With all the hype, I was hoping that "The Pregnancy Pact" would finally be able to put a realistic spin on the seriousness of teen pregnancy. I can give it credit for almost succeeding.
It starts out well enough. The school nurse (Camryn Manheim) has administered over 150 pregnancy tests during the school year, with 18 positive results. Her answer is to administer contraceptives, but head of the church committee Lorraine Dougan (Nancy Travis) says that contraceptives at school only encourages sex. Little does Lorraine know that her teenage daughter Sara has agreed to be a part of a 'pregnancy pact': She and her friends agree to become pregnant deliberately when their friend Rose becomes pregnant on accident 'so that our babies can grow up together'. Before long, a young reporter named Sidney (Thora Birch) returns to her hometown to get the scoop on the pregnancy spike. Then, we find out that Sidney has a skeleton in her closet, as well.
It's not that this movie is that bad, but it isn't great. The cluelessness of the teenagers is accurate, and so is Mrs. Dougan's optimism that her daughter would never get herself into such a predicament. Thora Birch's Sidney is a welcome breath of fresh air as the enterprising reporter who reveals the ignorance of these girls and the importance of 'choice'. The fact that this movie dared to touch on the option of abortion was what I thought made this movie different, because whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, abortion is just as open an option as keeping the child or putting the child up for adoption.
What brought this movie down was that it copped out halfway through on everything that could have made it stand out. By the second half, when the truth finally comes out, it becomes very predictable: Sara's relationships with her parents and boyfriend hits the skids; the town is scandalized; Rose, the 'bad girl' who hatched this crazy scheme, gives birth to a sick baby; Sara drinks herself into a near-coma after her boyfriend Jesse says he wants nothing to do with a 'liar' like her; and Sidney reveals to her boyfriend and the world that what he thought happened all those years ago with them, didn't. The closing shots (Rose and Sara as teenage mothers...they didn't include the fates of the other participants of the pact) were what irritated me most. Even though the voice-over from Sidney was about the difficulty of choices to be made and the rigors of teenage motherhood, the message on the screen seemed to be "Bad girls get bad babies; good girls get good babies", and that is at best misleading since even people who follow the baby books to the letter get babies with problems. See it if you must, but don't expect any Emmy-nominations for this one.
It starts out well enough. The school nurse (Camryn Manheim) has administered over 150 pregnancy tests during the school year, with 18 positive results. Her answer is to administer contraceptives, but head of the church committee Lorraine Dougan (Nancy Travis) says that contraceptives at school only encourages sex. Little does Lorraine know that her teenage daughter Sara has agreed to be a part of a 'pregnancy pact': She and her friends agree to become pregnant deliberately when their friend Rose becomes pregnant on accident 'so that our babies can grow up together'. Before long, a young reporter named Sidney (Thora Birch) returns to her hometown to get the scoop on the pregnancy spike. Then, we find out that Sidney has a skeleton in her closet, as well.
It's not that this movie is that bad, but it isn't great. The cluelessness of the teenagers is accurate, and so is Mrs. Dougan's optimism that her daughter would never get herself into such a predicament. Thora Birch's Sidney is a welcome breath of fresh air as the enterprising reporter who reveals the ignorance of these girls and the importance of 'choice'. The fact that this movie dared to touch on the option of abortion was what I thought made this movie different, because whether you're pro-life or pro-choice, abortion is just as open an option as keeping the child or putting the child up for adoption.
What brought this movie down was that it copped out halfway through on everything that could have made it stand out. By the second half, when the truth finally comes out, it becomes very predictable: Sara's relationships with her parents and boyfriend hits the skids; the town is scandalized; Rose, the 'bad girl' who hatched this crazy scheme, gives birth to a sick baby; Sara drinks herself into a near-coma after her boyfriend Jesse says he wants nothing to do with a 'liar' like her; and Sidney reveals to her boyfriend and the world that what he thought happened all those years ago with them, didn't. The closing shots (Rose and Sara as teenage mothers...they didn't include the fates of the other participants of the pact) were what irritated me most. Even though the voice-over from Sidney was about the difficulty of choices to be made and the rigors of teenage motherhood, the message on the screen seemed to be "Bad girls get bad babies; good girls get good babies", and that is at best misleading since even people who follow the baby books to the letter get babies with problems. See it if you must, but don't expect any Emmy-nominations for this one.