User Reviews

Danielle and Nikki are sisters whose lives have moved in different directions. Danielle murdered her husband and abandoned her baby, leaving little Cali to be adopted by sister Nikki. For her part, Nikki was a single mom and a widow. After marrying an attorney, Nikki and Jacob raise little Cali along with Becky, Nikki's daughter from her first marriage. And then, Danielle gets out of prison and returns home to wreak havoc.

One of the most sinister characters in the film is Beatrice, the wealthy grandma whose son was stabbed to death by Danielle. Beatrice has her own agenda to be granted guardianship of little Cali. Despite failing eyesight, Beatrice is determined have possession of the child by using to use her money in the legal arena and through the efforts of a private investigator to dig up evidence showing that Nikki is not a fit mother.

The filmmakers go to great lengths to portray Nikki as a good mom. But there are details in the film that call that premise into question. Nikki does not take a strong stand in keeping Danielle apart from Cali, agreeing to a meeting that opens the door for Danielle use her powers of persuasion to get the child back. When Danielle violates her restraining order, Nikki fails to call the police. Even in the film's denouement, Nikki still uses poor judgment by showing a letter to Cali written from prison by her deranged birth mother. That letter should have been kept away from the child until she attained her majority. The two sisters may be not be as different as the film suggests.

Overall, "A Mother's Crime" was an unpleasant film viewing experience. Danielle's oily boyfriend Gunner, who is led to believe that he might be Cali's father, is correctly identified by Nikki as a "deadbeat." Beatrice is repellent in almost every respect. One feels especially sorry for young Becky, whose developmental needs were not being met with Nikki devoting so much time to Cali. The happy ending was not only bittersweet, but even suggested that more problems may lie ahead for characters who cannot seem to avoid trouble.

I was in family services for several years in the state that I live in!! The "highly respected private detective" broke several laws by entering a home unlawfully(twice), stalking, talking pictures inside the home and "using them as evidence". There is no such thing as "grandparent rights" especially after the mother had signed the agreement allowing her sister to adopt her child. Niki should have called the police immediately when she discovered both the detective and the "grandmother" in her home. No discussion about the care of the child was necessary. The two were guilty of burglary. I lost interest in the validity of the movie after the scene I just described!! Also, if the private detective was in the driveway, he was NOT on public property as the policeman implied!! Why didn't Niki take a picture of the "PI" when she saw him in the bedroom with the cell phone that she was holding? Watch if you want but don't try to follow the writer's incorrect plot.

Grandma showed up. How in the world does she think hiring a detective to trespass and break into private property would hold up in court? This movie was fine as long as the unhinged bio mom was the assumed villain (and she was the typical nutty Lifetime stereotype). It seems like the little girl actually spent time with her grandmother so why didn't Nana just talk to NIkki? Grandma ruined it. Also, it goes w/o saying that it was obviously grandma who could pay for an old fogie of a PI so there was no mystery. Once granny made the excuse of not coming to Cali's party, it was clear there was a reason she wasn't there.

Made it to the end. I would have loved to hear that the grandma and her goon did at least 30 days for their obvious crimes. But alas, no dice. The only thing going for this movie is that there aren't a bunch of senseless stupid deaths. I knew for sure the hubs or the teacher friend were gonna be red shirts. I also did appreciate that they didn't take the entire movie til the last ten minutes to tell us the sister was following the little girl and that grandma was trying to take her. A lot of these movies can be frustrating when stupid things happen to keep the tension.

This is so superficial, but the main actress looks much more striking as the redhead she was on Two and a Half Men. I'm guessing blonde is her true shade bc all the LT movies I've seen her in she's blonde, so maybe that's her comfort zone, but her hair as "Candy" was lovely.

This film's main problem is by far the most interesting character (the druggie sister) is the one we're supposed to hate, whereas the 'perfect' yet terminally dull sibling of said woman is the person we're meant to root for.

Personally, I can't muster much enthusiasm for a utterly generic white bread, picket fence All-American family in a mansion of a house equipped with a swimming pool, snooker table etc. But that's just me.

Anyway, the troubled mother of the title, after a lifetime of abusive boyfriends and substance addictions, decides to knife her current squeeze in the back. After being caught by the cops, her young baby daughter is adopted by her estranged sister, and blossoms with all the privilege and money that being part of the 1% can give you.

7 years later, after being released for good behaviour, the ex-con decides to renew acquaintanceship with her child, something her new mother is obviously against. But the former criminal won't give up, and with various other people with connections to the sisters in the picture complicating things, it promises to be a wild ride...

And a wild ride it is, through one hysterical scene after another, and what starts out as a vaguely convincing portrayal of a woman with nothing to lose ends as a hilariously stupid textbook case of how NOT to write a thriller.

The nuanced portrayal of the addict sister disintegrates so she becomes just another mindless psychopath, previously intelligent people make incredibly daft decisions to put themselves and other in jeopardy to pad out the length and the acting takes a dramatic nosedive from adequate to shrill and annoying. Me no likey.

Pointless looking for high art in TV movies I guess, but watching this film's non-stop descent into awfulness is something to behold. Considering how much undoubted potential this story has though, maybe that's the true 'crime' here. 3/10.

There are just too many variables here. The third grade teacher, a widow with a daughter, her no-good sister, who killed her own husband and ran off with the baby, only to be caught and sentenced to prison, where after 7 years, she is about to be freed after doing community work. The second husband of the teacher, an attorney, the former widow's daughter who now years later feels left out by her mother's devotion to the niece she has adopted. The grandmother, who was the one to find her son dead with a knife in his back, now going blind but seeking custody of the granddaughter since she sees the daughter-in-law who killed her husband, at the home of the sister too frequently.

Naturally, our bad sister is influenced by her boyfriend, who foolishly believes that he might be the father of the child, and not the husband his girlfriend killed, he has influenced his sister to demand that the child, now 7, be returned to her, even though she had given her up for adoption to her sister as she went to jail.

Remember, there are so many stories in the naked city and this film is no exception either.