The Wrong Stepmother

The Wrong Stepmother

So I watch about two of these a week, I'd do more but I have a brain to maintain, and when I finally finish them up, which I hope to be sometime around May, assuming team Fox / DeCoteau don't make any more in the next few months, we're gonna give out our Wrong Awards.  I will have you know that in the category of Most KARAZAY, which will probably be the most prestigious of all of the awards, Cindy Busby's character of Maddie is going to be a tough one to beat. Not since Chris Klein have I seen so many glorious faces.  But we're only a third of the way through these and there have already been some fine contenders up to this point, with I'm sure more to come, but Maddie was taking it to another level.

Note that Maddie has not achieved the title of Stepmother and is just a girlfriend hoping to be a stepmother.  And even though the team hasn't done The Wrong Girlfriend yet, I must assume they are saving that one for a very special occasion.  

Michael (Corin Nemec) is a widower raising two teenage daughters in Lily (Calli Taylor) and Nicole (McKinley Biehm), and he's lonely.  Or horny.  I think it's more horny than lonely, which his brain will eventually translate into love unfortunately.  He pretty much tells his daughters this as he was getting them ready for school, prefacing his statements like he actually cared about them and how they need to get back to normal after the death of their mom, but ending with the real purpose of this conversation, that he's been having sex with somebody and they're coming to dinner tonight.  Oldest daughter Lily has already seen this lunatic lurking around the house and she's a little upset at her dad for having sex with somebody without having a family meeting discussing this or something.  

At school, Lily tells her bestie Clayton about this dinner which he calls 'A Real Life Guess Who's Coming to Dinner'.  I don't think Clayton has any idea what that movie is actually about.  Then they both get harassed by Vivica A. Fox for not being in class, she is Ms. Price and she is the guidance counselor, and hall monitoring is probably beyond the scope of her responsibilities.

Maddy tried so hard not to give the 'I'm Crazy' first impression.
Tried so hard.

So Maddie comes to dinner, Lily almost immediately doesn't trust her, but little Nicole likes her a lot.  Maddie wastes no time in dropping really large 'hidden' cameras around the house that I think anybody with a halfway functioning set of eyes should be able to see, so she can spy on her new family.

Maddie attempting to seem sane is a house of cards, at best, as she is none too happy with Lily not loving her, as she can plainly see with her large surveillance cameras.

Worst. Selfie. Ever.

She also catches Lily and her bestie saying not nice things about her which also tilts her further to the crazy side of things.

When asked what she was doing, 'Just Smelling the Wall'
didn't seem to go over so well.

We should mention a lot of Lily's distrust of Maddie is justified as she busted her going through her dads phone, and busted her going through her laptop.  Maddie claims she was going through Lily's laptop to order pizza, then changed the story to say she was going through her social media to find some common ground they could bond over.  Lily doesn't believe her, but her dad does and Lily doesn't know why.  I don't want to be the one to tell Lily about the power of sexual influence.  She's gonna have to figure that out on her own.

A good portion of Maddie's crazy is being pushed along by this lovely woman...

This is Cynthia (Gina Hiraizumi), Michael's work partner, and she's has had eyes on Michael for a while.  She just never acted on these impulses because she and Michael's late wife were friends and I guess there's a time limit sister code or something?    But she snoozed and Maddie has moved in, and when Cynthia dropped by unannounced to drop off some work papers, Maddie stepped in aggressively to let her know that this man is her man.  Michael feels really bad that Cynthia had to find out about Maddie this way, and had to gently let her know what was going on.  While Maddie glares at them like the lunatic that she is.

          

                                

But Cynthia just isn't going to go quietly into the night, especially with Lily telling her that something is seriously wrong Maddie, despite the fact Maddie makes breakfast and stuff.

As a Prison cook, Maddie has yet to adjust to outside life meal prep.

I have no idea who's gonna eat all that food, and that is literally an entire loaf of white bread toast.  That's what Maddie called it, as if to let them know that wheat bread toast or pumpernickel toast isn't something she does.  Just white bread toast.

Now things are starting unravel for poor Maddie, but to be honest it is mostly her fault.  For instance, after breakfast she takes the girls out for ice cream and publicly claims she's their mommy.  She not.  It doesn't go over well with the girls.  Then she finds Lily's college essay she's been dutifully working on, in which she praises how her late mother shaped her life, and Maddie completely changes it how her stepmother (which she is not) changed her life, and then sent it off.   Guidance Counselor Vivica A. Fox was not pleased with this essay, despite Lily telling her she didn't write that mess.  Repeatedly.  It went like this...

Vivica:  I'm very disappointed in this essay you to sent me.

Lily:  Here's the thing, I didn't write that.

Vivica:  This isn't what we talked about.

Lily:  Yeah, I didn't write that.

Vivica:  I can't believe you wrote this.

Lily:  I DIDN'T WRITE THAT!!!

And then Vivica turns and walks away, still disappointed.  

Meanwhile, Cynthia has been doing her own investigation into Maddie and she's turned up some disturbing information.  She let's Lily know that she's going to discuss this information with her... tomorrow.  We all know that tomorrow will not come.  The strange thing about this scene is that when Maddie pops up out of the back seat when Cynthia gets into her car, we all know she's going to get strangled.  But these two actually have like a three or four minute conversation before that happens, followed by Cynthia politely asking Maddie to get out of her car, which she does not do.  Don't think I've actually seen that before in a movie.

Maddie's calls it the Reverse Heimlich.

Part of Cynthia's meddling involved talking to a previous member of a family that Maddie stalked.  He will not be telling that story to anybody else.

    

Who's got your nose!

Lily is a little concerned that Cynthia hasn't contacted her, mainly because Cynthia is dead, so she does some investigation on her own.  

Actually she just walks around an empty house, which is supposed to Maddie's house, really slowly for about five minutes.  I think at this point, actress Calli Taylor, who is today's grown ass woman playing a high school student, hasn't really been adequately objectified, so her sneaking around in really tight jeans and a tee two sizes two small for an extended period of time fixes this oversight, and also pads the running time of the movie.  She also has a conversation with Maddie's psychiatrist, who I believe is also Lily's psychiatrist, because she needs info on Maddie.  The psychiatrist says something about Client / Patient privilege, then tells Lily to avoid Maddie because she's crazy, which I don't think is how Client / Patient privilege works.  Regardless, she should've gone ahead and spill everything because Maddie doesn't like people who say she's crazy.

No matter how often she rubs the lamp, a genie never pops out.

So Maddie has pretty much lost it at this point, the body count is piling up, her 'family' is disintegrating so it's time to take some action.  She goes to the school to snatch up little Nicole, but instead runs into one angry guidance counselor who gives her the business.

Maddie may be crazy, but those eyes burned a hole into her soul.

Maddie tries to claim she's the Stepmother.  Vivica yells at her 'She's the Wrong Stepmother!', which by the way is the title of the movie.  This still doesn't stop Maddie from snatching up little Nicole and holding her hostage.  Kind of.  

Nicole is thinking the joke simply wasn't that damn funny

She's basically just holding on to the poor kid while cackling maniacally as Michael and Lily look on horrified.  Somehow how, Perry Mason style, Lily has gathered all the info on Maddie and is just spilling it out.  The tragic childhood where Maddie saw her mom stab her dad because he was trying to leave her, her multiple identities, all the families she's terrorized, the mysterious deaths of some of those family members, and all the insurance money Maddie got from these dead family members.  I think this would be a good time to mention that close family friend Cynthia is still dead.   Maddie cackles some more, as Nicole gets free, and lets them know that she's just trying to create the perfect family, and one way or another, this is what she's going to do!

Nicole was last heard uttering 'later suckas!'

Baby girl runs off and calls 5-Oh like a reasonable person, while her father and big sister try to reason with this lunatic with a butcher knife.  It looks like there's a good ten feet between Maddie and those two, so they both should be able to just back away and just leave the house until the police get there, but no...  they try to reason with this...

Is it the knife?  It's the knife isn't it?

At least Michael does, in fact he tries to approach Maddie and take away the knife.

Michael knew he shouldn't have had that second burrito.

That's how that worked out.  Maddie, despite the fact she just stabbed this guy in the gut, is still trying to save her 'perfect family', until she hears the sirens.

Despite his internal bleeding, Michael was liking the view.

Leaving Maddie to flee, and yell at the family that never was, that it's 'Your Loss!'.  The next time we see our original family, they are at breakfast, business usual, getting ready for the day, no worse for the wear other than dad rubbing his stab wound.  I think now would be a good time to mention that close family friend Cynthia is still dead.  I was hoping that at some point someone would at least show some remorse for the poor woman, but oh well.

Maddie?  Well it looks like she got away.  

Walk away my man, walk away.

And the search for the perfect family continues. 

While the Wrong Stepmother was Wrong on many a level, playing most of the Wrong hits at all the Wrong times, Maddie, all by herself made this movie a classic.  If we were actually criticizing these movies, which we are not doing, sure... we could mention a fractured narrative, plot points that appear out of thin air simply because we have 82 minutes to tell a story and things have to happen with little or no context to support these things, or dead characters who nobody mentions anymore, but we're just here just to absorb The Wrong.   God Bless the Many Faces of Cindy Busby who we hope, somewhere down the line, turns up in the The Wrong Stepmother Returns and brings the crazy to another unsuspecting family.  Though they should totally be suspecting.  Because she's crazy.  Those cameras are still in the house.  I wonder is she still spying on those guys?  And Cynthia is still dead.  Maximum Wrong!