Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A single mother with four children is fired from her job. As she was struggling to make ends meet, she decides that the best thing to do would be to return to school and finish her degree. Financially, she thinks they can swing it. However, the kids get the mail one day and realize they have a $5,000 bill from the IRS, a gift from their runaway father. Keeping this news quiet from their mother, the foursome try to raise money for the payment. They babysit, walk dogs, mow lawns, and run a lemonade stand but only gain about $100. Then, on the radio, they hear that a hip-hop contest will be held soon and the winner will net, you guessed it, $5,000. Can these kids, with the help of a faded star (MC Hammer), win the darn thing? This is a sweet family movie. The kids are very cute, especially the littlest one, and their aspirations to help their mother are very commendable. That said, it really is a stretch to believe these children could actually win a hip-hop musical event against a bevy of skilled and practiced musicians. But, hey, its only a movie. Hammer is quite nice as the faded star who opens his heart to the kids and Melissa Joan Hart stops by now and then to lend her support as a caring cabbie. No, this is not Oscar-caliber cinema. However, if your kids love music, this film will entertain them for a couple of hours. Connecting kids to a movie with good messages about trying hard and caring for others will never grow old.

The Tompkins's kids have a good life despite being raised by a single mum. However when Gail loses her job they look like they will have to make sacrifices to allow her to finish college so that she can get a better job to support the family properly. But the kids discover that, unknown to their mum, their dad has dumped them with a $5k bill from the IRS – something they can't afford without ditching the family plans and getting Gail back into a menial "just getting by" job. A chance meeting with struggling hip hop "star" Kendrick Bragg aka Kicking Back Flash gives them the idea of entering a talent contest with his help. Telling him they can help get his car back from the bailiffs, they convince him to coach them – however the majority of the kids have zero talent and although Jamie does, she refuses to sing.I don't think anyone approaches a television movie starring MC Hammer with any significant hopes of this being a great film – I know I didn't and perhaps that is part of the reason why, although cheap and basic, I still managed to quite enjoy the slight humour it produced. The plot is very obvious and goes just where you expect it to; it will give you no surprises along the way and nothing about it is particularly imaginative. The production values are also pretty low and I was never in doubt that I was watching a TV movie. However it was still quite solid fun because the writers were able to inject a lot of cheeky humour into what could easily have been a horribly sentimental mess filled with "cute kids" and "life lessons". It doesn't manage to totally avoid this but at least the occasional chuckle did a little bit to covering up all the major problems.The cast aren't great but at least they all seem to have bought into the humour of the situation. Hammer seems to enjoy himself without any real sense of ego in his performance. He isn't a great actor but at least he has fun, which does help the audience. The kids are mostly too cute and obvious to be of any real value but the fact that they are real siblings seems to help their chemistry and allows them to also do well with the sense of humour.Overall this is not a great film but it is maybe distracting nonsense for older children. The cast can't really act but they do come across like they "get" the material and help draw the humour out of the script. It is unlikely anyone has come to this expecting anything of any value but the low expectations might mean that you at least get a little surprised by bits of this.

I just finished watching The Right Connections, and I somewhat enjoyed it.First of all, I approach movies on an individual basis. I do not care about who is in it or not in it. When it is over, I just ask myself one simple question: did it entertain me?I think the biggest problems this movie had was both finding the right audience, and in Hammer himself.The movie is almost a plot lifted from The Brady Bunch (which ironically the kids try to sing the theme song). 4 kids discover that their divorced mom has been laid off, so decides to go back to school. But they discover that their absentee father owes the IRS $5,000. Desperate to prevent their mom from leaving college, they try to find a way to earn the money themselves. When they hear of a "Hip-Hop Contest" with a prize of $5,000, they think they got it made.They then con an ex-rap artist (Hammer) to train them. In an almost biographical role, Hammer is down on his luck, ignored by his former fans, and is on the verge of losing everything he owns.Can he take this group of middle-class white kids and make them a Hip-Hop group? No, not really. But he does do his best, and teaches both himself and the kids something in the process.One of the things I enjoyed most in this movie is both the almost biographical nature of Hammer's career. Him and his producer try to convince a record executive that he still has fans, and the executive is white. But to him, the only thing that matters is money. And while the kids do have little talent, they do try.Also I enjoyed the clean nature of the story. One of the reasons that Hammer's career failed so fast is that his "fans" suddenly realized that all of his songs were about God. And while the message in this movie is not so heavy-handed, it is centered around family.Overall, I left this movie with a fairly good feeling, and with several laughs. The sequence where the mother walks in seeing this strange black man in a leather jacket "attacking" her youngest daughter (he was tickeling her) was fairly strong, and handled in a fairly mature manner. Both the mother tries to apologize for her wrong asumption, and Hammer tries to make her feel comfortable, understanding her fear, and why she might have had it.I rated this movie a 7. Not for the acting, nor the worn story, but simply because I enjoyed it, and it made me feel good at the end. After all, that is why we watch movies, right?At the end, there was an obvious opening for a sequal, which was obviously never made. I have to admit I am glad for that. If they ever made a sequal of this movie, it would probably be so contrived and silly, I could not enjoy it.

Let's don't get crazy. There is nothing redeeming about this silly movie. At first I was wondering what the heck Melissa Joan Hart (who is in a supporting role) is doing in such an awful movie. Then I realized the "stars" were her less talented siblings. This movie is just a chance for Melissa Joan Hart's Hollywood mother to take advantage of Melissa's stardom and to showcase the rest of her brood (can anyone say "Macaulay Culkin"?).The plot is stolen right from a Brady Bunch episode. The acting is on the level of public access television. Imagine watching the home movies of some stranger's children at their school play. The only person who could enjoy this movie would be named Hart or an MC Hammer fanatic.