walking, talking billboard for gay and women's rights but fails to give us any reason to care about her character in the least.
There's no question THIS MUCH I KNOW delivers a message society needs to hear. But good drama should do more than just make people think about an important issue. It should also make them feel the issue. With a better written script and a more sensitive leading lady, the film could have made a real and lasting impact on the viewer. Instead, I suspect the lesson of THIS MUCH I KNOW will be forgotten as quickly as the movie itself.