JayMusicGirl

Chris Stokes' movies are all pretty much recycled plots of majority white cast movies like Fatal Attraction, Mikey, Sleeping With the Enemy etc with majority black casts, but this one, I'm just now realizing after over a year since it's been out, was next level in it's level of lazy plot theft. This movie has a similar plot, a similar scenes to his film Only 4 One Night, with only a few changes. Instead of the wife's sister staying over because the husband died, it's the wife's friend staying over because the husband cheated. This movie makes it more obvious that the husband was taken advantage of, the original movie blurs the lines too much. Both have an unbelievably perfect longtime married couple who act just like newlyweds, except in this one there's no kid. Other than those few exceptions, almost the same film. There's even a scene where two characters get it on in a public restroom in a club (ew) in both...

This is one of those movies where you can tell half-hearted effort was put in, simply just to capitalize on a real story and make Tubi content, not because the people behind the movie actually care about what they're putting out. Otherwise, I feel like they would've hired actors of Russian and Ukrainian descent to play the appropriate characters. Seriously, not one of the characters "in Russia" are played by Russians. And apparently in Russia, they speak accented English and not their native tongue. This was because, again, the casting and production couldn't be bothered to have people who actually spoke the language natively play those characters. Which is ridiculous to me, because this was filmed in Canada, where you could easily find some actors who could. Or outsource a few of the 10 million struggling actors in LA or NYC. It's just lazy casting, you can tell these are bargain bin actors who probably learned the accent a month or so in advance. It's distracting and takes away the realism of the plot. On top of the mid acting and poor plot execution. Also the leads barely look alike, another sign of the lazy casting.

This was a fun movie in the vein of almost every Lifetime/Tubi film about high school and/or cheer. It didn't try to be Emmy-worthy, too deep, or even sensical, and for that I truly enjoyed it. My only complaint is that the casting was terrible. The lead actress looks great but she could never pass for a teenager, she looks very much like a woman approaching her 40's, so it's hard to believe so many people took her at face value as teenaged Cherie. But then, you look at the casting of the "real" teens of the movie, and you sort of get it. All the actors playing teenagers are clearly in their 20's or older, and it shows. Even the daughter looked nearly the same age as the mom. None of the people who are supposed to be youthful reflect that, they all seem too mature. I wish the casting went with someone like Bianca Lawson (or, to be a little biased here, any good POC actress since most tend to look younger than their age like the old sayings go) to play the role of the mother. That would've been convincing, but I guess some of the campiness and unbelievability would've been lost. Either way, I love over-the-top cheesy films like this, so I could overlook this flaw in a Clark Kent/Superman kinda way to enjoy it.