Review of Due East

Due East (2002 TV Movie)
7/10
Quirky; certainly not "anything goes" (mild spoiler)
13 August 2005
Warning: Spoilers
I found this movie to be watchable, although Robert Forster as the pregnant teen's dad and Cybill Shepherd as the dad's hot-widow girlfriend (along with his semi-illiterate gas station mechanic) seem to be going for laughs or at least grins at times. The story wanders between the teen, her dad's romance, and divorcing neighbors so much that, after a snack break, I wondered if I was watching the same movie. Kate Capshaw as the neighbor must have demanded more scenes...

Clara Bryant gives a moving, assertive performance as a strong-willed motherless teen. A trivial bit with the small-minded school principal expelling her and then having to reverse himself is wasted as a set-up for a later school-graduation scene where she goes into labor. It was possibly the only dead-serious confrontation in the whole movie.

The ending was not unpredictable, maybe a bit too convenient. But even so, it did not detract from the story itself, which was interesting and not always comfortable.
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