Due East

The story is a setup to blast conservative-religious attitudes toward a pregnant teenager attending high school. It does a good job and it's hard to believe a principal would actually expell a valedictorian girl just because she was pregnant and it made people uncomfortable. They way she was, everybody loved her and she got lots of support and the mean old principal had to back down, especially after she wrote a brilliant letter in the town newspaper that got her lots of support. What was satisfying was the quality of the acting of the girl, who had a quiet simple honesty and intelligence about her. In a pivotal scene the principal blusters "how could such an intelligent girl do something so STUPID?" She answered simply that she didn't PLAN to get pregnant... no surprise. The father of the child died and in the end... well, better not give it away. It's a touching scene.

This is a "movie of the week" variety presentation. Everything turns out great at the end and everyone is happy, so what's wrong with this picture? Nothing in life is this sweet! Small town people int this community are so understanding of a situation like what Mary Faith encounters, let alone, accept her and never turn their backs to her.

Clara Bryant is good as the young woman who finds herself in the family way and decides to have the child. Robert Forster makes a rare appearance as the father of the pregnant teen ager. Cate Capshaw is also very effective as the woman who befriends Mary Faith. Finally Cybill Shepherd plays the love interest of Robert Foster.

No surprises in this one. We've seen it all before!

I'm not really sure where I sit on this one. On one hand, some of the plot was very original. I've never seen a film where the teenage girl got pregnant by a guy who wasn't an asshole. He seemed decent.

It wasn't very well developed though, the story really should have focused more on her relationship with the father of her baby. Instead it kind of trailed off on a little thing about HER dad. That actor sucked by the way. His little "you're pregnant?!" thing was really acted out poorly. He gets an F for his performance.

As a female, I'd have to say it still has me mostly won over...come on, it's starts with them in the bathtub! I'm a girl. Give me a break. I liked it.

I saw this movie recently one night and liked what I saw. It's a touching story about a young girl played by Clara Bryant who must deal with the trials and tribulations of being a pregnant teenager in the highly-conservative South and try to fix her relationship with her father, in which the two have fallen out of touch since the day her mother died. Bryant is a talented young actress and does a beautiful job of showing the emotions that her character goes through. It's not the type of movie you'll watch over and over again, but it's definitely worth watching at least once. If you like stories of triumph that make you feel good in the end, I recommend seeing this film.

This is a very sad story, grievously politicizing small town values and small minded thinking about abortion related matters. Not wanting to be "too" controversial, it merely sets us up with all the obvious options, and then leaves us with an unexpected solution equally as tragic as the others. First we are given a moral dilemma which would be unfortunate for anyone, accept that in this case the girl is the valedictorian of her high school class! How could this happen with the brightest girl in school? Well, because the film wants us to question stereotypes, but then makes of everyone else a strawman, to be knocked down effortlessly. Even the "boy" involved is trivialized into a "James Dean" stereotype, thus making a hypocrisy of the attempt to un-stereotype the girl.

In short, the story is very manipulative and dependent on sentimentality to further its sociological agenda. The deeper issues are merely glossed over in order to promote an "anything goes" mentality, even while giving a nod of recognition to the obvious consequences. The future life for the girl, and the future life for the child, will be immeasurably changed by whatever happens, and in ways hardly advantageous to either. But the film gives a muddled and trivialized focus on the problem of teen pregnancy, which ultimately makes a mockery out of everyone including the girl. It is sophistry at its worst, merging good and bad arguments together until they "all" seem hopelessly wrong.