The Tenth Circle (2008)

The Worst Film Ever

Thanks for the memories!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Laura Stone (Kelly Preston) is a college literature professor sleeping with one of her students. Daniel Stone (Ron Eldard) is a stay-at-home comic book illustrator. Their high school daughter Trixie (Britt Robertson) gets dumped by her boyfriend Jason Underhill. At a drunken party, she reconnects with him. She claims rape but nobody at school believes her. Police detective Mike Bartholomy (Michael Riley) investigates. The case turns. One night, a drunken Jason falls to his death. Trixie suspects her father due to a previous incident.This is a Lifetime movie. There may be some ambitions but I don't really like anybody or find the situation compelling. Jason needs to be more of a douche. Trixie is too desperate after getting dumped. The mysterious death comes to an unsatisfying resolution. I can stomach a standard Lifetime movie but this is somehow worst.

Did not manage to count the circles... but watched this on the little box as a lunch "digestif"! Pretty boring for most of the story with characters having their own agenda. Romeo did not really care about Juliette, well may be he did! Juliette folks had their own motivation to do what they thought they should do. And Juliette mixed things a little. But it brightens a little towards the last bit. However by then most feel like quitting and happy to reach the ending whatever it might be... I'll give it another circle! Oh BTW, I did not read the book. Wow, I feel like copy all this and paste it here to get enough lines for submission; I really did not want to say more about it as I felt I said already too much - But rules are rules!

***SPOILERS*** Movie version of Jodi Picoult's 2006 novel "The Tenth Circle" has 15 year old Trixi Stone, Brittany Robertson, in attempting to get beck her dreamboat boyfriend, the handsomest boy at Bethel High school, Jason Underhill, Jamie Johnson, ends up getting raped by him! Or so Trixie in her drug confused mind thinks! Jason had dropped Trixi for what he feels is the future Miss America Jessica Rinchley, Leah Fassett, that has the heart broken and depressed young girl on the verge of committing suicide. At a wild drug and beer party that Jason is attending Trixi tries to get him jealous by hitting on Jason's friend Moss Milton, Geordie Brown, that ends up with her left unconscious and feeling that she's been raped. As it turns out,in Trixi's mind, it's non-other then Jason who's accused of raping Trixi and he's forced to suffer the consequences of that horrendous act.With his basketball collage scholarship canceled and Jessica forced by her parents to dump him the young man ends up getting good and drunk and attempting to force Trixi to tell he truth about what he did or didn't to to her that fateful night at the drug & beer party! This has Trixi's outraged father Daniel, Ron Eldard, grab Jason on the street and really give him a work over having Jason, a track and field star in high school, run so fast that he by being too drunk to see straight hit a poll and almost crack his skull open! It's later when Jason is found dead from a fall off the Prospect Street bridge that Daniel is arrested and charged in his murder in that the entire one-sided fight with Jason was caught on a cellphone camera by a person at the scene! It's later when Trixi's mom high school teacher Laura Stone, Kelly Preston, finds out that the local Bethel High School drug dealer Seth, Jon Cor, supplied her with the date drug that knocked her out that she suddenly gets cold feet in trying to link Jason to her daughter's rape! It's Seth a student of Laura's at Bethel High who's been having a hot heavy and drunken affair with her and that wouldn't look too good to not only the school's principle but her meek and home bound, he works as a cartoonist, husband Daniel. The mysterious about his past Daniel has kept secret his history of violence back in his home state of Alaska where he was convicted of manslaughter of his best friend as well as having a reputation of being the town bully!Meanwhile back at Bethel High life has turned into a living hell for Trixi with her being accused of faking her being raped, no seaman was found on her or her clothes, by Jason and driving him to kill himself. It's when Seth in taking a chance by seeing Laura at her home explained to her that he was the person who sold her the drugs that lead to Trixi getting "raped" that she panicked in trying to keep a lid on it!****SPOILERS**** This all lead to the movie's shocking conclusion that cold December night on the Prospect Street bridge where a drunk and despondent Jason ended it all but only with the help of the only person who was there for him when he needed someone but didn't have the psychical strength to save him!

Not as gripping as it could have been but the essence of Jodi Picoult's story is intact. An interesting aspect of the novel was the graphic novel intersecting each chapter, which explores the father's psyche. His conflicted feelings for wife and daughter are revealed vicariously through his illustrations and story-telling. His wife's obsession with Dante's Inferno, the class she teaches at university, becomes his obsession, too, since he explores the same theme through his comic book characters. Had this been a big budget film with animation telling this aspect of the story, it would have been visually intriguing! The father's sensitivity and artistic bent is an essential part of the central conflict and does not come across convincingly in this TV movie. On a superficial level, this film tells a story of a family in trauma, but the actors are not compelling enough to ring true. Any husband and wife who have struggled with raising a teenage child will probably agree this is a weak portrayal...but a young audience might identify with the teen angst of Trixie, the troubled young victim.