★★½
“Mother by day. Bank-robber… also by day.”
This low-key Lifetime movie stars Carpenter as a literal soccer mom, Anne Harding, right down to the minivan she drives, taking daughter Denise (Grey) to her practice. Denise is a hot prospect, with college scholarships beckoning. However, life for the rest of the family is not so smooth. Anne lost her husband and is in financial difficulties, mostly because of the never-ending gambling debts run up by her other child, Kyle (DiMarco) to local thug Quinlan (Mitchell). Anne has tried to help, only to find herself robbing banks on behalf of the boss. It helps that she wears a fake beard and mustache, so the police are looking for completely the wrong gender. But it takes its toll on an increasingly-twitchy Anne, with Denise eventually putting together the pieces to realize her mother is responsible for the recent crime spree.
It is all, of course, moderately ludicrous, although the movie seems to be aware of this and plays it slightly tongue-in-cheek, e.g. focusing on the PTA sticker on Anne’s getaway minivan. I also have to say, for a family supposedly in dire financial straits, they have a lovely and extremely large house. Downsize, pay off Kyle’s debts and there’s no need for any of this felonious larceny. Even the robberies are… well, polite to the point of being positively Canadian, with everyone just believing Anne when she hands over the note saying she has a gun. And do not even get me started on Denise’s football games, which are the least convincing bits of sport I’ve seen committed to film in quite a while. No wonder Team USA didn’t qualify for the World Cup [that joke will firmly date this review!]
However… it’s all still just about adequately entertaining, helped by Carpenter’s winning performance. She’ll always have a bit of a spot in our heart, thanks to her work on Buffy, and here she gets to play the most screwed up soccer mom since Orphan Black. There’s a good twist to turn things around as we head into the third act, which I did not see coming. And Anne has to demonstrate an admirable degree of bravery after Quinlan decides to “encourage” her ongoing participation by snatching Denise. This helps it skate just this side of entirely laughable, even if Charisma pretending to be a man will always be no more credible than those martial arts films where Michelle Yeoh does the same.
In the film’s defense, there do appear to have been a number of not entirely dissimilar cases in real life, where women at the end of their financial tether turned to robbery. Though I strongly suspect the final outcomes of those cases, were nowhere near as heart-warming as what is portrayed here [and this being Lifetime, saying so doesn’t exactly count as a spoiler]. The moral here is less don’t rob banks, and more, don’t play so much poker in shady local bars to the extent that you need to take a loan out from the owner. Truly a lesson we can all take to heart.
Dir: Terry Miles
Star: Charisma Carpenter, Sarah Grey, Amos Mitchell, Adam DiMarco