Le Pacte de grossesse

I cannot believe that I wasted time watching this. I kept waiting for it to get better, or even to make some sense. I'm afraid this could be a career-killer for some talented people who obviously needed a paycheck.

The only valuable lesson is that religion-driven communities tend to be so complacent and smug that instead of embracing their children and building family values, they actually just set them adrift in life with absolutely no clues about sex/sexuality (with or without birth control), career and family life, or the nitty-gritty facts about pregnancy and parenthood (with or without abortion).

It would be all to easy to get into socio-political issues here, but to refocus on the movie, it's sufficient to say that it's poorly plotted, badly written, photographed to mediocre TV standards, and features boring, bad music. And is it really possible for someone to actually earn a full-time living as a blogger? I always thought it was a hobby for the socially inept or a part-time business activity like a customer newsletter. Just as it would be bad to present teenage pregnancy as appealing, I think it's misleading to present a part-time activity as a true career opportunity.

Anyway, next time I will be sure to pass up a Lifetime movie for a rerun of Criminal Minds or NCIS (or Two and a Half Men, for that matter).

Yup this is a Lifetime movie. So its kinda cheesy but as usual it also sucks you in. I do remember this story in the news. Crazy, naïve teenagers all getting themselves pregnant at the same time because of a pact to stick together.

I enjoyed Thora Birch as Sidney Bloom, the internet blogger who travels back to her old high school in Gloucester, Massachusetts to investigate the sudden rash of teen pregnancies. The teens give an accurate performance of angst and bad decisions and we also follow a school nurse (Camryn Manheim) who fights with administration.

The townsfolk (and highlighted teen's Mum) were so ignorant in their thinking, raising money for more daycare at the school but refusing to offer a condom machine or even consider giving out contraception to students! 03.13

In voices steeped with shock, CNN's Anderson Cooper and some less-famous newsreaders report on a story involving high school girls who made a pact to get pregnant at the same time. The opening reveals, "This film is the story of a fictional 'pregnancy pact' set against actual news reports from June 2008, and although some of the locations and public figures are real, any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental." The young women have sex because they think raising babies at the same time will be fun. They want to dress them in cute little matching outfits and go to the park...

Gloucester, MA graduate Thora Birch (as Sidney Bloom) hears about the rise in pregnancy at her old high school. She's a professional video blogger and decides the spiking pregnancy rate will be a good Internet story. Arriving home with a secret past, Ms. Birch befriends pretty 15-year-old Madisen Beaty (as Sara Dougan). The red-haired teenager decides to bag (okay, no bag) cute basketball player Max Ehrich (as Jesse Moretti)...

"The Pregnancy Pact" is probably good in bringing topics up for discussion among young students and, hopefully, some trusted adults. As a story, it doesn't hold up well. It's difficult to believe events unfolded as they did on screen. We wonder, even though Mr. Ehrich appears mature for his age, how a 16-year-old has continued success with the withdrawal method. Their high school has "day care" for students' babies, but nobody seems to know much about how they got there. The leader of the group exclaims, "It hurts!" and doesn't even know what the word "pact" means...

From the opening, the high school looks too sexy and unsupervised to be a special school. Birth control can be more than abstinence, condoms and the withdrawal method. The birth control pill would have given the girl's pan to "get pregnant" more credence. She's not responsible for the "gift from God," if he's the one deciding to "pull out." It doesn't make sense. However, since she lied about the pact, the basic story still works.

***** The Pregnancy Pact (1/23/10) Rosemary Rodriguez ~ Madisen Beaty, Thora Birch, Jesse Moretti, David Clayton Rogers

There is a saying that no one is really ever ready to have a baby. While that is true to an extent a young girl is never ready to have a baby. This movie follows the lives of a group of girls who made a pact to have a baby. It shows the true reality of some people out there. The educational system and sometimes families don't prepare children about being safe. Whatever the reason is whether it be religion or something else the schools and home don't speak about sex. We follow a woman who goes back to the town she grew up in and tries to seek the truth about what is going on with these girls and why there is such a high rate of pregnancies. The girls learn the hard way that it's not as "fun" being pregnant and trying to live their lives. They make poor choices that result in consequences.

I guess you have to live in or near Gloucester for this movie to be interesting, or have an interest in local politics for at least. All throughout this movie I sat with an empty feeling and sort of not really caring, because the events in the movie seemed stupid and didn't appeal to my interest in any way.

The story is about teenagers apparently making a pact for them all to become pregnant and have children about the same time, so their children can grow up together, play together and become best friends, like the teenage girls themselves are. But being teenagers, they are not aware of the consequences and hard work being pregnant and having a child is. And the toll the consequences have on their families and the ripples in society of living in a small community.

Some of these teenagers have little respect for themselves or their pregnancy, as they smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. Plus their whole attitude to the situation was just infuriating. And the movie is based on real events, which can only make you think why some people are that ignorant. But, as I started out with saying, this appealed little to me, because I live nowhere near where this allegedly took place.

As for the acting in the movie, well, people did adequate jobs, but I can't really say that any particular performance stood out. It was fairly blend and mediocre.

I am sure that this movie have appeal for an audience who have an interest in events such as those portrayed in the movie. But for those of us who watch movies for a solely entertainment purpose, then "Pregnancy Pact" offers very little.