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It’s November and in the US that means Thanksgiving is on the way. So what better way to celebrate than rolling out a new series of LMN thrillers under the banner ‘Hateful and Grateful’? That could actually be the theme for many a Turkey Day family gathering, am I right?
First up is the decidedly not Thanksgiving-ish, or even Autumnal, My Mother Looked Just Like You, a title that will really make zero sense once you get into the movie (the movie’s original title made a bit more sense, Deadly Doubles, considering tennis is an underlying theme). So what is this movie about? We’ll do our best to explain but be forewarned — there will be major plot points revealed because there is no way to really discuss the film without spoilers. Buckle up.
The story begins twenty years earlier when a hoodied figure — an LMN staple — breaks into a home while the owners sleep and steals a bunch of jewelry from their bedroom. This hoodied figure, however, does not murder anyone but they are caught and the face of a young girl is revealed. The husband and wife look as if they’ve seen a ghost, as does their daughter who is peering around a corner to see what’s going on because … the hoodied girl looks just like her! Cut to the present and we meet a family consisting of parents Ben and Sharon, and their two children, Jaden and Noah. Ben works for an architecture firm and Sharon owns a tennis academy. There is some tension between mom and daughter Jaden because Jaden is such a disappointment for not picking up the tennis bug. Noah feels a little slighted because he has, and has even won some tournaments but mom is more focused on daughter. Some minor conflict that has no bearing on the story but does pay off at the end. Later at work, Sharon is approached by a young woman who introduces herself as Cara, and then drops a bomb on her — she’s the daughter of Sharon’s twin sister Diane, whom the family has not seen in twenty years, not since the night she robbed the house apparently (or perhaps not, because there are references made throughout the movie that Sharon and her parents tried to offer help to Diane which she refused). The second bomb comes when Cara reveals that Diane is dead, but all she wants to do now is meet the only family she has left. Sharon is just stunned by all of the news hitting her at once, but she consults with Ben about bringing Cara home to meet the kids … and the kids seem less than thrilled but, as Jaden says, they don’t have much of a choice, do they?
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Cara arrives and everything actually goes well, and she assures the family that she is not looking for a handout or anything like that. But Sharon insists that she stay with them for a while so she isn’t alone. (She’ll later learn this was like inviting a vampire into your house.) Sharon and Cara then pay a visit to Sharon’s mother Ruth, but Ruth is suspicious from the get-go that Cara is not Diane’s daughter. Sharon is taken aback because Cara has Sharon’s driver’s license and other papers so she must be her daughter. Because no one would ever steal things like that to worm their way into someones’ lives, would they? Cara even agrees to take a DNA test to prove she is who she says she is, and Sharon just hands the test kit to her without any supervision. We eventually learn that Diane and Sharon were both into tennis, but Diane tore her rotator cuff and the pain she experienced while trying to serve the ball became too great and it was nearly impossible for her to play anymore. Then she got hooked on the painkillers and that was what caused her life to spiral out of control (this, sadly, is an issue many athletes face in real life). Sharon and Ruth both assure Cara that they made many attempts to get Diane help and spent a ton of money on getting her into various rehab facilities but there came a point where they had to cut her off. Cara seems to take all of this in stride and is very understanding as Diane apparently told her these stories before she dies. But Cara’s own story begins to unravel.
First, Ben is approached by his boss who is very upset that a rival firm has called inquiring about Ben’s performance since he has applied for a job with the rival. Ben assures his boss that he has done no such thing, especially since he’s in the middle of the biggest project of his career, but the boss says they need to investigate the matter and takes Ben off of his assignment. Ruth then dies from a fall in her home … but it was Cara who murdered her after she point blank told the girl that she knows she is not her granddaughter. (It’s later revealed Cara used hair from Jaden’s brush for her DNA test.) As one incident after another happens, Ben suggests to Sharon that everything started happening when Cara showed up, so she must be involved somehow. Sharon doesn’t want to pin a series of coincidences on the girl, but she decides to pay a visit to the coffee shop where Cara works … and learns from the sassy manager that no one named Cara, not even the person in the picture Sharon shows him, has ever worked at that coffee shop. Uh oh. Was Ben right? Does Ben even believe what he said said the night before, because the next morning his entire demeanor has changed which throws off the entire vibe of the story. Poor Ben might need medication for his mood swings. Things come to a head when Sharon and Ben let their kids in on what’s happening and ask Jaden to take Noah out for dinner so they can confront Cara alone. They do and this is when things go off the rails — her name is not Cara and she is not Diane’s daughter (surprise). Is Diane even dead??? Anyway, Cara’s a disgruntled former student at Sharon’s tennis academy who got kicked out — Sharon reminds her she was being a bully — and was blackballed at all the tennis academies in the area (exactly how many tennis academy’s does Rome, Georgia need?). She has been holding on to this grudge for years, but Ben and Sharon made the mistake of not calling the police first, somehow thinking they would be able to handle the situation. What were they planning, a citizen’s arrest? Cara (or Paige) takes off, Jaden and Noah come home and then they call the police who assure them that if whoever the girl is has any sense at all, she will not risk coming back. Famous last words. Because she does come back and tries to lure Jaden outside to explain what happened but Jaden wisely gets her dad and they both go out to look for Cara, and the police are called again. They finally catch her this time and haul her off to the station. The end.
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Psych! There’s more! Some time later Sharon gets an alert on her phone from the security system at the tennis academy so they all haul butt to see what Cara/Paige is up to now. But when they call the cops, they’re told that the girl is still being held because of her previous record. Once there, Sharon heads to her office to see if it’s still locked and Ben goes to check out the indoor courts, which seem to be a half mile away. The kids are told to stay in place so they decide to check out some goods in the gift shop. No one thinks to turn on any lights. Sharon finds nothing out of the ordinary, but Ben ends up getting whacked over the head with a tennis racquet … which Jaden somehow hears in a completely different building miles away. She runs off and leaves Noah, and he and Sharon finally make their way to the courts when they hear Jaden scream. And when they get there they see Ben on the ground and Jaden being held with a knife at her throat by a hoodied figure. Guess who? Yep, it’s Diane, still alive and kicking, and still nursing that grudge about not being able to play tennis, blaming her addiction woes on everyone but herself. During the face-off between sisters, Noah calls out to cause a distraction which gives Jaden the chance to bite Diane’s hand (it sounded crunchy too) and get away while Sharon lunges and the sisters go into hand-to-hand combat. Jaden tosses her mom a racquet, and Sharon gives Diane a powerful backhand swing to the face, dragging her to the chair and holding the knife to her throat (and there is a really excellent, unexpected two-shot for one brief moment of the sisters in the same frame). But she can’t kill her sister and just lets her go. The police are called and they presume that Diane will be long gone so they can go home knowing she’s out of the picture and Cara is still in the pokey. But later that night Jaden is awakened by her mother … except it’s Diane and as soon has Jaden realizes that she gives her aunt a kangaroo kick to the gut, sending her across the room, out the door and onto the floor in the hallway. Sharon had been awakened by footsteps and bedroom doors opening and closing, and before Diane knows it her sister has her by the hair and is dragging her down the hallway. Sharon picks her up by the hair and gives her a mean left hook squarely to the face — she did the same move earlier to Cara — grabs her by the collar of her hoodie and … pushes her backwards down the stairs where Diane lands with a crack, her neck apparently broken. Two weeks later, all is well and Jaden is back taking tennis lessons. (And, boy, does she need them.) And Ben was reinstated on his project after his boss actually called the rival to see if they were trying to poach him and they said they had no idea what he was talking about. The end. For real this time. But we’re left with a huge question: were Cara and Diane working together (we assume they were since Cara had Diane’s personal item) and how on earth did they come together and hatch this cockamamie plan of revenge over not being able to play tennis? None of this makes a lick of sense.
Aside from the terrible title, the script for My Mother Looked Just Like You, by Adam Rockoff, takes a very long time to really kick into gear, right at about the halfway point when Cara admits to Ruth that she is in fact not her granddaughter (and that little ‘twist’ should come to no surprise to anyone who’s seen any of this type of movie before). But the story is filled with sensible people doing stupid things. Ruth got herself killed for telling Cara to her face that she was calling the police. No, girl, just play along and then call the police. And Sharon and Ben deciding to take things into their own hands by confronting Cara when they could have very easily set up a sting with the help of the police would have been the better option. Of course, no one expected Diane to show up because we never knew if she was dead or alive. Paige could have stolen the items and killed Diane, or she could have just robbed her. The fact that it’s never made clear how the two are working together just makes the whole endeavor frustrating. The first half is a bit of a snooze, but the second half is actually pretty fun, just bordering on the edge of campiness. It’s just the ending that nearly ruins it completely. Director Ben Meyerson does a good job at making the story flow, and really impresses with the lighting used in the indoor tennis court scene near the climax (which would have been ruined if anyone had turned on the lights so just for that colorful green and yellow lighting I’ll forgive the stupidity of not turning on lights anywhere in the facility). And Meyerson also deserves some kudos for that two-shot of Sharon and Diane. Most of their fight scene together involved a stand-in for each character from different angles, so I never expected to actually see them both in the same shot because the budgets for these movies don’t afford directors the chance to utilize sophisticated special effects. The shot was simple and effective, and there was never enough time to dissect how it was done, it just worked and it worked beautifully. Also props are deserved for Diane’s fall down the stairs moment because Meyerson’s camera does all the work showing the fall from Diane’s viewpoint, negating the need to hire a stunt person (perhaps not in the budget?). It was a very creative solution to depict the tumble and the crack at the end was icing on the cake.
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The performances also help buoy the story. Jenny Heaton is very good as Sharon (and later Diane). She gives off authentic mom energy, her compassion with Cara feels real, her shock at the thought of her sister being dead is palpable, and she has a real mother-daughter relationship with Ruth. She expertly conveys how the news of her sister’s ‘death’ made her make some bad choices or made her not want to listen to reason. Through her performance you can feel Sharon’s sense of loss — even though she hadn’t seen Diane in years, but they were twins — and that just drives her to want to be a support system for her niece. But when it comes to keeping her family safe, she is one tough cookie, not afraid to kick ass when she needs to. She probably could open a boxing school the way she throws those left hooks. Overall, a really good performance. Avery Joy Davis, in her first acting role according to IMDb, is terrific as Cara. Davis makes Cara completely believable with her knowledge of Diane and the family in general, coming off as a complete innocent who just wants to know her family without anything in return. She is totally endearing and she becomes even more impressive once Ruth outs her and her entire demeanor changes, now threatening instead of sweet, killing without compunction, then having to switch back to her innocent persona to lead Sharon to Ruth’s house so they can find her body, and later going full crazy using her extremely expressive eyes. She reminded me of a young Shelley Duvall, and if this performance is any indication of her talent, Ms. Davis has a very long career ahead of her.
Maya Compton and Jack Fineo are also terrific as Jaden and Noah, both giving very authentic performances as Sharon’s kids, never overly bratty. Compton in particular does a great job as a teen, occasionally exasperated by her mother but not allowing that to come between their relationship. Fineo is also very good as Noah, just a really normal kid, never precocious to the point of being annoying. Barbara Beneville is also excellent as Ruth, a no-nonsense woman willing to give Cara some time but never shy to express her thoughts. Adelle Drahos also does a really nice job as Detective Stone, always speaking to the family calmly and succinctly, never speaking down to them or victim blaming as we’ve seen in too may of these Lifetime/LMN movies. The one weak-ish link is Jonathan Lee Taylor as Ben. Perhaps it’s because of the writing or the direction he was given, but his mood can change from one scene to the next, concerned that Cara is not who she says she is, and being suspiciously happy in the next scene to the point of being goofy, making us wonder if he might be in on some plan to gaslight Sharon. His shifting moods are a bit off-putting and kind of take you out of the story, but when he’s focused on his family he does a good job.
We have seen much worse LMN movies than My Mother Looked Just Like You, and if you can overlook how the first half drags and then embrace some of the camp of the second half, it actually becomes pretty enjoyable. If only it had a better ending that made more sense (and retained its original title), we could have given it a full three stars. As it stands, it’s passable entertainment with some really great performances.
My Mother Looked Just Like You has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.