The Wrong Daughter

Typical campy lifetime pic, but with outstanding acting.

If you are a guy and are looking for a lolita type to fill your roster, watch it for Sydney Sweeney. At least the writers picked the prettier of the two girls in the foster home to feature for most of the movie. The protagonist was needy, her whining repetitive and her goal too modest to hold my interest. I love LFM movies. These movies are supposed to be fun where the protagonist is so clever that they are on the verge of obtaining their ambitious goal just before their plot suddenly unravels (love how that happens). I am not a snob, this movie was just not fun.

For one of the many "Wrong" movies, this one got it right. Hardly any complaints about it at all. The acting was fine, particularly the antagonist. Nothing happened that was outrageously stupid. The very end was a little questionable, but still pleasing and entertaining. The only complaint I have is not really a complaint. Every actress looked more or less alike, attractive blondes with long hair. (Except one was a brunette.) Now, since they all looked good, that's really not a complaint.

An unruly 18 years-old orphaned girl (Sydney Sweeney) leaves a group home and worms her way into a young couple's life by pretending to be the long lost daughter given up for adoption by the mother (Cindy Busby).

"The Wrong Daughter" (2018) is a television production that understandably lacks the artistry of Drew Barrymore's "Poison Ivy," yet it works well enough for a family-oriented drama with some crime thrills, prosaic though it may be.

Since it came out, Sweeney's star has risen and most people will consider her the main attraction. She was almost 20 during shooting (or just turned 20), but she's a little too thin here. As far as I'm concerned, Cindy Busby is the real highlight on the feminine front; she was 34 during shooting. (Be sure to check her out in "Behemoth" from seven years earlier, if you haven't already).

The flick is successful in making you root against the manipulations of the troubled young lass with the middle portion causing tedium and frustration. Yet the last act delivers the goods IMHO. She's a psycho, but some sympathy is cultivated for her, even if it's just a little. She executes evil deeds, indeed, yet the writers wisely keep it within plausibility. Less is more.

It runs 1 hour, 30 minutes, and was shot in Los Angeles.

GRADE: B-

This movie has a nice plot of a crazy girl impersonating a former roommate who she used for (likely) years. The acting isn't bad, but a few issues. One the foster family of the real Danica come off as cruel to me and finally the police making an arrest on a woman for no reason also made little sense. So the bad police procedure hurt this