THE PREGNANCY PACT - Lifetime's Ridiculous Teen Pregnancy Movie | Cynical Reviews

when 18 girls in a small town they're all gonna get pregnant together become the center of a teenage pregnancy scare off it will shock an entire nation yep it's one of those movies well we can I'm gonna have a baby this is so bad one of my favorite types of media to review our movies that try to explore a social issue or put forward a moral message but a so inaccurate ham-fisted or ridiculous that they end up being comedy gold and some of the best examples in this category come courtesy of the American cable network lifetime I've previously covered cyber seduction the so bad it's good watched a cautionary tale of how staring at pixelated boobies on the internet will ruin your son's life and why being an overbearing privacy invading mother is completely justified and now I've found another worthy entry and amazingly it might actually be even worse 2010 s the pregnancy pact is another one of lifetime scare mongering hit pieces guaranteed to send chills up the spines of all the alcoholic suburban currents who eat this top it purports to tell the story of a fictional pregnancy pact in which several teenage girls pledged to get pregnant at the same time inspired by a real-life pregnancy pact that allegedly occurred in Gloucester Massachusetts and made national news two years prior it's as melodramatic sensationalizing and absurd as you'd expect and it treats its subject matter with about as much nuance and realism as lifetime is capable of there's a lot of ingredients in this sandwich first off in reality there was no pregnancy pact 18 girls did get pregnant within the same year which is a lot but there was no agreement between them and in fact most of them weren't even friends but their school principal and the media concocted a story about a pre-arranged pact and it blew up from there and while the film does admit that the practical trays is fictional it seems like they're trying to have it both ways adding in just enough reference to real events to scare it's pole clutching audience and stoke the flames of a moral panic that they're innocent daughters could be off conspiring to make their egos prego despite this being nothing more than a paranoid fantasy and disclaimers aside both the film's trailers presenter an exploration of real events begin as a secret you can't tell me became a story that divided in town my magazine is saying that girls in your school made a pact to become pregnant life jumpers yes a movie what you're thinking need to dress them up in cute girl matching outfits that uncovers the mystery behind their motive did you want to get pregnant no mystery is uncovered by the way spoiler even more egregiously characters in the film repeatedly state that teen pregnancies were at an all-time high which is completely false the rate of teen pregnancy was never as high as the film states and had in fact been falling since the nineties and has continued to decline since but let's not let the truth get in the way of a good scare not even the truth about pregnancy which is depicted with appalling in accuracy this movie pregnancy is a straightforward process from conception to completion and any physical complications that can arise from it are almost entirely ignored or ham waived away even girls who are so heavily pregnant that they're ready to explode a surprisingly nimble on their feet and no one complains about tiredness soreness nausea back pain acne mood swings or any of the number of other potential side effects of being a human incubator so despite it being in the [ __ ] title they couldn't even get that right and this is rather strange considering the audience it's addressing you'd think they'd want to go all in on the fear factor but I guess they didn't have enough spine to talk about pregnancy to an audience of mothers but pregnancy is written entirely to serve the story and I've never seen an example of where biology is so badly warped for the purpose of plot convenience with girls getting pregnant and showing signs whenever they need to drive the story forward regardless of how little sense it makes or how much it's up the timeline and there's even some fetal growth rates so exponential you'd otherwise only find them in Chernobyl things don't get any better when the film looks at teen pregnancy specifically teenage girls get pregnant for all kinds of reasons but this extremely complex issue is reduced to the level of sophistication of a turd made of play-doh the most I could gather is that one girl got pregnant by accident and then the others agree to a pact because they thought it was cool with one exception their motivations are not explored and they have no agency personality or ambitions beyond a I have a baby there like Britney Spears is little sister and we can dress them up in matching outfits and play their nails and have playdates together it's gonna be totally fetch you think I'm joking I hope we all have girls oh my god that would be so cool having a little girl to hang out with and you'd be my best friend when we get little matching outfits and I'd paint her fingernails I was so stressed about college apps and getting financial aid but now I can just take a year off and play with the baby we get to dress them up in cute little matching outfits and bring them here to the park and play together I'm gonna cook them dinner every night so this is what it feels like the good Jamie Lynn Spears the pregnant girls are universally portrayed as either idiotic delusional grossly irresponsible or downright manipulative like holy Sh is this insulting and while the boys who knock them up are given a slap on the wrist the film places the overwhelming majority of the responsibility and blame on the girls themselves seemingly forgetting that you gotta have some sperm to get the job done and that knowing how many girls were getting up the Duff these boys were still too [ __ ] stupid to wear a condom or just ask for a [ __ ] not a single character in this movie is likable or sympathetic there's nobody to root for everyone is an [ __ ] in some way at least with the paranoid mother in cyber seduction I could understand where her worries came from even if I didn't agree with her but her equivalent in this movie the Family Values abstinence pushing mother of one of the pregnant girls is so willfully blind to what's happening around her that her arguments have no weight and she's turned into an unbelievable caricature the proponents for safe sex aren't treated any better making wildly inaccurate statements and being guilty of hypocrisy and a lot of questionable conduct and the news reporters are depicted as acting like the worst form of tabloid vultures a condemnation which is hypocritical considering the film is also exaggerating and sensationalizing these events for the sake of views and money all this means that the issues and debates surrounding teen pregnancy are presented very simplistically explored only at a surface level and reaching no real conclusions or solutions beyond saying it's complicated well notion it's complicated you could have just farted that repeatedly for an hour and a half and it would have been less migraine inducing than what we got I'm only slightly exaggerating because I found the pregnancy pack to be a very disorienting and frustrating experience to struggle through not only is the film confused about what it wants to say and how it wants to say it but because of the way pregnancy is essentially manipulated to fulfill story needs the timeline of events makes no sense and is extremely difficult to follow this is made worse by some truly terrible editing and scene structuring jumping between locations and characters without regard for how much this disrupts the flow of the narrative all these elements mix together to create a concoction that manages to be equal parts side-splitting ly laughable and aneurysm inducing ly awful but before we explore it further its sponsor time we all know that wide air 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link in the video description to go to boy icon comm slash cynical reviews help support the channel and get yourself the quality ear buds you know you deserve so thanks to Ray Korn for sponsoring this video and now let's get stuck into this garbage heap after opening with some clips of the real life news coverage of the events we're taken to our setting of Gloucester Massachusetts although you won't hear any Massachusetts accents because this was filmed in Louisiana gotta get those tax breaks and immediately we are greeted with multiple shots of horny teenagers kissing in the high school because one thing always leads to another am i right parents karissa one of the girls in the pact goes to the school nurse for a pregnancy test which comes back negative and the nurse just lets her walk away even when the girl looks quite obviously disappointed we cut to another one of the film's main characters played by Thora Birch yeah Thora Birch the Empress from the infamous Dungeons & Dragons movie I covered that blew my mind a little it had been 10 years since that movie and it really shows how far her career went down the crapper she manages to bring slightly more emotion to this role though that's not saying much that face sums up her character's entire personality she runs a blog exploring teen issues bear in mind that this is set in 2008 and she's supposedly able to make a full-time living and afford her own office and assistant off of a blog I'm gonna have to call bush so we have two big stories in the news today one a woman running for president just picked up a big state in the primary oh saying this age like milk doesn't quite cut it she sees that her old high school in Gloucester is in the news for its high number of teen pregnancies and then an indeterminate amount of time later decides to go there to blog about the issue and find out why it's happening you want to come no that's the most intelligent line of dialogue in the script back in Gloucester were introduced to Sarah another one of the girls in the pact her mom owns a restaurant and is the head of the local Family Values council I always made sure my girls were at home every night eight o'clock you and Michael have a curfew for Sarah I'm sure it'd make me be home by 9:30 and I'm 15 Carol Reed Oz's daughter had a midnight curfew now she's asking the council for baby clothes that's right moms if your daughters not home when the Sun Goes Down she's probably going down on some Sun you see what I did there huh right on cue Carissa goes back to the nurse and this time the test is positive the girls get way too excited about the prospect of another sprog let in the brood before returning to families as broken as their hymens Sarah's mom is loudly insisting in front page news articles that teen pregnancy and contraception are private issues that have nothing to do with the school the nurse protests to the principal and assistant principal but the formal refuses to hand out contraceptives and thinks that because girls are trying to get pregnant it wouldn't make a difference anyway but couldn't you at least give them out to the boys looks like where Eddie's got a stalker I hope this she has more friends that want to get knocked up oh alright never mind after a few more scenes bloggers finally arrives after how much time knows but she's vlogging while she's driving like the responsible adult she is she visits the mom's restaurant and tells her about her blog as if this woman even knows what a blog is the mom repeats her view that the media shouldn't get involved because it's a private matter between the girl and her family because the families of the girls have done such a good job up to this point while gloating about how great it is to be a mother and completely ignoring the downsides the girls talk about how unreliable men are that's what guys do they leave this conversation worries Sara so she decides to get pregnant in order to trap her boyfriend Jessi into marrying her and staying in the town with her forever happy well this got dark real quick god damn so they bang seemingly only once so he must have had some Olympic swimmers chewing down there I swear to God no one tells Jesse I made this happen can't know what he's gonna work it out eventually would you rather he thought you'd somebody else what's your game plan here blogger goes to the school to try to interview the staff and bumps into the assistant and it's awkward as you're doing a story on teen pregnancy you it's pretty impactful on a kid's life don't you think wow that was subtle do you think it might be foreshadowing then the nurse and the mum have a debate about birth control in front of the school council a force which doesn't do justice to either side of the issue we're dealing with teen pregnancy in our public schools after the fact why can't we just prevent it before the vote are we are preventing it before the fact with abstinence programs but that's so blatantly untrue given how many girls are getting pregnant but she's like no contraceptives let's just set standards for our kids to follow so of course she later turns out to be a hypocrite what a shock the school council rejects the nurses motion to provide contraceptives so she resigns in protest and then she disappears from the film she doesn't even try to help the girls in some other capacity or raise awareness about teen pregnancy anything that's one of the top build actresses gone after 20 minutes maybe that was all they could afford one of the guys Karissa banged finds out he might be the father of her baby and calls her a freak he wasn't meant to find out since the girls weren't supposed to tell anyone didn't stop them loudly talking about it in the hallways the smell of onions conveniently triggers Sara to vomit thus revealing her condition her dad drags her round to Jesse's house and spills the beans about her being pregnant to Jesse and his lawyer dad all he's missing is a shotgun Jesse's also pretty pissed about her being pregnant thinking that it's going to ruin both their lives I should have pulled out every time or figured out how to get condoms without anyone knowing or you could have just not her if you didn't have a condom that was also an option the girls get interviewed by bloggers and act like morons talking about how great it's going to be and relishing their 5 minutes of fame bloggers then interview Sarah are you sexually active there's no way that's appropriate to ask especially when she's on camera and when her mother's not there and this is on school grounds it's heavily implied that no one wants to talk to her so it's extremely unlikely she got permission to do this there's no way this is okay but during the course of this interview blogger finds out Sarah is pregnant nobody else does and I don't know why because your parents are struggling financially you're conservative mother is now humiliated and you've put your boyfriend's future in jeopardy and because it's not their baby today I put faces to the disturbing fact that one in six girls in the United States will actually have a child before she's the age of 20 again this is bullsh the screenwriters pulled this number out of their asses also how is she allowed to post this stuff that she filmed without permission on school property and featuring minors on the internet with no repercussions she again tries to interview the staff but the assistant refuses to see her because the superintendent told them via email not to speak to the press so she barges into his office to admonish him and he points out how much of a hypocrite she's being by using the girls for her blog thus giving them the attention they so desperately crave a couple of scenes later the principal gets told to check for the superintendent's email but completely ignores this and all of his common sense when a reporter from Time magazine shows up suppose I can spare some time for time all right make calm down your bonus showing meanwhile Sarah and Jessi grow more distant and her relationship with her parents becomes more strained pregnant the council gives them all kinds of stuff why can't you be nice to me because you knew better why does that make a difference to whether or not you're willing to help her what the [ __ ] the girls get interviewed by bloggers again having another opportunity to show off their stupidity bragging about drinking while pregnant and saying that they know what motherhood will be like because they have younger siblings because that's totally the same thing everyone acting like we're too young to have again but in the old days girls are a joys had kids so it can't be that bad yeah yeah well I mean it was fine when they weren't dying in childbirth I mean Mary and the mother of Jesus was only 14 right another girl wants to buy condoms but is too embarrassed so blogger goes in to buy them for her don't condoms usually come in a box who sells them like that also is it just me or is it not inappropriate for her to be buying her condoms everybody's doing it not everyone in fact not even most every woman pretty sure half of them are flying what why do you point to them when you said that what's that supposed to mean Sarah and Jessi find time to hang out again he wants to go to college and play baseball but she wants him to stay here with her so she's basically trying to emotionally blackmail him into giving up his hopes and dreams at a meeting of the Family Values committee bloggers points out how ridiculous it is for them to want to raise thirteen thousand dollars for a single slot at the school's daycare when they could hand out condoms for about $2 but refused to do so which is a fair enough point Sarah is very lucky to have you to help her and her baby but not all young girls have that kind of and you ruined it blogger meets the assistant at a coffee shop turns out she got pregnant at 16 and got rid of their baby something he's still unhappy with so he makes it all about him and how she doesn't feel what he wants her to feel hey if we had a gotten married you know we'd be divorced by now or deliriously happy one on the other dude you have a beautiful wife and two kids you really shouldn't be saying this I'm trying to help these girls I'm trying to help so that maybe not so many of them have to go through what I did you didn't have to go through what you did yeah because raising a kid is a 16 year old is such an easy option but honestly they're both our souls and the argument ends accordingly have you seen the Time magazine story that's not Time magazine did they not want to buy the rights or something so the principal told the time journalist that there was a pregnancy pact and the story's now received national attention that was quick the media is already there harassing the girls for a news story yeah that is creepiest but were they not miners when you interviewed them blogger confronts the girls who reveal the truth you can't tell anyway you can't tell yeah we wouldn't want this story making national news or anything jesse is suspicious that Sarah was part of the pact and got pregnant on purpose but she lies to him and tells him it was an accident they then use footage of the real-life mayor insisting that they have not been able to confirm the existence of a pregnancy pact and that the principal's memory was foggy as to who told him about it the fictional principal later tries to have it both ways giving a press conference where he says that he believes that what he said about the pregnancy pact was accurate and passes the book to the mayor but then at the end refuses to say whether there was a pact or not he never reveals who told him about the pact and we never find out so as far as we know he just made it off which is what actually happened but the way it's presented here it's like the film is throwing the mayor under the bus if I were her I'd have been pissed meanwhile Sarah goes with her mom to get an ultrasound which he then shows to Jesse and it's little arms no no no no she's been pregnant for at most a couple of months so it makes no sense that the fetus is that large and developed this is like that freak baby from Twilight oh and that bump she's possibly starting to show there it's gone in the next scene of course some [ __ ] reporter trespasses on Sarah's family's land to try to interview them and things get physical when Jesse and dad tell him to [ __ ] off and they both get arrested why did your girls do what you did I mean why did you want to get pregnant if you want to finish high school go to college start a career none of that stuff matters to me all I need to make me happy is marry Jesse and have a kid which would be fine if any of the other teen moms were portrayed as having some ambition sorry you're such a bright girl is no she isn't at what point has she demonstrated that she's intelligent either to you or anyone else at this point they find out that Rose the ringleader of the pact has given birth she had to have 37 stitches down there because she tore badly this is the first time they seriously show the potential physical consequences of a pregnancy without merely dropping it into conversation John is the baby okay I guess put her on an incubator thing like on top of the incubator and it's a bit weird that she's been left to recover in a part of the hospital that's this open and why are non relatives permitted to visit why a blogger and the girls even being allowed in there Sarah looks in on Rose's baby which is very blatantly stock footage they weren't even trying were they blogger tries to convince Sarah to come clean about the pact because she thinks it's unfair that the principal is taking the fall for all the controversy which is stupid because this media circus is entirely his fault and Sarah admitting to a pact would just make the situation even worse and then you can come out and safely say that yes there was a pact and then maybe we can move oh no another plot contrivance if that's where his car was surely he would have seen them when he got out to go to the restaurant to look for her what Karissa's mom who is deeply unhappy at her daughter following in her footsteps and until this point was almost approaching being a reasonable character now has no problem dropping her pregnant daughter off at a party that is very obviously full of other pregnant girls drinking maybe she's hoping her daughter's problem will be taken care of if you catch my drift no one here looks to be of legal drinking age except maybe this guy who's on his seventh repeat of freshman year and this guy who looks like he's here to pick up freshmen this is happening in broad daylight and none of the adults are doing anything about it where are the cops why aren't those news crews reporting on this what the is this script and you really don't need to be that well educated to know that drinking alcohol is bad for expectant mothers so why on any of them objecting this movie makes teenagers look horrendous Sarah's parents now knowing about the pact give her a dose of reality pointing out how bad her actions were and she responds like the whiny self-absorbed brat that she is and storms out to find Jesse when she does he publicly berate her for lying to him each has some bunny-boiler level she really thought we'd be together forever [Music] ruined because of you I'll repeat it takes two to tango dude you're the one that without a condom when you could have settled for a blowy and then she takes a swig from a bottle of liquor and again nobody does anything about it blogger goes to Sarah's house to apologize to her and runs into the mama she's leaving presumably for work they have a mudslinging argument that doesn't go anywhere as blogger is still ham-fisted in how she goes about asking questions and the mom just buries her head in the sand and then she goes back in the house I guess she didn't need to go to work after all blogger then does another vlog where she tells the story of how she fell in love at sixteen didn't want away and ended up getting pregnant she lied to her boyfriend the assistant telling him that she'd had an abortion then she lied again and said the father was unknown and gave the baby up for adoption not that she's ever apologized to him for all those lies the drunk girl somehow managed to drive themselves to the moms restaurant and Sarah has passed out in the backseat she gets taken to a hospital and is lucky to still have the fetus given that she nearly drank herself into a coma sara realizes how badly she dug and her mom confesses that she and her dad didn't wait until marriage to bone despite everything she now preaches I would never have guessed that was coming the assistant goes to meet bloggers again and they do actually realize that they've both been stupid and achieved some closure before they say goodbye so that's nice on a less pleasant note Rose is having problems bonding with her baby who refuses to breastfeed finally we're shown that babies aren't all glitter and sunshine remember teens if you're a bad mother it's all your fault we need to find a better way to get our abstinence before marriage message across okay that makes sense but then she says birth control may not be a choice that I would accept in my home but I can't stand in the way of schools offering contraception for the families that want them but surely that contradicts your abstinence message and it still doesn't solve the problem of kids actually wanting to get pregnant like your own daughter remember bloggers tell Sarah that she spoke up in defense of her mom having learned that teen pregnancy is complicated what a character arc but neither of them have proposed any solutions during the ending was shown that the principal has resigned claiming he was scapegoated by the mayor even though he's the one who made up the pregnancy pact story and brought all the media attention in the first place the families are still T and Jesse has definitively left Sarah and moved on while Sarah has decided to keep her baby what we need to do now is have a real conversation about how to help young women make more informed choices for themselves and how to help them succeed as mothers if their choice is to have the child but you shouldn't be encouraging their choice to have a baby at 15 that's the point isn't it isn't it what is this film trying to say the thing is pregnancy especially teen pregnancy is very complicated every pregnant woman experiences it differently and its impact in implications vary widely that's why it's difficult to portray these issues accurately and profoundly the pregnancy pact had the opportunity to do that but not only failed miserably but it feels like they barely even tried only paying lip service to the task instead resorting to melodrama and scare mongering nonsense while offering no meaningful messages or concrete solutions this movie is an insult to everything it involves it's an insult to mothers pregnant girls teenagers adults any and all commentators on teen pregnancy and sexuality and even to its own audience because even they can't be stupid enough to fall for this tripe if you want a film that explores teen pregnancy with far more subtlety and sensitivity check out Juno instead it's hardly perfect but at least it won't make you want to punch yourself in the uterus and to all the currents of the world if you want to stop your teen daughter from wanting to get pregnant don't subject them to this garbage just buy them animal crossing they'll never leave the house again but these girls feel a sense of purpose being pregnant and what are they supposed to do about it now anyway [Music] thanks for watching folks and do consider checking out the offer from Ray Khan it is a great product and they've been great to me as a creator plus you'll be helping the channel out links down below once again I've got to give a shout out to my lovely supporters on patreon if you like what I'm doing here and want to support the channel more directly consider becoming a patron yourself subscribe for future content follow me on my social media if you want to stay up to date and join my public discord server if you want to hang out links all below thanks again and I'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Cynical Reviews

Views: 2,161,539

Keywords: The Pregnancy Pact, Pregnancy Pact, Pregnancy Pact Movie, Pregnancy Pact 2010, Pregnancy Pact Movie Review, Pregnancy Pact 2010 Review, Pregnancy Pact Review, Cynical Reviews, Cynical Reviews Pregnancy Pact, Lifetime, Lifetime Movie, Lifetime Movie Review, Cyber Seduction, Cyber Seduction 2005, Teenage Pregnancy, Teen Pregnancy, Teen Pregnancy Movie, Thora Birch, Gloucester Massachusetts, Movie review, criticism, commentary, critique, satire, parody, comedy, movie, Pregnancy, Ad

Id: eCQsjO2oQa8

Length: 27min 44sec (1664 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020