Psycho Party Planner

 

I'm probably wrong on remembering this, but I think the last time I even remotely thought about watching a Lifetime movie was when my wife and I lived in Champaign. I chose Psycho Party Planner because the title sounded titillating and I was just ultimately curious as to how far could a film of this ilk go? I mean, we all know how hilariously bad and how hilariously low Lifetime flicks can reach to portray a story, but this entry was different. It was still pretty lame in specific spots (especially in the beginning when it's trying to setup everything to get going) but I don't know zits and zombies-I actually enjoyed myself with this one. Was this good enough to escape the clutches of being tossed somewhere onto my worst of the year list? Yeah, kind of-I threw it on the runners-up list for the moment because it still didn't steep my tea hot enough in the end, but this thing does have plenty of twists and revelations that did exceed my expectations. And I'll be honest, the acting from Lindsey McKeon, Katrina Begin and Cathryn Dylan went further than I thought it would in believability and prose to deliver what this plot eventually unfolds to. Basically here we have Kerry (Dylan) who is about to turn sixteen, and her parents want to throw her a sweet sixteen party to celebrate her. So since neither of Kerry's parents have the time to plan it themselves, they take the time to hire someone to plan it for them. Right away this is kind of ridiculous because if you don't have the time to plan the party, would you even have the time to find someone to do it for you either? I mean, I know that would take less time, but shit-okay, I just went with it for the situation that was happening. So, before any of that crap with Kerry's parents takes place with them talking to her about hiring someone to plan her birthday party when this film opens, we have Lindy (Katrina Begin) and her husband in bed fighting about how she can't physically have children and it's not part of what he signed up for when he married her and all of this other bullshit-he's a fucking prick to her outright, they end up in the hallway by the staircase and oops-his ass goes tumbling down the winding flight which is a symbolic foreshadowing to the downward spiral that Lindy is about to embark upon to keep her career going after his dumbass is dead. There's actually a lot of foreshadowing that happens in Psycho Party Planner that I don't know how you would ever miss unless you're just blatantly not watching the movie and have it on for background noise. So when Kayla (the ever sexy Lindsey McKeon) starts interviewing women who are party/wedding planners to put together something for Kerry, the first one she interviews is very likeable, knows what she's doing and is just all around reasonable. And judging from when we see the inside of her house later when Lindy bumps her off, she seemed pretty damn good and successful at what she was doing too because that was one ballin' place to live. But Lindy doesn't like the fact that Kayla wants to hire Dulcie over her (the first party planner) so she steals her resume from the table that it's sitting on to get her address and so the psycho part from here starts building up. Lindy kills Dulcie in her own house, then she starts living there I guess? Later on in the middle of the film, Lindy brings Kerry over there to figure out some stuff for the party and she lets her drink a pretty full glass of wine (she's supposed to be fifteen, remember?) and it's Dulcie's house, but Kerry doesn't know that. And then slowly but surely, Lindy just starts popping up everywhere that Kerry is-during her dance/cheerleading practices, and school in general, driving her home, when she's hanging out with her friends at some outdoor café-it gets really creepy really fast. Even thought I didn't end up being a massive, over-the-top fan of Psycho Party Planner, I did enjoy it way more than I thought I would. Out of all the Lifetime slop that I've seen randomly over the years, this really has to be the best one. The plot is rock solid, the main ladies here give pretty excellent performances and the ending is an ending that literally came out of nowhere, even though it was pretty predictable. The main issue I had with how it ended though was is that it was abrupt and the info you find out from Lindy right before her demise felt kind of shoehorned in at the last minute because whoever wrote the script couldn't figure out where else to put it, so it ended up right when this thing was about to end. Even though I enjoyed this one and I would actually recommend you inspirational undead to give Psycho Party Planner a go if you're in the mood for fare like this, it's still going on my runners-up list for my worst of the year. I can't praise it any higher than that because of the layers of lameness that plague Lifetime flicks. It's there, it will always be there and there is no cure. It's just how these movies are made. I'm turning 42 this year-maybe I could hire Lindsey McKeon to help me plan something for my birthday. Damn-dreams are so much better than reality.