A Teacher’s Crime (2008)

Directed by: Rob Malenfant | 93 minutes | drama, crime | Actors: Claudia Besso, Larry Day, Ellen Dubin, James Gallanders, Kyle Gatehouse, Art Hindle, Paula Jean Hixson, Ashley Jones, Erik Knudsen, Chris Mulkey, Tommie-Amber Pirie, Tom Rack, Sonya Salomaa, Veronique-Natale Szalankiewicz

An accumulation of missed opportunities, that’s the best way to describe the television film ‘A Teacher’s Crime’ (2008). Director Rob Malenfant has built up an oeuvre that mainly consists of TV series and films and has not yet been able to distinguish himself. His main employer is Lifetime, a media company that focuses primarily on wives and wives languishing at home, who fill their days swooning in front of the TV and immersed in stories of heroic women cornered by malevolent men. . ‘A Teacher’s Crime’ fits perfectly into that pattern. The heroine in this case is the handsome, ambitious and young Carrie Ryans (Ashley Jones, who is remarkably similar to presenter Wendy van Dijk). Carrie is a high school teacher. She spends a lot of time in the personal guidance of her students, not realizing that it could be abused…

Carrie was recently named ‘Teacher of the Year’, which comes with major consequences. People have read her story in the newspapers and therefore also know that her father David (Art Hindle) is a man who is very warm. When one of her best students, the introverted Jeremy (Erik Knudsen), asks for some extra attention from her, she doesn’t see any dangers in that at first. Jeremy’s parents both passed away when he was a little boy, so she can imagine it must not be easy for him. Especially when he tells that his guardian, Uncle Bill (Chris Mulkey), does not want him to go to college but demands that he take over the family business. In reality, however, Jeremy and Bill are crooks who want to take the wealthy teacher’s money from her to inherit. While Jeremy seeks comfort from Carrie, Bill takes compromising photos of the two. With that, they decide to blackmail her. However, Jeremy feels remorse when Carrie’s father dies suddenly. When it turns out that his uncle is behind David’s murder, it turns out that the distraught boy has ended up in a difficult position.

TV movies are generally not known for their overwhelming quality. They usually need a strong script and convincing acting. This Canadian-American co-production is woefully wrong on all fronts. Most cringe-inducing are the dialogues, which are spooned up by the mediocre actors as if they were reading from the autocue. The central character, Carrie, is far from realistic. She’s too good to be true. Not only is she a kind and caring teacher with an eye for all her students, she is also a wonderful and wise mother to her daughter Lacey and the ideal daughter for her – equally cardboard – father David. Plus, she looks great any time of the day. Yes, even if she just rolls out of bed! Her relationship with Dean (James Gallanders) does not go as it should for a while, but as a viewer you see well in advance that it will all work out. Almost all actors play their barely developed characters flat and soulless. The only one who tries to make something of it is Chris Mulkey, but the one-sidedness of Uncle Bill hardly gives him room to distinguish himself.

There could have been more, as the plot itself is interesting. However, Malenfant and his screenwriters Christine Conradt and debutant Corbin Mezner simply lack talent to make something of this and that also applies to the cast. The crew also fails to save ‘A Teacher’s Crime’. In fact, the music is very inappropriate and annoying at times. The cinematography of Bert Tougas is what you can expect from a TV movie; little inventive and above all straightforward. ‘A Teacher’s Crime’ claims to be a crime mystery, but this film never gets exciting. There is plenty of drama, but the characters are not captivating enough to empathize with them. The only aspect that deserves a big pass is the brisk pace. The events pass you by at a fast pace, so that you hardly get the time to wonder what could – and should – be improved in this very mediocre print.