By John J. O'Connor
Abuse in its infinite variety remains at the top of the television-movie hit parade. Recent weeks have brought vivid prime-time depictions of children beating up parents (Fox's "Terror in the Family"), a husband battering his wife (CBS's," Unforgivable"), and a young man wiping out his girlfriend (NBC's "No One Would Tell").
Tonight NBC dives back into the abuse swamp with "Twisted Desire." Not-so-idle question: Are these anxiety-generating exercises cautionary tales or how-to manuals? Depends, I suppose, on who's watching.
"Twisted Desire," which is labeled "inspired by actual events," does indeed have a plot twist, which commercials for the movie have thoroughly revealed. A teen-ager's well-to-do father is so strict that he inhibits her social life. This angelic-looking lass is, apparently, the abusee. But then, when she loses her heartthrob boyfriend, she latches onto another young man who falls for her so hard that he agrees to kill her parents. Miss Teen-Age America turns out to be a manipulating, murderous monster.
In a clever casting fillip, the girl, Jennifer, is played by Melissa Joan Hart, known heretofore as an adorable role model for children on Nickelo- deon's "Clarissa Explains It All" and Showtime's (soon to be ABC's) "Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch." While hoping that her incisive portrayal of a bad girl "opens a lot of career doors for me," the talented Ms. Hart, who looks a bit like Joanne Woodward with lingering traces of baby fat, expresses understandable concern about her core fans: "I hope that those kids who might just happen to see this TV movie know that it's just make- believe."
But where does that leave the "actual events" tag touted by NBC? Actually, the network appears to be nervously aware of the current abuse glut in television entertainment (and we won't even bother here with the smarmy shenanigans of daytime talk shows). The network's press materials for "Twisted Desire" contain a five-and-a-half-page interview with a psychologist who offers expert underpinnings for the "circumstances" dramatized in "Twisted Desire."
In the end, it is difficult to figure out what precisely the film is saying. The father, played by Daniel Baldwin, is certainly a humorless control freak, but then, Jennifer is a chronic liar and hardly to be trusted. Is any parental discipline bad? When her mother (Isabella Hofmann) finally gives up and brands Jennifer as selfish, deceitful and disrespectful, a good many viewers are likely to applaud.
Oddly enough, one of the few characters to come off sympathetically is Nick, the dupe who actually pulls the trigger. Played by Jeremy Jordan ("Leaving Las Vegas"), he provides some welcome touches of complexity in a one-dimensional landscape. As "Twisted Desire" fades into the night, can viewers, perhaps by now feeling abused themselves, assume that television movies will begin looking for some other subject in the unending quest to grab ratings? Don't hold your breath.