Betrayed at 17 [HD]

worth your time
Considering many films on the Lifetime Movie Network fall short of excellence in several categories, it's almost a minor miracle that Betrayed At 17 manages to escape the mediocrity that many films fall victim to and actually ends up being pretty suspenseful with a few twists and turns in the plot development that make the second half drastically different from the first.

It's about a 17-year old boy who encourages a 17-year old cute and reluctant girl to have sex with him as part of a bet with a friend. He films the act of sex using his laptop after luring the girl to his bedroom, and when he finally goes through with it he sends the video to his friend intended initially for a few cheap laughs. However he never would have guessed the entire school would find out about it.

When the girl is eventually killed in a freak accident during really awful circumstances, well, from here it's all about pointing fingers at each other over who's really responsible for not...

A Lifetime Message Movie That Proves, Once Again, That Terrible Things Happen When You're 17
Premiering as a Lifetime network original movie, "Betrayed at 17" has all the trappings that you would expect from such a distinction. I can be critical of the Lifetime brand with movies that tend to veer between sensationalized instances based on real life and thrillers of fantastical proportions. While "Betrayed at 17" feels a bit more grounded than the network's usual fare and tries to offer more realistic situations, it still strains under a soapy formula and stock characters. There is an interesting angle on the typical bullying story, but the screenplay lacks the subtlety to really let people connect with the material. The villains are painted in broad strokes, the victimization is devastating, and yet don't be surprised that there are important life lessons to be learned by everyone. The movie has a certain sincerity, I just wished that it had felt a bit more realistic (and not so much like an lurid after school special).

Before I get into the movie, has anyone...

So-So Artificial Drama
Made-for-TV movie where Greg, a popular high school football jock, bets his buddy, Jared, that he can "make it with any chick in this school!" He tapes his bedroom encounter with Lexi, a very attractive "Class-A prude," on his laptop just for the sake of proving to Jared that it really happened. However, Greg's ultra-vain, jealous, and apparently sociopathic ex-girlfriend gets ahold of his I-phone and forwards the taped encounter to half the school. A long string of tragedy follows.

Positives:

--Compelling enough story that keeps your attention;

--Several intriguing layers of plot, with the sort of conflict that we actually hear about in the news;

--Fairly decent acting by some of the cast;

--Characterization improves in the latter parts of the film;

--The film has some submerged yet meaningful statements to make about our society, particularly on the lack of privacy we face in the I-phone age and the effects of so many...

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