My nickname for Caitlin refers to her appearance on 90210 in the episode "A Tale of Two Parties" where the poor kid got way, way, way tipsy at her bachelorette party which was held in an aquarium, and tried setting the 'sharkies' free by smashing a tank. Prior to that she went "yummers" while downing the spiked punch, a setup by the Naomi Clark character. It's one of my all-time favorite scenes, and upon encountering it in April this year, I Googled Caitlin Thompson and found WALKING THE HALLS. A girl as beautiful as that, I had to have the DVD. I understood it to be a TV movie, and recently found out that it was a Lifetime TV movie (and lots of disparaging things are said about that and is bound to be true), but I remained undaunted. As long as Caitlin is in there.
Big bummer for me is that one of my all- time favorite actresses also appear in WALKING THE HALLS, but this is 15 years after her glory years and time has not treated her well. It's not as if it is in any way a flaw, it is just sad for me to experience. I prefer to stay away from this subject, though. The sad part of RavenGlamDVDCollector is knowing that the pretty flowers wilt very soon.
Movie itself has plenty of really bad flaws. We have a psycho pimp who at the drop of a hint of things not going his way, goes for a handgun? Come on! What a cardboard character!
But as a showcase for pretty girls... Wow! Caitlin is up there with the best of the best Hollywood ever offered in the looks department, and she is every bit convincing in her part. Good thing too that the bad girl of the story is not another cardboard character. Quite the opposite, really. And I was surprised to find that Marie Avgeropoulos stole my attention away from Caitlin several times. Another pretty girl to mention is Lindsay Taylor - her part wasn't that big, but she was another scene stealer.
But okay, everybody is yelling at me now, stop being on about the pretty girls, What About The Movie?
The TV movie plays to the largest common denominator, i.e. the housewife. Wivey wouldn't want the kids to watch something that doesn't fit in with her view of the world, and she'd especially not want hubby to watch something that doesn't fit in with her view of the world, especially not if they are wearing bikinis. Through the years, TV shows have suffered for playing too much to the male audience, most notably the 'notorious' ill-fated NIGHTINGALES (1989), and even the successful CHARLIE'S ANGELS (1976 - 1981) had major detractors. You'd think that in this day and age it would be different. But no, TV movies play to win over the chief of the household. This leads to certain corny flaws in this movie. For the evil man has to be a supremely evil man. Cut and dried, one- dimensional, cookie-cutter style. I found it very unbelievable that a pimp would be that unprofessional. In real life, I'm sure he would be the exact opposite. But this character is every Mother's nightmare, a seemingly respectful guy in a most noble profession in a position of trust. I still say in real life a guy with a setup like that wouldn't make it till sunset before the stories go spiraling through the halls about Officer Jack who is supposed to be a policeman but hangs out on campus checking out the dolly-birds and pimping them. Lifetime movies also seem to hold the particular distinction that if a teenage girl has sex she is endangering her parents, the psychos will swoop down upon them.
It is very, very wrong for teenage girls to engage in any illicit act of sex, and chances are that many of them do. But if you're telling a morality tale, let's keep it more real, huh? But that would bring a much darker tale. Prostitution will eventually lead to the situation where the girl will have to do something heinous with a nasty customer. There is more than enough horror in that. Drugs would invariably play a big part, blotting out reality (as shown with Lindsay Taylor's character). The dirt involved alone would be enough to frighten them off once and for all, so we don't really need a script with a gun-waving pimp staging family suicides. But this way the story is just more acceptable for Family Values, as violent psychos are common TV film fare, and acceptable to view in a decent God-fearing household.
Instead of a more complex movie, the easy way out is to film these crazy psycho scripts, using violence as the ribbon festooning the package sold to the network.
But okay, superficial old me, I collect the glamorous DVDs. I'm more than happy. Babes, rating 10 - 10.
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