Reviews

SPOILERS--so many spoilers. This may be the episode at which we give up on the show. Why let Elam survive the bear attack if he's just going to be killed 2 episodes later? I'll tell you why: ANGST. The writers seem to have feared that Cullen didn't have enough pain and angst in his life. The proof of it? In what universe would nobody help him bury the body? Just because Cullen asks to haul the coffin in his buckboard, NOBODY accompanies the body out of town, leaving Cullen to dig the grave and move the coffin alone? There's only one reason for this to happen, and it has nothing to do with the world of the show, and everything to do with writers deciding that we needed a scene of a tear running down Cullen's cheek, and a scene of him sitting on the coffin, wailing. Unfortunately, for me to enjoy a show, there needs to be INTERNAL consistency too.

So much of this Christmas movie is downright delightful -- the casting, the music, the locations. Heck, the chemistry between our romantic couple is better than I've seen on many of these Lifetime/Hallmark movies (and I do love this kind of Lifetime/Hallmark movie).

But I was upset about the dog (sub)plot when I thought this was titled "12 Wishes for Christmas." Now that I see its original title is "12 Wishes for Christmas for my Dog" I'm even more annoyed -- hence, the SPOILER ALERT.

No, the dog doesn't die. But still....

The dog is adorable -- but for some reason our heroine, who volunteers two days a week at a shelter/dog sanctuary, either adopted it while living in an apartment that doesn't allow pets, or moved with it to an apartment that doesn't allow pets, and to me, both those things make her a fairly irresponsible dog owner. Early on in the story, she's caught by management and told to either move out or get rid of the dog, SO SHE GETS RID OF THE DOG! Yes, she tells the dog "it's only for a little while" as she shuts the chain-link gate in its face at the shelter, but we then see her make NO (zero) effort to fix the problem. She doesn't look for a new apartment. She doesn't talk to management and ask if she can put down a significant deposit or something. Even once she gets her 12 wishes, she spends them on silly things -- new clothes, jewelry, a new car, winning the lottery, giving her best friend a good hair day -- and at no point do we see her even consider using one of those wishes to get her little dog back!

Even worse, she gets so busy at work that she's even skipping her two days/week volunteering at the shelter -- the shelter owner says "long time no see," and our heroine makes excuses. Even after she's resolved almost everything toward the end (other than the dog issue, she does a pretty good redemption), she's having friends over to her house for Christmas WITHOUT THE DOG! The only reason she gets it back is that her new boyfriend arrives with the dog and says he talked to her manager and made arrangements for her to keep it.

As a pet lover, I *really* hated this. I once had to put my cat in quarantine, and I visited her every day, for hours--I wrote and graded papers in the quarantine room--to minimize the time she had to feel abandoned. So if you love pets like I do, fair warning.

Also, her Life-Coach helper (who is delightful) seems to be some kind of elf until, halfway through the story she references her halo, and our heroine starts calling her an angel, with no indication of surprise. Okay.

Again, the acting and chemistry was great. The heroine's redemption in everything but the dog issue was wonderful. But I have to wonder if the writers ever had a pet of their own because, if they were as irresponsible as our protagonist, that might not be a good thing unless they take some kind of classes in pet ownership.

At the risk of being redundant, I have to join the other reviewers here who hated the ending of this film. At least our dismay shows how fully we bought into this story and hated what the 5 Popular Girls did to poor Haley.

Kudos to the actors playing the popular girls, who think that "disrespect" means someone "deserves" a beating and who long so much for their flash of Internet fame, the majority of them never do seem to regret making the video that will condemn them. I was especially impressed by the realistic unevenness of them helping Haley into a car after the beating, and one of them giving her a cola. It was a touch that cemented their inability to understand the full gravity of what they'd done.

I didn't mind Haley not fighting back when her supposed "friends" turned on her. She was clearly outnumbered, and her bewilderment and helplessness made her all the more sympathetic as a victim (both to the viewer and to the prosecution). She was never a character who would strike out in anger. I even understood her accepting a plea deal, rather than go through the horror of a trial and risk the girls getting life in prison (while I would not have minded seeing them get life, I understand that crimes committed by stupid teenagers perhaps shouldn't ruin their entire lives). When her mother stands up and tells the judge that the family is willing to accept a plea, I was fine with that -- but when she adds that the family is requesting the most lenient possible sentence, I found myself shouting at the television in a Not-So-Good way.

There ARE a lot of choices between "life in prison" and "probation with time served," after all.

It's one thing to not strike out at people in anger, or to refuse to escalate a violent situation further by fighting back. But the film confuses this often-laudable principle with not demanding justice. Only one of the five attackers ever shows regret or shame for what they did. The others delight in it, and in the fame it brings them. They don't want to go to jail, but to the bitter end they seem to blame Haley for what is happening to them, rather than blaming themselves. We are given no indication that other girls will be safe in the future... and I find that especially dissatisfying.

This is one of the rare Lifetime movies that I've watched more than once. It's by no means a mystery -- as another reviewer mentions, the movie shows us at the very start that the victim's preacher-husband is not being straight with the EMTs he calls after supposedly finding his wife dead in their bedroom. I approve of that directing choice. We all know that, most of the time, "the husband did it." So instead of a Whodunnit, "Sins of the Preacher" becomes more of a Howdunnit.

What really happened to Debbie, and will her mother, cousin, and aunt manage to prove it in a court of law?

That may be the aspect I most like about this film. Obviously, a murdered-woman film cannot have a "happy" ending, especially not one based on a true story. And yet we see a great deal of female strength and determination as Debbie's family investigates her death after the police too quickly rule it a suicide. The title of my review, "Love Trumps Evil," refers to the contribution of another helpful woman off- screen. In too many of these stories, the family never even gets closure of a body. This family, while it can't get their loved one back, at least has that.

I also appreciated that, while the preacher is obviously hypocritical, religion itself is not vilified, unless you see the Bible's bit about wives submitting to their husbands as leading too directly to Debbie's death. All the women in Debbie's family are seriously religious (though her mother understandably has her questioning-God moment at one point). The preacher doesn't end up seeming like he represents all Christians.

If you like this movie, I recommend you read the book on which it is based: Deadly Little Secrets, by Kathryn Casey. You'll end up even more frustrated with the bumbling police and judge. And the preacher ends up seeming even more evil, especially as pertains to the suspicious circumstances under which his daughter died. There are even more levels of sins from this preacher!

Oh, I did want to like this movie. It didn't matter that it's derivative of "Sleeping with the Enemy," right down to the abandoned abuser finding proof of his "dead" wife's deception that she conveniently--no, foolishly--left behind. (Honestly, if you're going to fake your own death, wouldn't it occur to you to hide all paperwork pertaining to the faking of your own death?) Most people who watch this film are probably drawn by its similarities to SWtE (with the added bonus of a child!)

The wife's leaving of damning evidence was only the first of her foolish mistakes, though (if you don't count marrying the crazy man in the first place. Let's assume that some men are good at hiding their abusive tendencies). Her biggest goof is that, after faking her death, she goes into a business (realty) which she advertises by plastering pictures of her face all over advertisements and billboards?

I don't appreciate movies with stupid heroines, which made it hard for me to truly like this one. Yes, she's the underdog. And she's played as being smart and tough. But some of her decisions discredited her. It was also hard to believe that her husband would be so obsessed with her after ten years. That was my other problem with this film. The husband character is so very evil, to the point where he's not only coming after his wife; he's coming after her friends as well! It almost feels like a twisted wish-fulfillment for women who mistake obsession for love--she's so great that he'll Never Get Over Her, and in the meantime, she'll have found another Wonderful Guy.

I give this 5 points because I liked some of the actors, and the story certainly isn't slow. But unless you throw your suspension of disbelief out the window, you may wish this film had remained hidden away.