Dangerous Child

What would you do if your child was a danger to you? This is the question that Sally Cambridge (Delta Burke), a divorced mother, must face when her 16-year-old son Jack who is very violent. Sally lives in fear, should she turn Jack in before its to late, or dose he accidentally hurt his younger brother badly while fighting with his mom? Dangerous Child is a WONDERFUL movie and the acting was great, I think everyone should watch this move on Lifetime TV.

This is an interesting movie starring Delta Burke, one of my favorites, and Ryan Merriman, who does an excellent job as a teenager who turns on his mother.

Burke is divorced from a verbally abusive and belittling man, and she has custody of their two children. The older boy becomes less and less able to cope with his emotions and begins to act violently against his mother.

He's jealous of a man she's seeing, he has anger issues over the divorce, and in his father, there's an excellent role model to blame his mother. She can't handle him so she covers for him by lying. This leads to a near fatality.

Merriman plays a boy who's obviously a good albeit extremely troubled kid, and Burke is excellent as a frustrated and helpless mother. It's an all too typical situation today, unfortunately.

The film handles the issues well, especially by pointing out that the boy's behavior was not learned overnight, and it won't go away instantly either. Fairly absorbing, and I always love seeing Delta.

The thing that struck me about this TVM were the two leads . Delta Burke looks like Monica Lewinsky`s older sister while Ryan Merriman looks like David Duchovny`s kid brother . It`s uncanny it really is.

The problem I had with this issues based TVM is that it pulls its punches . Jack doesn`t actually come across as the twisted tortured youth that lyricists like Roger Waters or Matt Johnson write about , nor does he make a convincing mother beating thug . And being a TVM you just know it won`t be ending in a graphic and senseless murder

And there seems to be an element of people coming onto this IMDB site in order to give a DANGEROUS CHILD 10 out of 10 . Almost a quarter of people who voted for it gave it a ten . It`s by no means the worst TVM ever but it`s not LORD OF THE RINGS either . I gave it a four out of ten

The film is exactly what the synopsis says, "mother is accused of abusing her children, when in reality her son is the abuser." Of the 90 minutes of the films runtime, 80 of them is just various scenes of the oldest son acting out, then being abusive towards his mother.

Since the movie spent all of it's time (and budget I assume) on mentioned above, the ending is rushed and lackluster. The movie tries to fit some emotional scenes in here, one's that if they actually had time would've made their mark, but they fall flat. The very ending scene skips six months ahead without telling the viewer and, while cute, really makes you go "that's it??"

You'll save yourself the time if you just read the synopsis paragraph.

Someone had better give Ryan Merriman a frickin' Golden Globe or something for his performance as Jack Cambridge. WOW!!! What a diverse and very powerful performance. This kid is an excellent actor, and it is way, way past time someone realizes this! You can feel the anger his character feels. Especially anyone that has been a 16 year old boy (Merriman is 18 in real life). Icicle are evident with every angry stare, or sneer he give to his mother (Delta Burke). I don't know if enough can be said about Ryan Merriman. His acting is such a powerhouse, he upstaged Delta in my opinion. He electrifies the screen with his presence, and could send a small animal running with that stare( chills)!!!! Unfortunately, this movie does play very formulaic to a made for tv movie. Especially one on Lifetime. Delta Burke does give a very emotion and excellent performance of a battered mother. Protecting her son from the world, knowing that he would be taken from her if it came out that he was the abuser. Very believeable! There is defintely no room for Miss Susan Sugarbaker here. One thing I really liked about the movie is how much Ryan and Delta look like mother and son. It was perfect casting. Set in Illionis, filmed in Canada, this movie is standard made for TV, but the performance by Delta and more so by Ryan make this movie more than it really is.