Christmas Cupid aka The 900th Ripoff

I have a confession to make: I have approximately 900 ABC Family movies in my Netflix queue right now and a good portion of them are Christmas movies. You should see the look on my boyfriend’s face when he comes home and finds me curled up with a holiday movie in August.

“Christmas Cupid” centers on a publicist named Sloane (Christina Milan, “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”)who has her hands full. Not only does she have to baby-sit an out of control young actress, Catlin (Ashley Benson, “Pretty Little Liars”), but she also has to deal with working with her ex-boyfriend and sleeping with her boss. Catlin’s newest movie, Snow Angel, is set for a Christmas release date, and her boyfriend/boss Andrew keeps riding her about making it perfect.

Sloane is so focused on her job that she doesn’t realize that people around her have pretty sucky lives. Her best friend recently opened a restaurant with her husband but business is so bad that she’s about to shut it down. Her mother wants nothing more than to spend Christmas with her, and takes her shopping without mentioning that her most recent husband isn’t coming home for the holidays.

Her life gets turned upside down when Catlin goes out partying, chokes on a martini olive, and dies on the dance floor. Catlin comes back to haunt Sloane and make her realize what her shitty decisions mean to others. Sloane manages to cross paths with Patrick (Chad Michael Murray, “One Tree Hill”), the love of her college years. She runs into him in the hospital where he works as a doctor when she needs confirmation of Catlin’s death.

Catlin introduces her to Brad, who was her first boyfriend. Brad serves as the ghost of Christmas past, taking her on a tour of her old relationships. We learn that Patrick got a good job in Iowa, but she ran away and left him a note because she couldn’t deal with moving, even though he was about to propose. She just keeps trading boyfriends for someone richer or more powerful. Catlin tells her that Andrew is cheating on her and shows her proof that money and power mean nothing.

Sloane confronts Andrew who admits that he did cheat but that they would be a real power couple. She dumps him and asks Patrick out on a date. Even though she thinks that he could be the one, she decides to marry Andrew when he interrupts their date with a proposal.

Her co-worker Jason shows up that night because he was her most recent boyfriend. He shows her that her restaurant owning friend is almost broke, and he shows her how sad her mom is sitting at home. She also gets the chance to see how sad Patrick was when she ran off with Andrew, and she learns that Andrew was talking on the phone to someone even as he proposed.

Sloane attempts to make things better, but when that fails, Santa appears. He shows her the future. Her mother has a house full of dogs because her husband left her, her best friend now works as a waitress because her restaurant failed, and she is in the hospital dying alone. Sloane argues with Santa until he reveals himself as Andrew. He tells her that they married, but she eventually left him and took part of his business.

When Sloane wakes the next day, she makes up with her mom and drops her off at a friend’s house. She gets to Catlin’s memorial/movie premier in time to drop gift certificates to her friend’s restaurant in everyone’s gift bags, and she even lets some of her employees go home to spend time with their families.

After breaking up with Andrew, she makes up with Jason and apologizes for using him. She then rushes to see Patrick, apologizes to him, and they kiss. As the movie ends, she takes him to her friend’s house, and they all have dinner together. Sorry for the lack of snark, but I totally liked this one!

Family Sins

Kirstie Alley, you are one cold-hearted bitch.

So our dear sweet Kirstie plays Brenda Gleck, a woman who opens her home to foster kids out of the goodness of her heart. When the movie opens, Brenda is celebrating Mother's Day with a shit ton of kids. Everyone looks super happy and glad to be there, except for the one girl in the corner who just sits quietly, holding her child. After opening dozens of expensive gifts, daddy Alley asks the girl what she got for momma and proceeds to flip out because it's the most important day of the year! Kirstie calms him down and says it doesn't really matter.

Later in the movie, the sad chick is revealed as Marie, a foster child. She escapes with her son and tries to get some help. She keeps telling them that Brenda and her husband did horrible stuff to her, but no one will listen. They keep pointing out that the local newspaper did a story on what a great mother Brenda is so it must all be in her mind.

A few flashbacks reveal that Brenda is even crazier than previously thought. She and her husband own a bunch of rental properties and when people won't listen, she just sets their homes on fire and collects the insurance money. One particularly bad situation comes about when one of her tenants complains about roaches. Brenda can't be bothered to fix it, so the woman calls the health department. Three days later, her house goes up in flames. Brenda conveniently shows up, yelling about her white trash tenant ruining her precious home.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that she teachers her kids how to shoplift? Marie remembers getting caught outside a store and Brenda slapping her in front of the manager to make herself look better. When we see her taking back her Mother's Day gifts without any receipts, we quickly discover that her kids just keep stealing.

Brenda is not a big fan of landlord-tenant law either. When people can't pay or whatever, she just tosses them out and steals their stuff. They literally have a basement full of stuff belonging to people who rented from them before. She's pretty defensive of her “real” kids too. When her son-in-law decides that he can't handle this whackadoo family anymore, he takes off and files for full custody of his kids. Brenda gets her son to kidnap him, lock him in the basement, and beat the shit out of him until he agrees to be a good son-in-law again.

Then we have poor Nadine. Nadine was a friend of Brenda's who completely lost her shit when her boyfriend/husband took off and left her with a baby. Brenda lets her move into their home and help out around the house to pay her way. Help out around the house is code for “do what I say or we will rape you and beat you.” Nadine is also Marie's mom. One day when they leave her working outside, she runs away. A cop finds her, calls Brenda, and they run to get her. Once she goes back, they lock her in the basement again and beat her with an extension cord. Can I just say that seeing Kirstie Alley berate someone for folding towels wrong is the kind of thing that gives me nightmares?

Marie tries explaining to her mother what's going on, but her mom is super confused. Even after Brenda goes to jail, Nadine keeps asking about her. She also talks about how loving the family was and how one boy promised to take care of her daughter, even as he was raping her.

Marie goes to a DA, but he doesn't move fast enough for her so she goes to the press. They interview the Glecks and Brenda helpfully brings out the newspaper clipping about what a great foster mother she is. Marie then flashes back to the moment when she learned she was pregnant. Brenda kept calling her fat, and she started beating the crap out of her when Marie said she was pregnant. Her son jumped in the middle, and I'm pretty sure that Brenda's husband knocked her up. Another site said it was the son, but Brenda asks her husband if it's true and he kind of shrugs and goes back to eating his cereal, so I am pegging him as the baby daddy.

The DA finally gets off his ass and they raid the house, finding Nadine and a bunch of stolen merchandise in the basement. The “bad” son-in-law tells him what he knows and they lock up a bunch of the family members. That doesn't stop Brenda though because she calls one of her guys and gives him a coded message to either threaten or kill Marie. No worries though because she totally gets prison time and so do her sons and husband.

Beauty & The Briefcase

I should have known that this movie would be bad, but I totally have a crush on Michael McMillian (“The Hills Have Eyes 2,” “What I Like About You”). While I love him, the movie also stars Hillary Duff who I secretly can't stand.

So the Duffster plays Lane, a completely shallow and obsessed writer who only thinks about looking good and finding the perfect boyfriend. When she goes to see Kate (Jamie Pressly, “My Name is Earl”), the editor of Cosmopolitan, she learns that her newest article is a dud. They don't need any more of her crap, so she's out of a job. Suddenly, she comes up with the idea to get a job in the financial/business world and write an article about all the men she dates.

After creating a fake resume, they give her a shot on the computer software. Since she has no idea what she's doing, she spills coffee on the power supply and knocks power out on the whole floor. The hiring manager somehow decides to give her job anyway, even though she didn't prove that she can do the work!

On her first day of work, she meets her boss Tom (McMillian). He's a total by the board kind of guy, the type of guy who talks, walks, eats, and sleeps business. He teaches her hand motions that he can do from his office to tell her what she needs to do without wasting time with a phone call. Naturally she forgets it all, standing up and twirling when he does one motion because she thinks that he wants to check out her outfit.

None of that matters though because she gets to meet a bunch of guys. Since this movie is apparently set in the 1940s, the only women in the world are secretaries and wives. There are literally no other women in her department, so all the guys fall all over themselves to ask her out. Duffster also has a long list of traits that she wants in her perfect man. She meets one guy who seems great on paper, but he's a total dud in person.

One night, she meets Liam (Chris Carmack, “The O.C.,” “Shark Night”) and he seems perfect. He looks great, makes her laugh, and even has a cute Australian accent. She decides to use the dud in her article but actually write about all her nights when Liam. Unfortunately, she then discovers that Liam is an actor who works at a restaurant as a waiter. He and his buddy take turns covering for each other, making girls think that they are who they say they are.

Let me point out here that he lied about a few things, but he hits everything else on her list. She really likes him, they have great chemistry, and everyone she knows likes him. Despite all that, she breaks up with him and decides that she absolutely cannot ever see him again.

Tom accidentally comes across a copy of her article and flips out. He cannot believe that (a) she would lie to him the entire time she worked there and (b) that she would write about her sex life with a co-worker. He calls her and the dud into his office, and the dud is naturally confused because they only had two dates.

Lane gets fired, but she gets her article back. Kate thinks the article is so great that she shows her a mock up of the next issue, which has her article as one of its cover stories. When Kate casually asks about Tom, Lane has no clue what she's talking about. Kate wants a follow up story about their relationship, which confuses the Duffster because she never thought of him in that way. Following Kate's advice, she rushes back to the office, finds Tom, and plants one on him. And I guess they live happily every after.

WTF? When the movie first started, I figured that they would end up together because of the cover for Beauty & the Briefcase. After like an hour of them barely spending any time together, I figured I was wrong. They literally have zero chemistry together and rarely spend time in the same room. I guess she traded the hot guy she shared amazing chemistry with for her former boss.

Two Babies: Switched at Birth

I watched this movie under the title “Mistaken Identity,” but I love, love, love the name it originally aired under “Two Babies: Switched at Birth.” The original title somehow sounds more like a made-for-TV masterpiece.

When Sarah (Melissa Gilbert) goes into labor, her husband rushes her to the hospital. Approximately 30 seconds later, we learn that they are “city folk” who only came to the country to go antiquing. Why would you go shopping when you're that close to labor? Better yet, what are you still doing out when it's pitch black at night?

Anyway, Linda (Patricia Arquette) goes into labor at the same time and conveniently, the two woman share a room. Sarah and James are super rich and Sarah puts her foot into her mouth when she asks Linda about her husband. As if her lack of a ring wasn't enough proof, Linda calmly explains that she's knocked up and single. After giving birth, Sarah notices that her kids looks a little off, but the nurse assures her that it's her kid, so she goes home to the city.

Darryl, aka Linda's spawn's sperm, pops up in town just in time to complain that he doubts the kid is his because he looks nothing like him. Linda doesn't want child support or anything else from him, but he still wants a blood test anyone. This guy is such a dick that he's worried about people calling him the dad around town, despite the fact that everyone knows he was sleeping with her and left town when she got pregnant.

Linda gets the news that (a) Darryl's DNA doesn't match the baby and (b) surprise! the DNA doesn't match hers either. Realizing that the babies were switched at the hospital, she decides to call Sarah. The last time she called her, Sarah was too busy with her big city life to deal with some chick from a hick town. After talking things over, Sarah and her husband agree to do a DNA test, which reveals that yup, the babies were totally switched at birth.

Instead of deciding to keep the kids separated forever or possibly switching them back, they decide to get together constantly and mope over their real child. Linda is a total free spirit who *gasp* feeds her son apple juice. The horror! Sarah's son cannot possibly have any type of sugar, so she actually dilutes his apple juice with a ton of water. Um, they made natural apple juice even in the 90s lady.

The little happy family thing kind of works, up to the point where Darryl starts sniffing around again. After dating and boffing like bunnies, he asks Linda to move in with him. Then he drops a bombshell, he wants to sue for custody of his real son. This basically means that they would keep custody of the other kid and have custody of their own.

Did I forget to mention that the two families are getting a huge settlement from the hospital? Yeah, that's why Darryl started coming around again. Darryl explains that he loves his real son, up to the point where the lawyer tells him that they won't get any money from the hospital if they get custody. Apparently, the law would consider everything okey-dokey if they got custody. I guess the 2+ years they spent raising another child doesn't count for anything.

Sarah realizes that Darryl is a dick, but of course Linda doesn't want to hear it. Sarah and James randomly show up at a birthday party for their real son and get into it with Darryl. Plus, Sarah finds out that she's pregnant (again) and is super busy with that. Ugh, so finally after like 40 minutes, Linda realizes that Darryl is a dick. In the process, James offers to buy her a house near them in the city and flat out give it to her, which is a deal I would totally take. The two families finally decide to help each other raise the kids and live happily ever after.

BTW, this is supposedly based on a true story. Given that there were quite a few stories like this, I don't know if it's based on a specific case or just some random conglomeration.

Mayor Cupcake

I am a cupcake fanatic. At one point, I made a new cupcake recipe every week for three months straight and usually made multiple batches every week. I saw this one at Family Video, but I couldn't bring myself to pay to rent it. Luckily, it showed up on Netflix, but unluckily, it's not a TV movie. Based on the cover, the name, and the acting, it seems like something that should play on ABC Family.

Lea Thompson (“Back to the Future”) is Mary, a woman living in a small town who takes pleasure in baking cupcakes and cakes for the local diner. Her daughter decided to put her on the ballot for the upcoming mayoral election. I know what you're thinking, but she actually loses the election. The mayor suddenly dies and since she was the runner-up, they appoint her mayor.

Yes, it's a ridiculous premise and it becomes even more ridiculous when it turns out that the mayor bankrupted the town. Mary swings into action, selling off police cars and doing whatever it takes to keep the town afloat. Judd Nelson (“The Breakfast Club”) pretty much sleepwalks through the entire movie. He shows up as her husband, wearing his signature sunglasses, just to make random comments and seem like he supports her.

Bottom line: skip it and reach for a real cupcake.

Just Ask My Children

Scott (Jeffrey Nordling) and Brenda (Virginia Madsen) are just about the two most normal people in the world. Unfortunately, their good friends ask Scott to be a character witness in an upcoming court case, which is when everything goes to shit. The mother/mother-in-law of that couple is a total whack job, who believes that they are molesting their children. Once the Kniffen family helps out, she decides they must be crazy molesters too.

Cut to the Kniffens losing their kids. This is one of those ultimate made-for-TV moments with the cops rushing in and dragging the kids off as Brenda screams in horror. A few months of constantly browbeating the kids and they testify in court that their parents did stuff like hang them upside down while their mom went down on them. The fact that they never found any signs of physical or sexual abuse means nothing because these kids were molested!

Sadly, the movie then covers like 10+ years in 30 minutes or so. Brenda and Scott write letters to each other, vowing to stay together no matter what. Since they were sentenced to more than 1,000 years in federal prison, this seems kind of sad. Brenda also gets into it with a feisty black woman in prison. The woman looks like she could kick Brenda's ass with one arm tied behind her back, but since Brenda no longer gives a shit about her life, she totally takes her down.

Brandon and Brian (the kids) grow up a little and start wondering about what actually happened. Brian realizes that they were never molested, while Brandon joins the military and thinks that it must have happened. Can I just point out here that Dan Byrd (“The Hills Have Eyes,” “Easy A”) plays Brian at one point and Gregory Smith (“Everwood”) plays him as a teen. Oh and Scott Bailey plays older Brian. Not only does he have the same name as a guy I went to school with, but he was totally on “Guiding Light”!

Anyway, Brandon doesn't want to admit that it never happened because that would mean that him and his crazy brother put their parents away for over a decade. Their grandparents spend years defending the parents and trying to get them released, but the court rules that they can never, ever talk to the kids about what happened.

Brandon and Brian finally admit that nothing happened, which means nothing to the DA. It doesn't even matter when they learn that other cases probably came about because of crazy in-laws and a wackado lawyer. The poor grandma dies, but others keep pressing the story. Finally, the Kniffens get released from prison and I guess reunited with their kids. Sadly enough, the movie tells us that the other couple are still behind bars.

Unspeakable Acts

I love when a top-billed star only turns up long after the movie starts. Since Jill Clayburgh is the top-billed star, you might think that she would show up before the 30 minute mark. Then again, reading the synopsis, I had no idea that Bebe Neuwirth was in this one at all.

Okay, so Bebe Neuwirth (aka Lilith from “Cheers”) is a new mother, or at least that's the way it seems. Of course the fact that her kid can walk, talk and carry on conversations makes me think that she's a little older. It's even more confusing when one of her friends makes a comment about how it's the first time she ever left the kid with a sitter. Seriously? Even the psycho moms I knew left their kids after a few months.

Anyway, Lilith is off having fun at the tennis courts when she gets a call from her sitter. Since there are no courts in her town, she drives the 60+ minutes back home in a hurry, and all because her sitter says that her kid has diaper rash. No, not diaper rash! Lilith quickly explains to her friend that her daughter never, ever gets diaper rash. She's so traumatized that she doesn't even want to go for a cup of coffee; she just wants to get her kid home asap.

Cut to a few weeks later and her sitter calls her at the courts again. Lilith starts getting suspicious, and she notices another woman who used the same sitter. Lilith confronts her, which leads to random woman admitting that her kid told her some disturbing things about what happened there. She decided to take her own kid out without warning any other parents about the stories.

Lilith meets some other parents and they discover that the sitter molested their kids. Enter Laurie and Joseph Braga, a married couple who work with kids. BTW, these two are totally real people who worked on a number of child abuse cases. Laurie can “talk” to kids, even infants by posing questions in the right way and working with them. One of the prosecutors agrees to work with her. He gives a classic TV movie line, saying, “you teach me how to talk to kids, and I'll teach you the law.”

It turns out that the sitter's boyfriend is a convicted pedophile. His parole officer let him stay with her because they promised he wouldn't interact with the children. You can see how well that worked. He says he didn't do anything and lame girlfriend sides with him. She finally admits that she left him alone with the kids and once, she even saw him with a naked boy in the bedroom.

This is based on the true story of the 80's Miami`s Country Walk Day Care Center child abuse, but I literally didn't know that until I started reading about it. The movie makes it seem like this was just a few kids abused by one woman and her husband/boyfriend.

It's actually one of those gross cases where you don't want to know the details. “Unspeakable Acts” glosses over most of those moments, except for a few scenes where one of the young boys admits that the couple made him have sex with some of the babies. I wish I could make fun of this one, but except for the fact that it doesn't hold up well in terms of clothing/sets/props, it's still a pretty good TV movie.

Strange Voices

I had a lot of different choices for my first ever blog post, but there was something about “Strange Voices” that called to me. What could be better than a 1980's TV movie starring Valerie Harper and Nancy McKeon?

Nicole (Nancy McKeon, “The Facts of Life”) is the kind of sibling that you have. You totally know the one. She has the hot boyfriend, does great in school, treats her parents well, never fights, and goes above and beyond all the time. After a weekend at home, she heads back to college and everything seems fine.

Then, she catches her boyfriend and roommate having an innocent conversation. She completely snaps, packs up all her stuff, and tells them that “they” told her about their affair. The bestie and boyfriend are super confused, but basically kind of stand around and watch her go.

When Nicole comes home, no one wants to admit that she snapped. She destroys one of the computers that her dad uses for work because she can hear it talking to her. One of the best moments in “Strange Voices” comes when her parents throw a fancy dinner party. Nicole decides that everyone is out to get her, so she proceeds to ruin it for everyone. She even tells one woman that her husband is having an affair.

Since this is a Valerie Harper TV movie, you just know that she's going to take a stand. Her stand basically involves her checking out different hospitals, complaining that no one can help her daughter, and whining that no one understands her. Nicole's little sister Lisa actually does most of the work. She constantly gets stuck taking care of her sister, while her mother runs around town like a crazy person.

“Strange Voices” is a starring vehicle for McKeon, so her character is the focus of the movie. She stops taking her meds, which leads to a breakdown in the middle of the highway. She also goes back to school and wanders into a coffee shop. Thinking that it's the school cafeteria, she refuses to pay because the cost is included in her tuition, which leads to the cops coming.

Nicole hates taking her meds because it causes seizures, so she stops taking her drugs a few times. Her parents finally admit her to a hospital, but she runs away in the middle of the night. This all leads to fighting between her parents. Her mom wants to get her help, while her dad tends to think she doesn't have a problem.

When Nicole almost burns down the house, everyone has to admit that she has a problem. Her little sister doesn't want to go to college because she thinks she might get stressed out and get “sick” too. Nicole finally downs all of her pills at once, landing in the hospital of an overdose. Since this is a TV movie though, she recovers and her family works together to help her in the future. Nothing cures schizophrenia like family togetherness!