Rivals

I thought this movie was excellent. It portrays the real side to life for a teenager, and is very relevant to todays society.

Although there are frequent movies on this same subject, i believe this shows outstanding characters and fights to make this movie into a reality for the viewer.

The end of this story shocked me, although i knew it was going to happen, it was a huge awakening. I only hope that nothing like this happens in my life or to people surrounding me.

I give the movie 10 out of 10 for one main reason. It seemed real. There was none of that bull that other movies bung on about it was straightforward and realistic. It was interesting all the way through and it taught me a lot about the kind of people i should be associating with.

The problem with this TV-movie, to paraphrase Dr. Johnson, is not that it is done so badly, but that it is done at all. Years ago a movie about the type of crime depicted here might have been unique and intriguing. Sadly for both society at large and the TV viewing public, it's all too commonplace now. There have been at least a dozen movies on this same subject. This film may be worse than some and better than others, but it does nothing to distinguish itself from the pack. After seeing so many similar flicks, some stock characters emerge. Of these, the terrorized victim and her mother aren't drawn too badly, but the closet psycho-homecoming queen is not as compelling as that character should be, in this viewer's opinion. And her oafish boyfriend is so shallow that he's a major irritation every time he's onscreen.

There are no laughable performances here, and the direction is at least competent, if not distinguished. Even Jennifer Salt's script is not a bad one, but she fails to convince us why we should want to watch these unpleasant characters. If you think you've seen one too many stalker movies, this certainly isn't the one that's going to change your mind.

This movie was on the TV last night. At first I only wanted to watch because Dawson's mom (Dawson's Creek) plays Laurie's mom, but it proved to be a decent show. All through the movie, I kept thinking: Man, this really happened? No way. It says "True Story" ... Nahh! Couldn't be. Oh, it is then? It's disgusting! If we have to set aside the suspected criminal's human rights to further investigate the problem, let's do it. What happened to Laurie really could have been avoided, the laws just aren't tough enough. It's far worse finding out the hard way that you've had the criminal sitting in the police station before her deed was done and the police couldn't do a thing about it because all you have for evidence is your word over hers. Are there really such horrible people in this World?

Now, there are thousands of murders a year. And very violent ones. And this was a brutal murder, but my question is. Why would the mother of Laurie Show let them do a movie about her daughter's death? And of course I'm sure that they embellished a bit with the story. But it seemed pointless to me.

The movie is good. The actors did a good job. It's just the concept of the story that bugs me.

7/10

Classing this movie is difficult,it's bizarre,frightening and tragic.The fact that it was based on a true story got me watching and all the way till the end I was thinking about how unbelievably terrible this tragedy must have been,especially for the real Hazel Show.But my mind wasn't on much else,the scenes were scrappily put together,the script lacking and Finnigan....well let's just say she could have played the part better.It wasn't entirely bad though,Lambert(Patterson) was truly loathing and psychotic,and there were other notable performances namely that of Humes,Hunt and Vannicola.It was one of those movies that you HAVE to watch till the end,but once you've watched it you think it could have been done better.