Wonderful Movie

One of my all time favorites.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I guess you have to live in or near Gloucester for this movie to be interesting, or have an interest in local politics for at least. All throughout this movie I sat with an empty feeling and sort of not really caring, because the events in the movie seemed stupid and didn't appeal to my interest in any way.The story is about teenagers apparently making a pact for them all to become pregnant and have children about the same time, so their children can grow up together, play together and become best friends, like the teenage girls themselves are. But being teenagers, they are not aware of the consequences and hard work being pregnant and having a child is. And the toll the consequences have on their families and the ripples in society of living in a small community.Some of these teenagers have little respect for themselves or their pregnancy, as they smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. Plus their whole attitude to the situation was just infuriating. And the movie is based on real events, which can only make you think why some people are that ignorant. But, as I started out with saying, this appealed little to me, because I live nowhere near where this allegedly took place.As for the acting in the movie, well, people did adequate jobs, but I can't really say that any particular performance stood out. It was fairly blend and mediocre.I am sure that this movie have appeal for an audience who have an interest in events such as those portrayed in the movie. But for those of us who watch movies for a solely entertainment purpose, then "Pregnancy Pact" offers very little.

Can anyone understand the mind of a teenager? Why don't teenagers better understand consequences, and why are so many in such a hurry to grow up? These questions burn in the mind of every parent of a certain age, and this movie, short of providing concrete answers, is one of the best treatments I've seen on the subject. Many movies ask the audience to accept extraordinary circumstances: a flying elephant, for example. Screen writers call this "suspension of disbelief," and are careful not to exceed the ability of the audience to wrap their mind around a premise. This movie is more difficult than others because the premise hits very close to home; it invites challenge. Did four teenage girls in Gloucester, Massachusetts intentionally try to get pregnant? We'd like to think not, but the possibility makes an excellent theme for a movie, and the writers leapt at it, taking full advantage of this opportunity to give full treatment to the important subject of teenage pregnancy. The temptation will be to view the teenage characters through a rational perspective and dismiss the movie as being just as stupid. Yes, the main characters were stupid, but there's much more to it than that. You will enjoy the movie much more if you exercise your empathy skills and try to identify with the characters. The writers made it easy to do so; my compliments to them. The result was both clinical and artful. And while the movie, at times, lacked drama and emotion, I was able to identify with the main character, which is an accomplishment in and of itself. The other components of the movie were satisfactory. The plot was sufficiently unpredictable, and the ending did not disappoint. After watching this movie, you will have learned the most important lesson in parenting: Children are born without knowledge. Parents (and in my opinion, teachers, too) must explain things over and over again in a variety of ways and in a variety of voices. What works for one kid, may not work for another. The important thing is to keep trying and don't just assume that the child gets it.

What I expected from this LMN movie was a soap opera in which a happy family's daughter turns up unexpectedly pregnant. The scenario then calls for the husband to go ballistic, the teen-aged daughter to be buried under a mountain of contingencies, and the mother -- after overcoming her initial shock -- to straighten things out. It wouldn't have been a surprise if the baby's father had been a psychopath who left her behind to deal dope out West, but then there would have been the shy, studious, not unhandsome class brain who has always loved her from afar. The nerd would replace the delinquent in the daughter's affections and the future would begin to look pretty rosy overall.I'm reluctant to spin out more of this formulaic crap without a paycheck.Instead, although I caught this in only bits and pieces, I have to say it was rather better than that. It's roughly based on a real story of a pact among teen-aged girls in pretty little Gloucester, Massachusetts. All agree to get pregnant early in their teens so they can stay together, buy their babies matching outfits, and live comfortably with the fathers after they graduate.A young woman who makes a living by being a blogger (can you do that?) comes to investigate and finds much of the community complacent and in denial. The school nurse wants to introduce sex education and distribute condoms. Nancy Travis is the mother of a virginal teen and she's against sex education and all that filthy stuff for the same reason some of our legislators and governors oppose it -- it's like giving the kids a license to have sex. Some of us oppose the distribution of condoms in third-world countries where AIDS is rampant for similar reasons. Gee, if you give them condoms, they'll have sex! Nancy Travis bumps up against reality when her daughter becomes pregnant. At that point, the movie begins to examine the genuine difficulties attendant upon teen pregnancies. First, the kids are living in a kind of fantasy world in which a baby is a wind-up toy that loves you no matter what. The reality is that having a dependent child is more like attaching one of those ball and chain devices that we see prisoners wearing in cartoons. Unless, that is, you want to drop out of school and cut off your future, or you happen to have a grandma into whose lap you can conveniently drop your offspring. The movie examines these problems in some detail, and realistically.The photography around Gloucester is well done. I've always liked Cape Anne so I may be prejudiced. The seasoned actors, including Travis and the school nurse, deliver the goods. The girls, for a change, look exactly like ordinary high school sophomores. They're not thirty-year-old gussied-up starlets. They're plain for the most part, just like the girls I went to high school with. Of course, in this case, they're all sleeping eagerly with their boy friends, which MY high school dates never did, the uptight prudes.On the minus side, the musical score belongs to the genre. Much of the acting is poor. The plot has disjunctions. (I still don't know how you make a living as a blogger.) And the direction is watery and pedestrian.These teens aren't stupid, but they're inexperienced and they're missing half the evolutionary problem. I'm an anthropologist and I have slight doubt that they're hard wired to produce babies. But pregnancy represents an extraordinary investment on their part. Each girl is born with all the eggs she's ever going to have, a bit more than 300, and each month presents her with a complicated question about fertilization. The answers she comes up with will affect the rest of her life, and that's what these girls don't understand.The boys have no such problem. Every ejaculation contains millions of sperm cells, any one of them capable of producing a child. They're even ORGANIZED. After fertilization, the left-out sperm from the donor seem to form a barrier against the advance of alien sperm, just in case there was more than one partner, as in a gang bang. A man can afford to be profligate with his sperm. A woman has to choose a mate who will care for her and for the offspring, preferably one who is strong, healthy, powerful, and rich. I'm not being cynical. Those are just the facts of life.Well, anyway, I applaud this production, not because it's a gripping emotional experience but because we seem desperately in need of a little enlightenment along the lines that it provides. After all, it was NOT just the soap opera it might have been.

The picture is trying to depict that much more must be done to avoid teen pregnancy.We have quite a story going here with 4 girls in a rural Massachusetts town agreeing to become pregnant. They don't realize the consequences of their actions. In addition, their lives are dull and their goals in society are limited. Getting married and having kids is all they want. Sounds like a time when the thought of girls going to college was looked upon as ludicrous.We have a principal of a high school who really doesn't know or want to know what's going on until he confronted with the issue. A reporter, formerly from the town, returns and reveals to her ex-boyfriend, now wed with children and an assistant principal in the school, that she gave up their child, and did not abort it as she claimed.Nancy Travis is wonderful in the part of the mother, president of the council who is against intervention even when her own daughter becomes president.Serious subject matter is dealt with honestly, but more passion was needed here.