Excellent but underrated film

As Good As It Gets

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The Surrogacy Trap is a predictable tale of a couple who go down the surrogacy route in order to get the family they want. Their choice doesn't go as well as they had hoped.It's all a bit far fetched and you know exactly what is going to happen right down to the clichéd ending. However thanks to really good performances from the three leads it actually manages to overcome these obstacles and still manage to be entertaining from start to finish. You shouldn't expect too much from this film but if you're in the mood for an easy watch on a rainy afternoon you could do far worse than this. One of the better TV movies.

This lifetime thriller is above average - in fact one of the better ones for the non based on a true story movies. With the recent rise in surrogacy and gestational carriers among the famous the topic is quite current. As expected from the title, a couple use a seemingly perfect surrogate who turns out to want the kid for herself.Rachel Blanchard who reminds of Sarah Paxton is pretty good as the surrogate. Mia Kirshner (why don't we see more of her?) is the biological mom. The acting is good. There are elements of Hand that Rocks the Cradle here. But things are kept fairly realistic for this kind of movie and the plot is not far fetched - it makes it more exciting because it could happen that way.Entertaining.

Unable to have a child, a couple, where the husband once cheated, agrees to hire a surrogate to have the child. What they go through with this surrogate is unbelievable. Did anyone ever bother at the agency to check the records of this seemingly innocent, polite girl, who proceeds to turn our couple's life upside down, before ultimately turning violent?Absolutely frightening that something such as this could take place, but in today's world anything is possible.The acting is first rate, especially by the lady playing Mallory, the surrogate. Her descending into ultimate lunacy is amazing to watch on screen.

Something remarkable may be afoot at Lifetime: movies that are not aggressively chintzy. Recently the network aired Dark Desire, released by The Asylum -notable in itself- , and very much unlike the typical Lifetime dreck. This was well acted, nicely directed by a director with a few above average pictures to his credit, and written in a way that kept up the pace and sustained the tension. The Surrogacy Trap is at least as good, with an acting and directorial style unlike what we've come to expect from Lifetime. The female lead does not have a smiley, wholesome friend with whom she shares cute, warm, folksy quips. The forced upbeat, uplifting character interactions are entirely absent. The patented ending remains though - it is a Lifetime movie after all. But this does not detract from the quick pace, engrossing story, snappy pace and actors quite unlike the usual Lifetime mediocrities. The performances are quite nice and sometimes actually interestingly subtle. (The male lead happens to be a dead ringer for SNL's Seth Meyers.) No Douglas Jackson directing this one. This is not the same old Lifetime movie you've seen a million times. Let's hope something is changing at Lifetime.