Accusée à tort

If horrible lifetime movies are a go-to on a sick day, please don't miss this one! It is standard lifetime crap, but very entertaining nonetheless. If you watch this with others you will get a great peanut gallery going--there are just too many things to laugh about. The dialogue is corny, the plot is unrealistic (I mean really, who would kill someone for chucking a rock at them?), and the acting is pretty over the top. Despite all of this, you will find yourself laughing at the ridiculousness that seeps out of every scene.

What I love most about this movie is Fallyn--the girl looks EXACTLY like Val from "Brink". It is hard to take her seriously when all you can think about is her skating for "x-blades" and getting a milkshake thrown in her face.

Well, I will start right off with admitting that I had initially expected this to be much worse than it actually turned out to be, given the synopsis of the storyline.

Sure, this was predictable to the core, and followed the essential "how to make a lifetime drama movie" manuscript. But still, there is just something oddly entertaining about these particular kind of movies in a weird sense.

The movie is about three young friends, Bianca (played by Nicole Gale Anderson), Fallyn (played by Janet Montgomery) and Sarah (Stella Maeve), who find out that Bianca's boyfriend is cheating on her with Dory. Setting out to teach Dory a lesson, the girls drive her out to a remote location, where they play to leave her and let her walk all the way back home. But then something unforeseen happens and things take a turn for the worse. And soon Bianca is finding herself fighting for her innocence and having her two friends turn against her in a web of lies. While incarcerated, it is up to Bianca's mom, Jacqui (played by Cynthia Gibb) to bring out the truth and cleanse her daughter from any accusations.

Of course, you know exactly how the storyline will span out and how it will turn out to be. And yes, director Doug Campbell managed to follow the stereotypical mould to every last shot.

The ending to this movie, was about as abrupt and totally out of sync with the entire movie as it could be. With events that had happened like that, no one would just walk out into an ending like that. It was so anti-climatic.

I will say that the people on the cast list were doing good jobs with their given roles and characters, despite having a very stereotypical script and storyline to work with. Nicole Gale Anderson and Cynthia Gibb did carry the movie quite nicely with their performances in the lead roles.

If you enjoy these sappy kind of lifetime dramas, then you are bound to get enjoyment out of "Accused at 17". I rate this movie a mere 4 out of 10 stars, given the fact of its predictability, stereotypical storyline and the horrendous ending.

Teenager Anderson is accused of murdering classmate Taylor after she and her friends (Maeve and Montgomery) play a prank on her for sleeping with boyfriend McClendon. The accused's mother (Gibb) must now try to find the truth in order to save her daughter from a longtime prison sentence, and soon suspects that it was best friend Montgomery who may have framed her. Yet another Lifetime Movie about a complex situation that is resolved by simplistic plot devices. However, one must give credit where credit is due; the teenagers' parents (particularly Gibb and Moses) are incredibly likable and believable, and have impressively sharp dialogue. Could've been a lot lot worse.

** (out of four)

This movie teaches us that bad things attract bad things. That once we immerse ourselves into crime, just like with anything, it's difficult to get out. The more we lie the bigger the consequences. Ending is extremely quick without details, I think that is part missing that would make movie have more that 5/10 rating, But the story is good. Dealing with serious life issues, no joke there. Sometimes it's better to do nothing than bad things.

This very familiar story may have been inspired by several real life crimes, cobbled together for this predictable exercise. Three teenage girls, led by a bully, gang up against a fourth girl and inadvertently kill her while trying to "teach her a lesson". Among the remaining three, mostly-innocent Bianca is also conveniently mostly-at-odds with her single mother and has left a trail of mostly-damning clues; the second girl, Sarah, is a weak-willed asthmatic follower, and the third, Fallon, is an ice cold, manipulating sociopath. Predictably, the most decent people in the story suffer the earliest consequences, as if to underscore the point that no good deed goes unpunished. Because she is the first to spill the beans, Bianca is charged with the crime ("Accused at 17") and conspired against by the other two. Trying to clear her daughter's name, Bianca's mother investigates but has her daughter's habit of leaving misleading clues when Sarah is subsequently also found dead. Evil Fallon plants evidence and tells lies, and also has a shallow, narcissistic mother who sunbathes by their pool, practices yoga and drinks martini's from an over-sized martini glass. The only familiar actor in the cast is William R. Moses, wasted in a one-note role as Fallon's clueless but decent father. It all leads to a formulaic conclusion where everything is revealed in one scene less than five minutes before the movie ends. You sort of see it coming.