53 Days: The Abduction of Mary Stauffer

Meh. True stories that have an underlying criminal element to them such as this abduction of a mother and daughter can appear to be suspenseful merely based on the action(s) of the perpetrator(s). This is a TV Lifetime film that stars Alyson Hannigan (TV star of How I Met Your Mother) in the role of the real life abducted mother and school teacher Mary Stauffer. Personally, I don't know how a teacher/mother is supposed to act over her 53 day period of abduction with her young daughter held hostage with her so I can only provide my opinion on whether this film was believable or not.

Unfortunately even with the factual evidence of the sequence of true events well documented Alyson Hannigan's performance would have you believe that her abduction and continued rape, night after night was a ho hum event. Maybe because Lifetime is a cookie cutter process, with limited costs and time to write a script, select the actors, tape the film and bring it to the small screen, they deliberately have a formula that does not provide sufficient time, costs and cast to warrant any consideration for an Emmy (or two) performance(s).

I am glad I watched the film before reading the historical events just so that I kept an open mind. Now that I have seen this Lifetime TV film, and read the background info on the criminal, 29-year-old Ming Sen Shiue (played drably by Howie Lai) I can close the book for good. It's a drab time waster that I cannot recommend anyone watching.

I give it a so-so 5 out of 10 IMDB rating

In 1980, school teacher Mary Stauffer (Alyson Hannigan) and her eight-year old daughter Beth are kidnapped by her former student Ming Sen Shiue. They are held captive for 53 days. It's a straight forward Lifetime woman-in-trouble movie. Alyson is good. Most of the actors are fine. Everything is fine and nothing's great.

Over the top tamed down version of events. Made for tv event, really.

These true stories SHOULD be treated as true stories and not some cleaned up version. It's a disservice.

Since this movie is based on a true story, it is difficult to be hyper critical. I will say Alyson Hannigan's portrayal of Mary Stauffer was layered and well acted. Nice to see her step out of her comfort zone!

I'll keep this short and sweet. The story here is very close to the actual happenings of the Mary Stauffer kidnapping, but because this was a film designed for a TV audience, including children, it spares many of the horrific accounts that actually took place.

Hannigan delivers above all in this movie to portray Mary, a role that is difficult to capture and required a lot of pressure to take on.

It's also an excellent testament to the power of hope and prayer. The morals that the world learned from the actual crime are easily pushed in a proper manner.