53 Days: The Abduction of Mary Stauffer

This review isn't to discredit the ordeal Mary and her daughter went through, but to critique the acting and direction. Horrible!! I've seen better acting from Lifetime and I'm very disappointed in their low budget production of this true story. They sugar coated what happens to Mary and her daughter and should have focused more on making this feel less like a mediocre cry for their fan base. The camera is often unsteady and the actors talk like they are reading from que cards

You have to wonder about the people who are around you when you consider true crime. Mary Stauffer was not a woman who one would consider to be living a high risk lifestyle yet she and her daughter were abducted.

The film is fairly tame considering what they actually went through. Lifetime has a way of filming some pretty horrific crimes committed against woman in ways that are respectful towards victims and that is appreciated by a lot of women.

I would suggest this. It was well acted and a decent watch for a night on the couch.

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.

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