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High school teacher Lauren finds her life up side down when her job, the custody of her adopted daughter and even her safety is in danger when an angry student falsely claims to have had an affair with her.

Rhonda Dent, Tegan Moss, Poppy Darch, and Carlo Marks in Secret Life of A Student (2021)

VIEWS ON FILM review of Secret Life of A Student

Accelerated from second gear in the final 10 minutes

&quot;I&#39;m your teacher. There is nothing more between us&quot;. There is &quot;more&quot; I need to say about the flick I&#39;m about to review. How about another 200+ words. Anyway, Secret Life of A Student is my latest write-up. And its title, well it doesn&#39;t have much to do with the movie. &quot;Secret Life&quot; is about a female high school teacher who is getting it from all angles. Someone in a sleek car is trying to harass her, her student claims he had an affair with her therefore threatening her job, and social media deviants are posting stuff about her that is well, inappropriate. The high school teacher I&#39;m talking about is Lauren Beeches and she is played by Canadian actress Rhonda Dent. Dent gives a solid performance in the lead role. There&#39;s a certain rawness and vulnerability to it. Secret Life of A Student is directed by sometimes producer Jason James. James fashions &quot;Secret Life&quot; as a slow burn where you anxiously wait for the big reveal. So OK, who is driving by Lauren&#39;s house and giving her the creeps? Why doesn&#39;t the dean of students believe that Lauren is an upstanding teacher who doesn&#39;t rob the cradle in her spare time? And who killed Lauren&#39;s bestie at the beginning act leaving Lauren to care for said bestie&#39;s young daughter? These questions get answered at the two-hour mark (with commercials added). &quot;Secret Life&quot;, well it has the ability to leave the viewer tedium-bound and enthralled all at the same time. Basically &quot;Secret Life&quot; is a Lifetime endeavor posing as veritable whodunit. The acting is sometimes hammy, the whiff of the film is sometimes campy, the red herrings are ready-made, and there&#39;s the final twist where the antagonist goes completely cray cray (the way she says &quot;sweet baby angel&quot; is borderline theatrical). I&#39;ve seen better Lifetime-rs but I&#39;ve also seen worse. A secret &quot;life&quot; less ordinary.

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Secret Life of A Student

This 2021 film appears with several titles, I believe. The plot is fairly predictable with no major surprises, but the red herrings were well-crafted and served up throughout the running time. The setup is fairly simple, with the odd question of why her best friend is murdered. Cute kid becomes centre of our heroine&#39;s world, as she continues to mentor several hormonally-charged adolescents at her college. So far, so predictable. The tension builds slowly (the film could have lost 40 minutes in editing without any significant impact) and maintains progress. We ramp up in the last 13 minutes when all becomes clear and the main Antagonist is fimally revealed. Happy ending.

The movie is entertaining despite some of the dumb things Lauren, played by Rhonda Dent, did. I knew as soon as the will was revealed who the perpetrator would be. But Conner&#39;s (Kaden Connors) role was a nice twist. I do wish the acting was better. The acting is so bad it&#39;s like fingernails on a chalkboard. Ms Dent is the worse. It&#39;s a good study of human behavior. Can people who say you are an excellent teacher, good person, appear to respect you, really turn on you so quickly. These are the kind of people I would never want to see again. I had some difficulty feeling compassion for Lauren. She just sat there and let Nadia (Tegan Moss) make degrading insinuations about her deceased friend and her friend&#39;s law partner. I would think she would have defended her friend, especially since she wasn&#39;t there to defend herself. How could she believe those horrible insinuations while someone is doing almost the same thing to her, spreading hurtful rumors. The ending was a surprise to me. There is no way I would have returned to that school, no way I could have trusted anyone there again. The title is misleading. The student does not have a secret life. He&#39;s very open to the teacher about his feelings. The pre-school teacher has a secret life. Not a bad watch if you get past the &quot;acting.&quot;

A thriller with a decent story and plot twists that make sense. A really enjoyable watch. I didn&#39;t quite expect anything as this film wasn&#39;t formula, and had a lot of different things. The acting is cool.

There&#39;s probably about 20 minutes left in this movie as I&#39;m writing this. The principal makes me want to fast-forward to get to the ending already! He has me doing plenty of eye-rolls at how quickly his disposition changed! Don&#39;t get me started on the red-head teacher. In the beginning, I instantly thought I knew who it was. Then towards the middle, I became conflicted. But my second guess was right all along! I&#39;ve been binging on LMN movies on SlingTV and this is one of the top few I&#39;ve watched that&#39;s good! Yes, the SL is very similar but I think it has a twist because it keeps you guessing. This reminds me of the &quot;old&quot; Lifetime movie days!!

In &quot;Secret Life of a Student&quot; (aka, &quot;A Lethal Lesson&quot;), there is a major tussle over the adoption of an orphan. After both her parents were murdered, little Phoebe is adopted by Lauren Beeches, the best friend of the deceased mom Chloe. Now, the race is on to separate little Phoebe from Lauren by a nefarious villain. Who will ultimately gain custody of the character referred to as &quot;my sweet baby angel&quot;? The filmmakers juggled two narrative strands. First, it is clear that someone wants Lauren out of the picture in order to get Phoebe in their clutches. Second, Lauren is framed at her place of employment, Grant High School, for fraternizing with a student. The two actions were brought together due to the machinations of a deranged and clever villain. While there was not much suspense in figuring out the identity of the perp, interest was sustained due to the strong character development, especially that of the protagonist Lauren. Ms. Beeches was a character of considerable stature. Despite being a victim both at work and on the home front, Lauren&#39;s stoic demeanor stood her in good stead against such figures as her oily Principal Harris. Lauren was a character who had agency against all the odds. Another intriguing character was the attorney David York. At one point, he came under suspicion by Lauren. But David turned out to be that rare creature in a Lifetime film: a soft male who actually had backbone and determination. The actors hit all the right notes in this well-paced and well-photographed domestic drama. The only missing element in the denouement was that Principal Harris should have been fired and been on the receiving end of a civil suit filed by David.

User reviews

Secret Life of A Student

VIEWS ON FILM review of Secret Life of A Student

Accelerated from second gear in the final 10 minutes

Entertaining

Fantastic lifetime

Familiar SL with a twist!

"My Sweet Baby Angel"

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