Stolen from the Suburbs (2015)

Excellent adaptation.

Absolutely the worst movie.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

In the sunny suburbs of California, young teenagers are routinely rounded-up and sold as sex slaves. Unaware of the problem, wealthy single mom Cynthia Watros (as Katherine) moves from Wisconsin into the danger zone, with her blonde and beautifully-figured 16-year-old daughter Sydney Sweeney (as Emma Hudson). Handsome young men arouse Ms. Sweeney's interests, but mom gets mad when she won't bring them home for closer inspection. Grounded and defiant, Sweeney sneaks out of the house to make time with asthmatically cute Nick Roux (as Adam). Next thing you know, she is "Stolen from the Suburbs" to be sold as a sex slave. Victims' specialist Brooke Nevin (as Anna Fray) and Ms. Watros join forces to search for Sweeney..."If you want to find Emma, you're going to have to do it yourself," advises Ms. Nevin...This is a very serious topic, and several of the performers try to give it a serious reading. Unfortunately, this TV movie production treats the subject most predominantly as escapist entertainment, with a touch of repulsion. In that regard, writer/director Alex Wright is successful. You do want to see the fenced-in, tied-up, and bikini-clad young women released before the closing credits. As the young girls' sex-trafficking mistress, tightly-attired Olivia d'Abo (as Melena) drives her unbelievable role over the cliff. The Lifetime TV channel adds a "public service announcement" about the child sex trade, but does not tell you their movie is ludicrous. For the record, the police and FBI are interested and you should tell them before going to any "Pink Motel".***** Stolen from the Suburbs (2015-08-30) Alex Wright ~ Cynthia Watros, Sydney Sweeney, Brooke Nevin, Olivia d'Abo

I'm giving this silliness 3 stars because it IS absolutely hilarious in how far fetched it goes, but past that we have a nearly fact-free plot, much scenery chewing and, yet again, a cautionary tale in the vein of "Go Ask Alice" (which appears to be the source these days for Lifetime Movies).I absolutely love the bumbling, ineffective cops (and, of course, there's an unseen shady one on the force, who's able to move with magic speed to get info to Evil Boss Lady Madam Olivia D'Abo), who even after mom and faux social worker are witnesses to a freakin' murder, right after a confession of the kidnapping, still fail to do jack about the teens. Best, of course, is how one desperate mommy is able to nearly single handedly take down an international human trafficking ring....or maybe it's the endless references to "THE Syndicate". Cause apparently there's just one, and it cannot be named.Or is it the figures concocted on the fly? "90% of the girls in juvenile hall are underage prostitutes". Really???? How strange since we routinely see police departments with case workers to help these children break free. To say nothing of the MUCH larger social service organizations that have already existed for decades.Or maybe it's how "Anna" got the DA to "bargain it down to self defense" (because it was), but still served time for manslaughter. Ummmmm, "self defense" means you're acquitted. You go free. No charges, no time. And a girl younger than the teens in this movie could already tell you that.Or was it the "Romeo trap", which was clearly taken straight from the bad spy novel concept of a "honey trap", back in the 1950's? Because this was easily the stupidest thing I had ever seen.The truth is, middle class teens (or in this case, rich ones) are not group kidnapped, because their families WILL come looking for them. Maybe not in the way we've seen here, but certainly private detectives would be rich from tracking them. And this silliness, once again, did nothing to accurately depict how human trafficking in the US really does work.In reality, most kids are the homeless runaways from bad (or at least perceived to the kid as bad) family lives described early on, because they're the easiest to prey upon. Or girls (and boys) are lured by pimps into "the game" through a slow process of manipulation, faux love, drugging etc.Or they're young women lured from eastern European countries or developing Asian nations by the promise of employment, etc into foreign countries.Want a real figure? Of the missing and exploited children (read under 18) who are kidnapped each year the percentage of those taken by a stranger (which this counts as) and not a family member or someone known to them is .02%. Yes, you read that right. The reason the cases we hear about make the news and receive so much coverage is precisely because they're the exception.I'm not saying this couldn't happen, just it's HIGHLY unlikely. Oh and for the record, I watched this with MY 15 year old daughter. And she howled with laughter.

Terrific problem dealing with kidnapped girls who becomes victims of sex trafficking. The film really doesn't say much good about police who are depicted as doing little to nothing and often treating the victim as a criminal.The film shows to the violent extent that the gangs shall use to get their victims to comply.After being kidnapped, the girls are literally dehumanized and told that they shall never see their families again and are the property of their masters.The film details one such case where a mother literally took on the gang literally to free her daughter, even if that meant endangering her own life.

I watched another Lifetime "world premiere," with the rather bland title "Stolen from the Suburbs" — leaving me wondering just what might have been stolen from the suburbs that a Lifetime filmmaker (in this case Alex Wright, who both wrote and directed the show) would be interested in depicting. It turned out it wasn't a what, but a who: Emma (Sydney Sweeney), restive 16-year-old daughter of Kate (who oddly isn't listed on the IMDb.com page for the film even though she's playing the leading role!), a single mom who moved from Wisconsin to Los Angeles after her husband died and is so neurotically overprotective she freaks out when Emma tells her she wants to do horrible, perverted things like hang out at shopping malls and date boys. Before the main characters are introduced we get a scene showing the modus operandi of the ring of human traffickers who will ultimately "steal" Emma and her Black friend Courtney (Tetona Jackson) from the suburbs, kidnap them and hold them in what amounts to a boot camp for underage prostitutes of both sexes. Recruiter Johnny (the genuinely hot Mark Famiglietti — as usual with a hot guy in a Lifetime movie, the moment you meet him you know he must be up to no good) approaches a couple of homeless teens, one male and one female, who are hanging out under a lifeguard tower at a beach. He lures them out with promises of food, shelter and a place to clean up at the "Los Angeles Teen Shelter," and claims there will be no police there and no curfew. The two are suspicious but eventually agree to get into Johnny's white van — whereupon two heavy-set thug types, Ivan (Rick McCallum) and Mike (Karl Dunster), grab them and tie them up. Johnny (who's referred to as "Tom" on the film's IMDb.com page — evidently there were some changes before the film was finished) is then told by Malena (also unidentified on IMDb.com but played by a quite good blonde actress who delivers a chilling portrait of matter-of-fact evil, especially later in the film when she explains to Kate that as far as she's concerned the kidnapped children are just merchandise and all she cares about is the money) that homeless kids are already such damaged goods that they are of little use to her, and he needs to find her nice suburban teens. Johnny protests that such kids will be more difficult to recruit, but he accepts the marching orders and turns up at the mall to which Emma and Courtney have sneaked."Stolen from the Suburbs" suffers from didacticism — a more subtle filmmaker than Alex Wright might have been able to create a story in which mom's very overprotectiveness lures Emma to the dark side and shown a longer seduction process before she realizes what her "boyfriend" really wanted from her (in real life the pimps who do this sort of recruiting can spend weeks getting their victims to the point where they're so convinced the pimps "love" them that they're willing to turn tricks to show their own affection), but instead he seems to be saying, "Girls, when your mother tells you not to date guys she hasn't met, just follow her orders, or you'll end up a sex slave!" It also suffers from some pretty gaping plot holes and the usual loose ends of sloppy thriller writers. There's even a scene early on in which Kate, who works for a building contractor, tears down a missing-child poster from a tree near the latest project her boss is developing — he's told her to because advertising that children go missing from the neighborhood would be bad business for the developer — and the volunteer who runs the agency that put up the poster upbraids her and asks, "What if it was your daughter?" But for all its messiness, "Stolen from the Suburbs" is actually quite a good thriller; Wright manages to sustain the suspense until the end, and we're genuinely in doubt as to how it's going to turn out and whether mom will save her daughter in time. "Stolen from the Suburbs" is gripping filmmaking and well worth watching, and if Alex Wright can give himself a cleaner and more coherent script next time (or get someone else to write one for him), his future films should also be worthwhile entertainment.