I viewed this film because I admire Melissa Joan Hart as an actress, and she's certainly good in this one. The problem is not her, but the film itself. It plods its way through unimaginative storyline to a predictable conclusion. Just when you think the movie is going to have an interesting twist, it doesn't. It never shifts out of its "nail the bad guy" rut.
Melissa, who is great in the TV series "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" plays a student named Mary who is a reporter for the college newspaper. Her room-mate Holly gets thoroughly drunk at a party, and the college football hero takes advantage of her.
Holly cries rape, but no-one takes it too seriously. The college tries to sweep it under the carpet because they don't want to look as if they have an unsafe campus, and because the football hero is the key player in the team who will win them the premiership and get the college an extra million dollars of funding.
Even Holly doesn't want to go to the police because she is too upset, and she is just trying to cope, trying to hang on, trying to forget it ever happened, and besides, she feels it was probably her own fault for getting drunk, and for acting sexy and leading him on.
Three other actors give the film a lift whenever they're on-screen. Teryl Rothery, as Detective Brubaker, has a small part. Rothery is very famous for her voice work in Japanese anime, as well as being famous for her brilliant acting in just about every second or third TV series you could name. So why was she given such a small role in this one?
The second is Melissa's brilliant little sister Emily, who played in several episodes of "Sabrina", as the spoilt brat whom Sabrina had to babysit. She's only on for a few lines, so it's another case of wasting a great actress. I predict she'll be an even bigger star than Melissa, so keep an eye on her.
There's also Peter MacNicol, famous for his role as "The Biscuit" (John Cage) in the Ally McBeal TV series. His role is no bigger than Rothery's.
I'm not saying you shouldn't see the film. It's not a total loss. Any film with the Hart sisters in it is worth seeing, just for them. And Rothery makes it essential viewing too. I'm just saying that they could have made a much, much better film if they had used more of the great acting talent they had available, and had re-written the script with entertainment in mind, rather than aiming at heavily labouring the point that there's no excuse for rape, and that it must be fought against, not swept under the carpet.
