Movie: Little Girl Lost: The Delimar Vera Story (Lifetime Movie Network)
Premiere Date: Sunday, August 17th, 2008
Rating: 3 out of 4 Stars

Quick Synopsis: No one believes she was taken.

Long Synopsis: A young working class family is told that their baby died in the fire. The mother doesn’t believe that is what happened. She thinks her daughter was taken and the fire was started to cover it up. No one else believes her. Her faith that her daughter is still out there leads to the breakup of her marriage. She never gives up hope and one day runs into a woman that was at the party that has a six year old daughter. She thinks that it might be her daughter and sets out to prove it. With the help of a State Representative that gets the police involved, the find that she may have been right all along.

Review: Little Girl Lost: The Delimar Vera Story is based on a true story. It stars Judy Reyes (Scrubs), Ana Ortiz (Ugly Betty) and A. Martinez (L.A. Law).

The movie is straight forward, but is put together very well. It takes you from the birth of baby Delimar to her disappearance to her being found. It is a very sad story with a very happy ending. Reyes, as the mother who never gives up, is especially good in this highly dramatic role.

Overall, Little Girl Lost: The Delimar Vera Story is worth checking out, but it is crowded tonight on TV. It premieres tonight on Lifetime Movie Network. It plays twice tonight and another five times over the next 10 days, so you have plenty of chances to catch it.

Photo CR: Lifetime Movie Network

Movie: The Tenth Circle (Lifetime)
Premiere Date: Saturday, June 28th, 2008
Rating: 1 out of 4 Stars

Quick Synopsis: Painful, prodding and predictable

Long Synopsis: The story of local college professor, her comic book artist husband and their 15-year-old daughter. When the daughter accuses her boyfriend of rape, their world gets turned upside down. Everyone thinks she is lying and then everyone thinks he did it and then it looks like he committed suicide. The detective looking into the rape begins investigating a possible murder/suicide. As the story continues, you find out what really happened. Was there a rape? Was it suicide or murder? Who did or didn’t do anything?

Review: The Tenth Circle is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Jodi Picoult. It stars Kelly Preston (Death Sentence), Ron Eldard (Blind Justice) and Britt Robertson (Swingtown).

The movie has a weird flow to it. It just plods along and a third of the way in, I had no idea what the point of it was, as I hadn’t read the book or anything about the story before watching the screener.

It opens like it is another family drama, but then not everything is revealed, as scenes stop before you get to see everything. So, it turns into a sort of whodunit mystery. It tries to go back and forth between the two and doesn’t do either all that well.

The very end shows you what you didn’t get to see earlier to fill in the gaps and reveal what has gone on. But, you will probably know long before they show you.

Overall, The Tenth Cirlce is not one of Lifetime’s better movies. It may have been a bestselling novel, but it didn’t translate into a very good TV movie, as did happen with last months very good The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.

The Tenth Circle premieres tonight on Lifetime and replays tomorrow night, June 29th and again on Monday night, June 30th.

Photo: CR Chris Reardon / Lifetime

Movie: Wisegal (Lifetime)
Premiere Date: Saturday, March 15th, 2008
Rating: 2½ out of 4 Stars

Quick Synopsis: A woman does whatever it takes to provide for her kids.

Long Synopsis: A woman that grew up very poor meets a nice police officer and ends up getting married. They have two children and then he falls ill with cancer. After two years in-and-out of the hospital he passes away. She is left poor once again and begins selling illegal cigarettes to pay the bills. A local captain in the Brooklyn crime family takes notice of her and offers her a chance to run a restaurant of his. She turns it into a hot nightclub and gets noticed by the family Don. He wants her to use her wherewithal to shuttle millions of dollars down from Canada from the family’s operations up there. As the years go by, she ends up deeper than she ever thought she would be. One day she realizes that she can’t do it anymore and wants out.

Review: Wisegal is inspired by the true story of Patty Montanari, played by Alyssa Milano (Charmed, Who’s the Boss?), a widowed mother of two that became a trusted member of the Mafia in an attempt to do right by her kids. The executive producer of the movie is none other than Joe Pistone, the FBI agent whose undercover exploits inspired the movie Donnie Brasco.

When I pulled the Wisegal screener packet from the envelope and saw Alyssa Milano on the cover and the likes of Jason Gedrick (Boomtown) and James Caan (Las Vegas) as co-stars, I was looking forward to watching this. It wasn’t as great as it looked like it might be, but it is worth checking out, especially on a Saturday night bereft of worthy TV watching options.

Pretty much anything with Alyssa Milano in it is going to get this TVaholic to check it out. I mean, she was my first TV crush way back in her Who’s the Boss? days, as she is only six months older than I am. I used to watch that show every week. Check out an interview with her over at theTVaddict.com, for more on her character in Wisegal.

Alyssa Milano is very good and believable in the role, except for her accent coming and going a bit. Jason Gedrick plays a good smooth talker with anger issues and James Caan is, well, James Caan. Some of the other side characters don’t come off as well, as they seem to be right out of the mafia movie stereotype playbook.

Overall, Wisegal is pretty good. It may be even better when it airs than the version I got a chance to watch, as it will have the full soundtrack and musical accompaniment in the final version. Background music to set the mood and transition scenes is a very important element in a movie, one that the preview copy didn’t have.

Wisegal premieres tonight on Lifetime and replays tomorrow night, March 16th and again on Monday night, March 17th.

What did you think of Lifetime’s Wisegal?

Movie: Queen Sized (Lifetime)
Premiere Date: Saturday, January 12th, 2008
Rating: 2½ out of 4 Stars

Quick Synopsis: Holding your head up high “in a kick-ass dress.”

Long Synopsis: An overweight high school senior, who has always seen herself as not worthy because of her size, has had to bear the brunt of being socially bullied because of her size. One of the popular girls decides that it would be funny to nominate her for homecoming queen. At first she is horrified that they have found yet another way to torment her, but instead of doing as expected, she decides to stay in the race and run for the crown. With the help of her few friends, she is able to gather enough signatures to stay on the ballot legitimately. She then runs a campaign to be the representative of the less than cool and not popular. She starts to get noticed and when she wins, it goes a little bit to her head. She has to stop and take note of herself and figure out whom she truly is and what she was fighting for.

Review: Queen Sized is inspired by a true story and stars Nikki Blonsky (Hairspray), as Maggie Baker, and Annie Potts (Men in Trees, Designing Women), in a duel role, as her mother and also the manifestation of her inner self doubts. It is the story of a fat girl (she doesn’t like to be called plus-sized) that decides to fight back after the popular kids play a cruel prank.

The review copy that TVaholic was sent included temp audio and no soundtrack, so it is hard to fully judge, as music is a large part of what makes a movie or show work. But, what are here to see, are the performances and the execution of the story. While the story is about what you would expect from a Lifetime movie, the acting is a cut above your average made-for-TV movie.

Blonsky is really good, especially when she is portraying the hurt she feels, as she escapes into eating to try and cover her pain. The TVaholic is sure that this is only improved by the finished audio and soundtrack.

Potts is good, as her mother that doesn’t know how to deal with an overweight child. She thinks that if Maggie would just lose a few pounds that she would feel better about herself, but the way she goes about it only adds to her daughter’s hurt. Potts is really good though, in a more devilish turn, as the manifestation of Maggie’s inner turmoil. She appears to tell Maggie everything that is wrong with her.

This Lifetime Original Movie is worth checking out, especially on a Saturday night that, as usual, is pretty devoid of anything really worth watching.

Queen Sized premieres tonight on Lifetime and replays tomorrow night, January 13th and again on Monday night, January 14th.

What did you think of Lifetime’s Queen Sized?