I have mixed feelings about this movie. The Boy She Met Online does convey an important message: how parents need to monitor what their kids are doing online. As I once heard someone say, when I was watching a webinar - the internet wasn't designed for children. They don't have the mental capacity to decipher between who's safe to be talking to, and who you should ignore, or in some cases, perhaps block. That's why they need their parents to teach them what red flags to look out for. Now keep in mind, however, that I am generalizing, because some teens are more intelligent than others. Which is where my mixed feelings come into play. I found myself annoyed with the main character, 17-year-old Cami (Tracy Spiridakos), a very naive girl who lives in a small Pennsylvania town. She turns into a sneak after talking to this guy online named Jake (Jon Cor). She knows he's 23, and figures their relationship's not inappropriate because she'll be turning 18 in a month. What she doesn't know, is he's sending her messages from a computer in jail. She thinks he's a student at Penn State. When they talk to each other on the phone, the prisoners are cheering at a TV in the background. She asks him about the noise, and he says he's at a bar off campus.
Her behavior becomes increasingly outrageous the more she talks to him. Getting into trouble for texting in class, skipping school to go shopping at the mall, constantly lying to her mom about where she was going every time she left the house to meet up with him once he got out of jail. Even dismissing her friend when she started showing concern for her lack of sanity. If I'm being honest, she got on my nerves. I found her cluelessness to be so irritating. I was also 17 the year this was filmed, and I was NOT anywhere near this dumb! I mean don't get me wrong, I didn't always use common sense, but I knew it wouldn't be a sensible choice to start a relationship with an adult man. I wasn't that desperate for attention. I do understand the allure that older guys have to some teenage girls. They can seem more interesting to converse with, more worldly, and more attractive compared to boys their age. All of that aside, dating can pose a risk. An older guy is likely to have a checkered past, and might hide things about himself. It was kind of disheartening to watch her be so obsessed with someone who was a lowlife. A guy who Jake sometimes clashed with when he was in jail had also got out, and at one point, when the 3 of them are sitting in the coffeeshop where she works, and Jake mentions going to New York, she's like oh cool, we could get an apartment together! And I'm like... Why would she wanna share an apartment with a couple of dudes, in NYC? So they could invite their friends over, and then she would be the only female surrounded by a bunch of men drinking, smoking, and doing who knows what else. She's extremely sheltered. Over time, she finds herself caught in the middle of Jake's dangerous lifestyle. When all of this is going on, her mom is out of the loop, and doesn't discover who Jake is until she calls his number on Cami's cell phone and he answers by basically saying "uh-huh, I knew you would call, sex is addictive!" That was just poor parenting. Forget taking the phone. She should've taken all of the technology. Some teens aren't mature enough to have a computer in their room.
Unsurprisingly, the acting leaves a lot to be desired. Jake's jail mate/friend is injured from being whacked in the head by a person who broke into the house. Him and Cami drive him to the hospital, and when she says let's get him help, Jake shouts no. That made me laugh, the way he said it abruptly. It was supposed to be an emotionally charged scene, but it just came off as so silly. The ending was unsatisfactory. Her mom just stands there while her and Jake hug. After all of the stress and dysfunction this guy has caused, if I was her, I would've been telling him to get his hands off of my daughter. So if you're looking for a story where the characters aren't stupid, you won't find it here. The only character who truly had sense was Cami's friend's boyfriend, who told her the guy might be 50 and bald for all she knew. He turned out to be neither, but she still put her life in danger. The whole time she was sneaking around I kept thinking I hope she doesn't get killed. If this were real life, I don't think it would've ended the way it did. Girls who meet up with men they've been talking to online usually get murdered. Just like many Lifetime films, the lesson is valuable, but the events throughout the story, in addition to the poor acting, make it quite annoying to watch.
