I guess I watched this because I thought it would be smarmier than the Jessica Lynch story on the other network. Trouble is, it wasn’t smary enough. Cheesy yes. The Smart family are a perfect family of angels living amid stupid policemen, conniving television people, drug using handymen and nutcase religious fanatics. Poor, poor Ward Cleav…eh, Mr. Smart. How did he manage to plant his flawless, God-fearing, Republican family in this hell hole?
The Larry King impersonation was, however, fall-on-the-floor-laughing funny. I’m so glad CBS was too cheap to spring for rights to the real thing.
But where was the religious fanatic lobby on this one? Just like the CBS’s Reagan movie is said to make him look bad, this film really cast religious nut cases in a bad light. I guess they don’t have the same pull as the right-wing nut cases.
I didn’t watch it. I still have my private suspicions on the whole mess anyway( but thats another thread). You need to remember that the image outsiders have of Utah is only slightly funkier than the image the right INSIDE Utah have of the rest of us. Believe it or not there ARE good NON Mormon people inside Utah.
I think the Smarts have created themselves a nifty meal ticket here. Poor Elizabeth.
Watching this was a waste of time. I didn’t find out anything I hadn’t already seen the Smarts tell us on the evening news or Dateline or Oprah. The real drama was watching the whole thing play out in real life on national television and hearing the story straight from the mouths of the actual people. This movie was bland by comparison.
Just FWI, there are some Reagan supports who are not “relgious fanatics”. Labelling them all thusly does not make your argument stronger, it makes it weaker.
I saw the last hour. I was surprised at how they portrayed the contention between mom and dad. I also was floored by the Larry King impersonator. He was good!
A side note, and I guess this speaks to the blandness factor, one thing that stuck me was that Mom was often shown sipping what must have been coffee. Devout mormons-- coffee?
I didn’t say, or mean to imply, that Reagan supporters were religious fanatics. I was comparing the success that the Reagan fanatics had (in getting his bio-pic pulled from CBS) with the (tongue-in-cheek) notion of religious fanatics attempting to squash the Elizabeth Smart movie 'cause it made them look bad.
But, since I’m back here. What about the very idea of selling the rights to your daughter’s kidnapping and sexual assault ordeal? I can only hope the parents did this because they really needed the money to pay for Elizabeth’s psycho-therapy.
I wish the kidnapper was given more lines, I kinda liked what he said & his acting was neat. Also, they left out the sexual part of the kidnapping, but mentioned it in the followup.
See this is the stuff that makes me say this whole business stinks like yesterday’s fish! There are about three books about the poor girl currently filling up bookstore shelves here and a couple movies. I think the whole thing is a stunt. A particularily nasty one at that…
You know, if it were MY fifteen year old daughter who was kidnapped by some freaky sex cult and molested and shit like that, the last thing I would be doing is splashing her face all over the media and making freaking MOVIES OF THE WEEK about her on tv!
He was telling the Smarts that they needed to talk to Mary Catherine, etc. and then Ed Smart’s brother came up and kind of deflected him. Next scene: Ed Smart’s brother was saying thanks for coming, Mark (or something like that) and Mark said that he wanted to sit down and talk to the Smarts. Bro said, I’ll see what I can do. Then Mark said, there will be cameras there to which bro replied, huh? Then Mark said, well I represent Fox news, at which point the kicked him out.
BTW, the best people I met during my year’s stay in Utah were ones who had moved there from other states/countries. Even Mr. Beckwall, born and raised in SLC, gets a little scary sometimes. The problem is that, generally speaking, they don’t realize how much propaganda they are dealing with, so they tend to accept some really funky ideas as normal.
My understanding is that the Smarts are very wealthy and don’t need the money. However, they wanted some control over the project, which can be made with or without their official endorsement.
