Mystery Woman: At First Sight (2006)

the audience applauded

Perfect cast and a good story

Just perfect...

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Samantha is played by Kellie Martin a woman who owns "The Mystery Woman Book". She investigates and is interested in law and enforcement. She found out she was adopted and is going to a town she thinks her mother lives. She drives to that town is kind of afraid and stays outside the house for about an hour before she goes in. As her "mother" Hannah opens the door she recognizes Sam and tells her to leave.Inside the house is a dead man killed by a gun shot wound and Samantha's birth mother Hannah is arrested. Sam meets her half sister who does not know about her. Sam makes out she is someone else.There is a lot of drama in this movie. Philby, played by Clarence Williams III is an excellent actor. He plays Sam's all around man with a lot of computer and police knowledge in the book store.There are a lot of criminals in this. Insurance fraud agents, people who work in offices and pass personal information because they are being blackmailed and more.I had a problem with this movie. Sam has to watch her half sister, her mother and her step father support each other in love and she is at a standstill having to hold her identity while her family shares love and is not included. She helps her mother get out of jail and finds the killer of the man in the house.It has some good parts Sam and Philby are successful with what they start out to do but to watch a girl not being acknowledged in love by her mom is so sad.

Contrary to another review, just because a storyline seems meaningless, doesn't mean it is.Most good stories have at least one subplot. In this episode the subplot provided some comic relief to an otherwise very serious episode. I was in stitches!The fact that it reunited a couple of dear old friends made it much more special - especially to us fans of The Mod Squad. Because The Mod Squad was a very serious show. To have it's two male stars (Clarence Williams III as series regular Philby, and Michael Cole as Desmond) in a more comical situation was a treat to me!In this episode, while Samantha is off looking for her birth mother, a silly, but fun little subplot has a couple of old spies (Philby & Desmond) get together to free a Russian spy who landed in the local jail.Philby decides to get himself arrested, so he can tell the Russian spy how he's going to be busted out.It's the 'how' that is hysterical. The police chief, who has a semi-adversarial relationship with Samantha and Philby, is befuddled when he has to arrest Philby for breaking a window.Desmond then, comes in 'under cover' to help break both Philby & the Russian spy out of jail. What ensues is like The Keystone Cops. It is hysterical, and so much fun!

A date with a doctor and an offhand comment about the health of her parents, sees Kellie reveal to Cassie that she was adopted and suddenly now wants to find her real mother. She follows up a few leads and gets an address but, on arriving at the house of the woman she believes is her mother, she finds her standing over a dead body. Kellie pretends to the police that she was soliciting for donations and they happily accept this despite all the obvious flaws in that alibi. As her "mother" Hannah is taken away as the main suspect, Kellie stays to help. Meanwhile, back at the bookstore, Philby's quiet time alone is ruined when a man from his past turns up.So with a shoe horn the size of a canoe, Kellie is set up with a new mystery to try and solve. There is a slight insult to the audience's intelligence by having her suddenly announce her revelation, brush away a tear, suddenly decide to track her down and, after doing it surprisingly easily, she just happens to have turned up minutes after a murder has occurred, but I suppose with daytime TV you can never overestimate the audience's intelligence. So off we go on the usual superficial mystery that never aspires to be more than daytime filler. It drifts forward with unsurprising and dull "twists" and revelations in the plot and the main thing I felt was boredom. This isn't helped by the stupid mood music played throughout as well.It isn't like the mystery is even enough to fill the film, because we are also treated to a pointless subplot that runs throughout the film that just seems to exist to give Philby and Connors something to do. Done well the two threads would have the film bulging and it is telling that even with them both it is still baggy and boring. The cast don't help much. Martin is cute but that's about it. Siemaszko continue her trend of doing very little while Williams yet again takes his paycheque for strolling round in the background being all mysterious about his past. Harrold is OK but Lakin looks like an actresses keen to make the most of her opportunity and forces it throughout. Sander also does his usual charisma-free turn to no good effect while Podell is smarmy to the point where my stomach churned.Overall then a dull and boring Mystery Woman film; and I say that as someone who has found some of the other films OK. The main mystery isn't much cop, while the subplot is pointless. Die-hard fans might like it but even for the casual daytime TV viewer this is pretty weak.

This production had an attractive protagonist, a cozy middle class middle American setting, a small cast of journeymen actors, and two prime time television hours (minus commercials) to work with. Yet, in the end, I felt completely let down.First of all, a significant portion of production resources were diverted into a totally meaningless sub-plot involving Clarence Williams III and Michael Cole, who starred together in "The Mod Squad", back in 1968. I kept expecting Peggy Lipton to show up, but I gather she has been able to find work on her own.In this episode, Samantha Kinsey ventures out to explore her own roots. Of course, the "Mystery Woman" lives up to her moniker by the end of the two-hour drama, at which point we expect her to explain it all to us. But there is no revelation of "family ties", no exploration of "family values", no knitting together of loose ends, and no answers to pertinent questions. In fact, the most obvious questions about Samantha's roots are not even asked. She simply walks away.Even if the writers had devoted 100% of their budget to the main plot line, it is not clear that they would have known what to do with these characters. It seems they had not started out with the first requirement, a good story that would involve an audience in the lives of well-drawn characters.I was left with the feeling that this entire production crew had frittered away a great deal of time, money, and effort, and I had just wasted two hours of a Tuesday night.