Student Seduction

I started out fine it until the Elizabeth Berkley character got arrested for being attacked by a student. I wanted to fast forward through the rest of it after that. My wife left the room because of the stupidity. The child would have been questioned more deeply that he was. As a former investigator with the State's child services, I can say that would not have happened the way this movie writers claim it would have happened.A more investigative questioning would have been performed. The police in this are as dumb as a box of hammers. Also, when she reported the assault, the attacker would have been arrested immediately. She was at the hospital for crying out loud.If I could rate it "S" for stupid movie I would have.I'm sitting here typing this stuff while the movie is on hoping it will end and thinking about fast forwarding it to the end and watching something else. I am watching Lifetime movie club on Amazon by the way.

Pretty chemistry teacher Elizabeth Berkley (as Christie Dawson) offers to tutor handsome student Corey Sevier (as Joshua "Josh" Gaines) after school. Used to having his way with women, Mr. Sevier makes sexual advances, which Ms. Berkley refuses. Persistence leads to accusations... This is a very predictable story, but refreshing in that it does not follow the path you are initially expecting; this makes the title "Student Seduction" highly misleading. Credit should be given to director Peter Svatek and a fine cast, for keeping performances appropriate. In particular, Berkley is attractive without being seductive. Sevier and Sarah Allen (as Jenna) do well as the students. Unfortunately, we are treated to obvious plot plants throughout. You will be able to spot future "witnesses" easily, along with the behavior which could prove to be the perpetrator's undoing.

**** Student Seduction (5/5/03) Peter Svatek ~ Elizabeth Berkley, Corey Sevier, Rick Roberts, Sarah Allen

"Student Seduction" was an inadequate portrayal of a teacher caught in the fantasies of a student. The acting of the two main characters, Christie Dawson (Elizabeth Berkley) and Josh Gaines (Corey Sevier), was very well done, and I applaud their effort. However, the film was almost unbelievable.

What I didn't like was the long sex scenes. There were a couple key scenes that were cut short and leaving you wondering what just happened and confused because the actions weren't fully explained. Instead of elaborating these short, key scenes, the editors chose to keep the ridiculously long sex scenes with no purpose. I understand the entertainment value, but come on! If you need a sex scene that much, that you have to have important scenes cut short, then you need to re-evaluate the entire premise of the movie!

All in all, I applaud the two main actors, but I am criticizing everything else.

Oh boy, where to begin...

First off, it's a Lifetime Network movie, so you should know exactly what you're getting into when you turn to that channel. That being said, I never really sat through one of these long-winded diatribes before. You know right off the bat what's going to happen, and nothing comes as a surprise.

Elizabeth Berkley stars as the new teacher at some generic high school. Being young and attractive, she warrants the wrong kind of attention form some of her male students (and I think one of the girl students, too, but lesbianism is handled with graceful subtlety on Lifetime). After she begins tutoring one of her students, Josh, he becomes obsessed with her.

One thing leads to another, and Josh thinks they have something more than a teacher-student relationship. He forces a kiss on her in the hallway, then flips out and attacks her at home, ripping her shirt but nothing else.

Somehow, Josh's Dad and his lawyers are able to spin it as if it was the hot, young teacher was to blame for the whole thing. Then, the rest of the movie deals with her struggle to maintain her innocence.

You know what is going to happen. You know how it is going to end. Every single character looks plucked straight from the Big Book of Clichés; young, headstrong teacher, her doubting husband, her incompetent lawyer telling her to plead guilty, only one student who believes in her, the slimy cops and lawyers who are seemingly out to ruin one woman's life so some rich kid won't have to spend a month in juvenile hall. It is all so terribly predictable, and everyone acting in the film seems to know it, also.

I still don't get a few things, though. How on earth could those lawyers spin the facts to make Berkley seem like the predator? Wouldn't one tough (but effective) interrogation of Josh show what really happened? The characters seem to perpetuate on a different level where rational thinking and deductive logic make as much sense as looking for WMDs in Iraq (heh).

Now you understand my summary line. It is boring, stupid, pointless. I'm pretty sure these movies will serve as a backfire and hurt the reputation of women in the sense that they will always be viewed as the victim, and never the one who (gasp) is really guilty. Thank God I had three beers before sitting down in front of this one.

Is there anything that happens in this movie that is NOT predictable? I think not. Basically the movie is cliché after cliché and really nothing ever comes as a surprise. It makes the movie extremely predictable and because of that the movie is also seriously lacking in tension. So for a thriller it is not tense and unpredictable enough but also as a drama it's a failure. This is because the movie its story is highly unlikely. I mean, no way this could ever happen in real life, as in the same way as the events occur in this movie. So the movie has a real suspense and credibility problem.

But it truly are the clichés that killed the movie. It was cringing stuff at times. Everything is so formulaic in this movie. The predator is portrayed as a cool heartless, almost psychopath like sexual frustrated boy and the victim as a naive young woman, who acts like she didn't see any of this coming. Everything that happened in the movie was so obvious and all seemed to happen for a reason. Such as the sequence in which the 'predator' fixes the 'victims' broken car. That has got to be one of the oldest clichés out of the book. I knew what the movie tried to achieve after that point. I tried to look as if the teacher and the student were really growing toward each other trough the eyes of the other persons around them. It was so incredibly obvious and cheap that I almost wanted to stop watching the movie after that point. The movie is filled with moments like these.

The title might suggest that this is a cheap porn movie but this in fact is a sappy made for TV movie. Which means that everything is slowly happening and the movie spends halve its time on character development and unnecessary sub-plots to make the movie even more drama like.

I'll admit that Elizabeth Berkley is pretty good acting in this movie. She makes some of the clichés and events look even almost realistic at times. Her Hollywood career is as good as over after appearing in the Paul Verhoeven movie "Showgirls", so unfortunately she will probably only still appear in movies- and television series like this one. It's a waste of her talent and she surely deserves better. All of the other characters are a disappointment. Corey Sevier plays the cliché pretty 'untouchable' rich boy and the way the husband of the main character is portrayed is even worse. He looks more like a sexual frustrated predator than the true predator of the movie. He basically tries to have sex with his wife in every sequence. He wakes up, he wants sex. Before he goes to sleep, he wants sex. He gets home, he wants sex. It might be a realistic thing but I don't know, it just didn't feel right for a movie like this one and the story in general.

A cliché filled movie and I can't think of any reason why anyone should ever watch this movie. It's predictable and therefor also lacks in suspense and credibility. Not an 'horrible' movie and it certainly is a watchable one at times but all the weak and cliché elements in the movie also make this far from a recommendable one.

4/10

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