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!