User Reviews

Professional model Lauren LaSalle is devastated upon discovering that her husband Rick is actually a cocaine dealer. She attempts to leave with her child but is stopped. Making another attempt, this time alone, she succeeds. Forging a new identity, Lauren makes a plan to rescue her daughter, to that end taking flying lessons with Charlie, a decent man whose ex-wife is trying to bankrupt him. Together, the pair make an audacious attempt to rescue Lauren's daughter from Rick's house before he relocates for good.

Necessity is a minor telepic thriller based on one of the novels of Death Wish creator Brian Garfield. The film tackles the concept of a drug dealer's wife trying to escape her husband's clutches & rescue her child from him as well.

Despite the film being quite sympathetic to the heroine's plight, I wasn't particularly impressed with the concept as a whole. Child abductions by one parent is a growing problem in some countries, with several mothers & fathers undergoing a custody dispute forcefully taking their children & fleeing to remote locations in order to either keep their children to themselves or to harm them as punishment to their ex-partners. Whilst the film makes it look like a good thing only because the ex-partner in this case is a drug dealer, in real life the very act itself, no matter who is doing it or why, is illegal. Most of what Loni Anderson does in the film is illegal enough – obtaining a driver licence or birth certificate under false pretences, using the stock market to launder drug money that she stole from her ex, & so on. This is just a whole heap of trouble that should not be tolerated.

The whole legal issue aside, the film is a reasonable thriller. Loni Anderson gives a passable performance as the model trying to rescue her child from her evil drug dealer husband. John Heard is equally passable as the pilot friend & Sherman Howard – famous amongst genre fans for playing "Bub" the good zombie in DAY OF THE DEAD – is good as James Naughton's friend.

There's an old saying about Hollywood movies and TV shows that if it's written on a piece of paper, it's got to be true. But there's a more accurate point of view by none other than PT Barnum who said, "There's a sucker born every minute." I doubt many people who watch this on TV when it first aired believed for a minute that Loni Anderson's character could get away with the way she changed her identity, dyed her hair, move to a new state and went out of her way to do everything she could to get her baby back after running away from her drug lord husband, James Naughton. The help of pilot instructor John Heard seems to set her on the right direction to succeed, and for some reason, everything seems to always go Anderson's way even if her estranged husband is extremely powerful and very dangerous.

That's the problem with this woman in peril style movie of the week is that the heroine is really never in peril and the audience knows from start to finish but somehow, she's going to make it through. Anderson looks rather odd as a brunette in the flashback scenes, and it's hard to believe that her character would be a top model as Anderson definitely did not look as attractive as she looks as a blonde. She tries to be sincere, but it's obvious that no way in any government agency could Anderson do the things that her character does to hide who she really is even if she is ethically in the right. Government red tape just never works that way. You have to really suspend belief quite a bit in this. With his booming voice (that made him a popular Broadway star in the 1990's), Naughton walks off with the film, and even if the audience is rooting for Anderson, they can't help but be impressed with him. At least he's not written to be one dimensional. It's too bad that's the film has few dimensions that are fully realistic.

Just when we thought she couldn't be any better, coming off her extremely successful role as Dagwood's wife Blondie, she wows us again! Loni's chemistry with the guy from the Nexium commercials is amazing, followed closely by the supreme chemistry of her and that guy from Big.

I highly recommend this movie. It is the pinnacle of all human achievement.

I don't want to give anything away, but when she shoots the bad guy at the end of the movie, he dies. Her acting is superb. Also, kudos to the replacement nanny character--the evilest nanny in movie history. I really felt her motivation.