The Wrong Woman (2013)

Pretty Good

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Former The Wonder Years mainstay Danica McKellar stars in this another "The Wrong _____" Lifetime movie about dental assistant that has been wrongly accused of murder entitled "The Wrong Woman".Well,after being into a lot of "The Wrong _____" movies this weekend that could probably be classified as average and mediocre while this review was written,I finally found something that I would probably consider a notch above mediocre in the sense that it was able to provide excitement in its plot twists and common story lines.Ellen Plainview is a dental assistant at a dental office that has been secretly taking pole dancing lessons at night to bring added joy and sensuality to her sex life with her husband Mike,who also works as a cop.Suddenly one day,two detectives arrested Ellen for the case of an attempted murder of Faye Walker.Things begin to look overwhelming as she starts getting represented by a seemingly incompetent lawyer and the amount of evidence goes against her.In the end,she decided to defend herself being a Law Student after her lawyer decided to leave her and decided to prove her innocence to the court and the viewers as well.The movie is basically the standard "The Wrong _____" having the protagonist being against a villain who is trying to put a trainwreck on her life;the least suspected person being the villain; and protagonist trying to put an end to the terror the villain is putting in her life. But what makes it a notch above the standard Lifetime movie and the "The Wrong _____"-type movies is the fact that we got involved in an interesting court room drama.The court room drama was good enough to be entertaining especially with Ellen representing herself as a lawyer.Danica McKellar did well in terms of performance in proving her innocence during the court room scenes.She made them truly entertaining despite being predictable or the viewer knowing that she will get the "Not Guilty" verdict in the end.She played Ellen with passion especially being her own lawyer.No wonder there was a sequel made for it entitled "Mommy,I Did Not Do It" which I will review later.

This diverting piece of nonsense is genuinely entertaining in its bland simplicity. Danica McKellar is a happy suburban housewife with a decent job, a beautiful child, and a husband who is a police officer. Everything is hunky dory. Little does she know (although the viewer guesses immediately) that trials and tribulations lay just around the corner.A woman is beaten to death with a tire iron in the same parking lot used by McKellar. Circumstances build up against her. Her hair was found on the victim's body. An eyewitness saw her cleaning blood from a tire iron before disposing of it. She's arrested and thrown in jail. Her husband, not knowing what to think, packs up without warning and leaves with their pretty little girl, whose mind he subsequently poisons against her. She's suspended from her job. So far -- and throughout -- the story is archetypal: a woman falsely accused, gossiped about, deserted by everyone, empowers herself, defeats her enemies, and finds true love.That's it, in a nutshell, but a few more details are worth while. First, all men are beasts. They're all smug, arrogant, and hateful. The only male who actually comes across as an actor is a former football player, Fred Dryer, who takes his time to work through his oversimple character. He's almost the only believable performer in the movie. And I don't say that just because he and I share an alma mater. Well, there is one more relatively subtle performance, and convincing too. The witness who falsely claims that McKellar assaulted her with a music stand in high school. I think her name is Jennifer Blanc. She should have been the lead. McKellar herself is cute enough and has a neat figure but the role compels her to act dumber than she turns out to be, and her voice is a strident version of a Valley Girl's.About two thirds of the way through, the helpless heroine, adrift in an antagonistic world, inexplicably finds herself and demolishes the case against her with confidence and aplomb. The end.

Lemme see... does "lame" even in all CAPS begin to describe how bad this movie is? Character development? No. Plot line? No. Logical transition? No. Direction? No. Decidedly no. Production value? No. There was absolutely no ROI in that arena. Can't believe anyone put up the loot to produce this.At no time in the scripting is the "heroine" (quelle joke) Mirandized. Nothing remarkably stunning is made of the photographic evidence found in the trunk when the car has been in impound since the defendant was arrested (did I mention without being mirandized?). I can't believe Fred Dryer, a former police officer himself, could have agreed to appear in this LAME movie with such shoddy plot development, poor investigative protocols and NO MIRANDIZING of the defendant. Suspects aren't presented to the victim in this fashion. How could you Fred? Really? Hunter would be so disappointed.And they wrap it all up with the real culprit knocked out by an oxygen cylinder to the head, laid out cold on the hospital supply room floor and no logical conclusion to the scene or the entire movie, perhaps showing the real culprit being arrested, mirandized and dragged away screaming obscenities, vowing vengeance forever? No, we get the heroine walking away with her best model's runway gait, camera focused firmly on a shot of her calves and her "two cats fighting in a sack" posterior. Yeah. That's important plot development.No, let's transition this with a sudden cut to a scene of the heroine playing a LAME tennis lesson with the lame daughter and cutesy public defender. UGH what a lame movie. Did I mention the only thing this LAME movie achieved was a very successfully executed version of a LAME ripoff of Hitchcock's "The Wrong Man"? I am sure Hitch rolled over in his grave, groaning at the insult. Don't waste your time on this incredibly awful movie.

Taken straight from the Lifetime Movies template, this movie is full of cliché and stereotype. A very grown-up Danica McKellar (The Wonder Years) plays the unsuspecting cop's wife, who loves her hubby dearly and is doing all she can to revive their marriage. She even takes pole dancing lessons, hoping to surprise and entice her hubby with her newly acquired skill. Meanwhile, unbeknown to the cop's wife, he's having an affair with the town whore. One of the two women ends up dead, and the other is accused of her murder. Amazingly, the cheating cop hubby barely has a speaking role in the movie. I kept waiting for him to show up as the villain, but he never did. I've enjoyed Danica McKellar in past Lifetime movies, but I just couldn't believe her as this character. She went from wimpy wife to superwoman in two hours. There are too many scenes where she has her "Winnie" sad eyes on, lips apart, big white front teeth showing just enough. I'd love to see Danica make a movie a little more light hearted, one that uses her sparkling smile more. The ending was unbelievable, and seemed forced upon the viewer without explanation. I typically like original Lifetime movies, but this one was so predictable it was probably shot in three days. Compared to Lifetime movies of the past (three years ago and beyond perhaps), I wouldn't bother to watch this one twice.