Beware the Syph

I'm going to go ahead and review another movie I'm pretty sure no one cares about, but which gave me nearly an hour and a half of hysterical laughter and joy...She's Too Young, care of the Lifetime Network.

For my money there is nothing, NOTHING more unintentionally funny than the movies shown on Lifetime. I feel as though Lifetime programming executives concoct all of their plots from a menu of characters, situations, crises and ailments. For instance, complete the following plot synopsis by circling one option on each line....

My
Mother/Daughter/Grandmother/Sister
Was
Kidnapped/Raped/Murdered/Otherwise Maimed, Attacked or Molested/Harassed/Turned on to Drugs/Turned on to Prostitution/Infected with Something
By a
Bad Husband/Jealous Boyfriend/Otherwise OK Boyfriend/Male Stalker/Creepy Boss/The Captain of the Football Team/Man

There, I've described every film in Lifetime's movie schedule for the next three years. You're welcome.

Anyway, She's Too Young is a doozy. It stars Marcia Gay Harden (a good actress! Where's Lindsay Wagner when you need her?) and Alexis Dziena of TV's Invasion as Trish and Hanna Vogul, a mother and daughter duo living in nowhere American suburbia (The dad barely does ANYTHING in this entire film except look concerned, therefore this is the last time you'll be hearing about him). There's nothing special about the family or their nondescript hometown...which is why it's supposed to be super frightening when 15 year old Hanna gets...duh Duh DUNNNNN...syphilis.

It is at this point that I'd like to bring attention to the movie's tagline, "To fit in, you've got to put out."

Yes, poor Hannah has contracted the dreaded syph, and her entire school is abuzz with speculation as to the givers and receivers of said VD. You see, lots of people at Hannah's school have been turning up with syphilis...so many that the school nurse has sent out an all points bulletin to the entire school warning them that perhaps, if they too have been dirty little freshmen, that they should get tested for syph. This of course gives the nurse ample opportunity for lengthy monologues all about syphilis and how it is spread. The "Principal," yet another completely ineffectual male, also gets an earful of teen sex statistics once there is a looming outbreak. Thanks, buzzkill.

Hannah is pretty quiet about her affliction, at first sharing the news only with her nerd-with-a-heart-of-gold-friend-who's-a-boy-but-not-her-boyfriend-friend. The others...well, they're more vocal about it. In one PRICELESS scene Nick Hartman, star athlete and all-star syph-spreader, tells the nurse (and everyone in the waiting room) that if he's got syph she'd better test everybody, because he's been banging A LOT. Awesome.

Eventually, Hannah's erratic behavior clues corporate executive Mom in to the fact that there may be a problem (By the way, kids with stay-at-home Moms never catch VD). Inevitably, there is a mother-daughter confrontation, during which 15 year old Hannah eventually yells "I have SYPHILIS...OK?!?!" at the top of her lungs. It was at this point that my roommate walked in, and my love of Lifetime...Television for Women was discovered. Anyway, Hannah explains that all she did was go down on Nick Hartman, and only to fit in and be cool. Hannah sweetie, that trick only works in COLLEGE.

Mom is horrified and proceeds to talk to everyone in town about how her daughter got the syph, even going so far as to set up a town meeting for parents to talk about their kids' syph-catching ways. Additionally, she holds personal meetings with other parents to talk about syphilis, including ones with Permissive Hot Mom, Deluded Christian Mom, and Rich Disaffected Mom (who happens to be the mom of Patient Zero, Nick Hartman). This of course horrifies Hannah, but too bad...this working Mom's gotta take care of business...her daughter's lady business that is. Sorry.

At this point in the film, we also get to see what kinds of pressures girls face these days just to "fit in." Boring, except for the fact that the daughter of Deluded Christian Mom is of course banging everything in sight.

Hannah's been ostracized at school, fondly referred to as "that chick with VD and the crazy VD-obsessed Mom." Of course, her friend-who-isn't-her-boyfriend has been seeing her through this whole crisis, and in a sweet high school moment admits his love for her. They kiss. Awwwww...then Hannah mounts him and goes STRAIGHT FOR HIS CROTCH. I kid you not. Of course, in TV Movieland, nice boys like him tell girls that waiting and taking it slow is a great idea...they have forever to get to know each other "that way," so why don't they just cuddle blah blah. Hannah responds with what might be the greatest line of dialogue in the entire film, "It's ok, it's been two weeks...I don't have syphilis anymore." Ah, young love.

Mom meanwhile is just SURE that her daughter is off playing hide-the-salami with more members of the football team, so she uses her IM account to find out where the party at and heads off on what would soon be a very revealing fact-finding mission. Seriously, this high school party was 1,000 times more exciting than anything I ever went to, and I'm pretty sure things haven't changed THAT much in 10 years. What's the coup de grace you ask? Drinking? Drugs? Oh they're there, but they're just the warm up. How about a girl pulling a train in the spare bedroom? Choo choo! I mean... ding ding ding!

Mom is suitable horrified and tears out of there in a panic. Meanwhile, Hannah has taken her friend's desire to "take things slow" as rejection, and in a nonsensical subplot heads to the very same high school party in search of her friend, the Christian Soldier (who happens to be busy with a three-way in a parked car...seriously). Since it wouldn't be a Lifetime movie without the threat of at least one rape, she gets attacked by a lurking predator before being saved by the camera phone-armed friend-who-is-now-her-boyfriend. He takes her home to Mom, the syph has been cured for dear Hannah, and everyone has learned an important lesson...namely, do NOT go down on Nick Hartman. That guy is DIRTY.

Of course this movie was followed up by the obligatory public service announcement about syphilis, which was only missing the "The More You Know" banner. On a side note, I have to add that I was creeped out in general by Hanna's mounting and probing of the friend-soon-to-become-her-boyfriend. The actress (Alexis Dziena) has a seriously weird Lolita vibe about her on Invasion too, and I couldn't put my finger on it until I looked her up on IMBD. It turns out that she's actually 22 but looks MAYBE 15. Mystery solved!