PicoBlog

Hello friends! By now, you may have noticed that a lot of the movies I write about have multiple titles. Some of my favorites: DEADLY SPA is also known as ZEPHYR SPRINGS (a phrase they barely mention in the movie), and TRAPPED SISTERS was a.k.a. 12 FEET DEEP (a.k.a. BOOTS MADE OF CONCRETE). Usually, the titles are kind of equally dorky: DEADLY HOLLYWOOD OBSESSION or FAMOUS AND FATAL, for instance. But today’s movie has two titles, one incredible, and one I will absolutely refuse to acknowledge even though concrete proof of it will show up on the screen. So let’s talk about MY MOM ROBS BANKS! And let us never speak of MOMMY’S SECRET. Who? What? Whose secret? I don’t know her. (Content warnings for….not a lot? Kidnapping, gambling, fake beards. Also I did have covid as I was writing this so I apologize if it gets weird!)

A scene of a high school soccer game intercut with a scene of a bank robbery gets us started. As girls in ponytails and headbands dribble and pass and do all the soccer things a person could do, a person on a bike tracks an armored truck through city streets. This person, who could be anyone under the fake beard, lush eyelashes, and bulky jacket, but who is Charisma Carpenter, waits in line at the bank. A woman eyes her suspiciously as Charisma Carpenter steps up to the counter and hands the teller a note informing her that she’s being robbed. A blonde girl scores a goal and everyone claps as Charisma scoots away on a bike with a backpack full of cash. Instead of clapping for Charisma Carpenter, someone in a Mercedes actually hits her with their car. Her body did make sort of a clapping noise as she hit the pavement. She flees and packs her grubby backpack in her minivan, as we return to the soccer game and the blonde girl who scored the goal. This is our protagonist Denise, and she’s asking if anyone’s seen her mom, which they haven’t, but the soccer coach is very excited to tell Denise that a college scout is coming to see her play. Denise’s friend Brook assures her that she isn’t jealous that she might get a soccer scholarship, because Brook has a plan: reality tv. Brook has a lot of lines that I think are supposed to be comic relief, but they’re all written by someone who’s only had comic relief described to them in a dream. Anyway, Denise’s mom isn’t here, but her older stepbrother Kyle is, and he’s asking for money. Not for anything bad though! It’s fine! He needs a….haircut, for a job………interview. Y….es.

After the game, Denise walks home to an enormous house. Her mom, Charisma Carpenter, pulls a casserole out of the oven and brightly asks how many goals she scored. The movie doesn’t bother to name Charisma for a while, but I can use IMDb. Her name is Anne. While Anne and Denise wait in vain for Kyle to show up for dinner, Denise mentions the scout coming to watch her, and Anne tells her her dad would be so proud of her. Keep up: Denise’s dad is dead, from causes unknown to this movie, and her mom Anne is alive, and her older stepbrother Kyle is also alive. Was Denise’s dad technically her stepdad? Or should this movie be called MY STEPMOM (WHO RAISED ME AND IS IN ALL PRACTICAL MATTERS MY MOM) ROBS BANKS? Does Kyle have other family or parents? Narratively, why is he Denise’s stepbrother? Don’t worry about it! He just is. We have to move on, to Denise washing up after dinner. Like every teen, she’s watching the local news on her laptop while she does the dishes, so she sees the weather report interrupted by breaking news: a bank was robbed! Several hours ago! No one was hurt! Well that’s all very well and good but now I don’t know if I need a raincoat tomorrow. Denise goes to ask her mom if she heard about the bank robbery right by her work, but finds her tending a nasty scrape on her shoulder. “Of course I didn’t get this from falling off my bike after being hit by a car while I fled the bank I robbed,” Anne says, “go do your homework.” So she does, and falls asleep, and wakes up to see a guy staring at their house from his car on the street. Also, her mom and Kyle are arguing about his problem and how Anne doesn’t have anything else to give. Sell your house, maybe? It’s a big house.

In the morning, Denise goes for an early run and then finds a denied loan application in her mom’s purse. I get it, they’re in debt. But when Denise suggests babysitting for a neighbor to make a little money, Anne shoots her down. She has to focus on school and soccer, and school and soccer ONLY. Can you imagine if Elizabeth Thomas made Kristy stop babysitting and told her she had to focus on school and softball? Elizabeth Thomas would never. Denise goes to school and doesn’t learn anything except that her friend Brook’s mom was totally at that bank when it got robbed, and she was totally fine, but she totally drank a bottle of totally wine because she was so totally freaked out about it. Brook is not a very deeply drawn character. Anne runs into Brook’s mom at the game later, and Brook’s mom absolutely wants to gossip about the bank robbery. “Don’t you bank at United Metro Trust?” Brook’s mom asks Anne. “Lucky you weren’t there, then.” Quick, name the banks of your three closest friends. Where do they bank? Are you even friends?

When they get home after the game, Anne sends Denise inside so that she can deliver the backpack of bank-robbed cash to some guy in an SUV in peace. The guy tries to give her a wad of cash for a job well done, but she tells him to put it on Kyle’s debt. The guy replies by venting about how his bitch ex-wife left him and took their kid, this is a story from which we can all learn a lesson about loyalty and gratitude and bitch wives. Anyway, Kyle is a grown man, he can gamble if he wants, here’s your next bank-robbing assignment, and some sort of…metal cylinder? “What is that?” gasps Anne. “It’s a gun,” the guy says. Oh, it’s a gun. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Denise lectures her stepbrother about his favorite hangout; it’s called the Rose and she knows it’s rife with drinking and gambling. “I don’t drink,” says Kyle, letting that hang in the air. When Anne comes inside, Denise asks her who that guy in the SUV was. He’s simply a guy! A…friend? Not a boyfriend. A normal friend, not the kind who gives you guns and felony errands. Ha ha! Normal.

In the morning, Denise asks where Kyle’s bike is, since she was thinking about riding it to school. Since the answer is “I was riding it when I got nailed by a luxury sedan, and also by the way, I was wearing your dead dad’s favorite jacket at that time, so that’s wrecked too, sorry,” Anne says it’s uhhhhh in the shop? She hit it with her car. Whoopsy doodle, so clumsy! Denise gets a ride with Brook, and Anne rummages around in the closet for yet another jacket that belonged to her late husband. Go to a thrift store, Anne! I understand that money is so tight you’ve started robbing banks for some reason, but please stop cosplaying your dead spouse to do it.

At school, Denise tells Brook that something is up with her mom and that guy, but Brook is busy telling a moony-eyed boy to go wash her car. The simp doesn’t even get any lines! This isn’t his story, go wash my car. They decide to go off campus for lunch, but oh no! They have to stop by an ATM for cash and they’re at the bank Anne has to rob today! Anne, in cap, jacket, and fake beard, walks into the bank while Denise and Brook chat about how Denise should date more, and then an alarm goes off in the bank and she walks back out. Anne simply squats between two dumpsters to avoid a passing cop car, ditches her jacket and backpack in one of them, and returns to her minivan. If people find out how easy it is to rob banks, they’ll all do it, and then where will we be? As a society? Denise spots the minivan with her mom inside, and Anne is like, “haha! Let’s get out of here! Weird scene, am I right?”

Denise gets to ditch school for the rest of the day because she was kind of near a bank robbery, and she passes the time by scanning the news on Local Daily Articles Dot Com (The Top Source for Articles Online). There’s an article about the bike used in one of the bank robberies being recovered, and Denise absolutely realizes it’s Kyle’s bike. Meanwhile, Anne is texting the guy from the SUV, who finally gets a name, and I am delighted to tell you that it is Quinlan. Quinlan (!) has a new job for her tomorrow, and Anne tells him to pick another day. Pick another name while you’re at it, bud.

Unfortunately, Anne has severely misunderstood the terms of her relationship with Quinlan, as he shows up at Denise’s next soccer game to tell her she doesn’t get to reschedule. He also tells her she’s smart and touches her hair, which is actually worse than robbing a bank if you ask me. Anne pulls away from Quinlan and he stalks off as Denise watches this extremely strange interaction. What she takes away from it is: her mom has a new boyfriend! After the game, she tells Brook that her mom’s been acting weirdly nervous about something, and Brook replies, “Sounds like she’s in love!” Brook is gonna tell Quinlan to wash her car next time she sees him. Denise allows Brook to convince her to come to a party at Brent’s tonight. Who’s Brent? Oh my god you don’t know Brent? He’s Brent. Oh my godddd.

Denise goes home to change for the party but notices a car trailing her through the neighborhood. She hides behind a tree and waits for it to pass, but then Anne just gets in the car. See, it’s fine. It’s probably just that guy she’s in love with! Quinlan makes small talk about how much he hates his ex-wife, and then he hit on Anne, because you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Anne firmly informs him that once Kyle’s losses are paid off, he’ll never see her again, but guess what! Kyle is extremely bad at gambling and he has a bunch of new losses! We’re gonna be seeing a lot of each other, little lady! Anne gets out of the car and goes inside, where she mopes around so hard that her teen daughter notices. She thinks her mom is sad about her dad’s life insurance not coming through, or Kyle being a fuckup, but she’s still going to a party later. Let Denise live.

Brook picks up Denise to go to Brent’s party (Brent!!!) but Denise wants to check on Kyle first, so she gets Brook to drop her at the Rose. Somehow she walks through a kitchen before she gets to the extremely well-lit and smoky bar (her concerns are soccer and school, not knowing what door to go in), and spots Kyle playing cards. Denise tells him he promised to stop, and he’s like, “yes, excuse me, I’m busy not stopping, so.” He bets a lot of money on his hand and loses, and now he owes five thousand dollars. Denise grabs his elbow and marches him out of the Rose and into Brook’s sedan, rolling her ankle in the process. But that ankle is gonna get her into college! Brook brightly asks if Kyle wants to go to a party, but we’re never gonna get there, you guys. We’re never….we’re never gonna meet Brent. Brook drops Denise and Kyle back at home, and the stepsiblings have a heart to heart. Kyle isn’t gambling because it’s cool and he likes it, he’s trying to pay off their dad’s (again, still extremely unclear on the family relationships here) debts. And he was winning for a while, until he wasn’t, but it’s fine! He can win again, by borrowing money from the house! The house loves it when you do that. Denise is like, oh my god knock it off, Mom has been working with that guy from the car and the Rose. Kyle agrees that Quinlan is bad news, so he will simply stop gambling. Problem solved, movie over, thanks for reading!

Oh no there’s more movie. Okay. Anne is watching the local news on her laptop, the official family activity. The police have recovered Anne’s latest clever disguise (a fake beard and a real jacket) but this brings them no closer to catching the robber, who could be “a man, woman, or teen.” Or any number of nonbinary children in a trenchcoat, really it could be anyone. Denise, instead of going to a party, gets her own local news fix, jesus christ whoever wrote this movie sure does love the news a lot for someone who’s never actually seen it, and she learns that there’s security camera footage of the robber escaping on foot. Wait a second, Denise knows that jacket! It’s the one her dad is wearing in the picture on her desktop! When she goes in the closet to look for it, it’s gone. Oh my god Denise, I am absolutely begging you to put the pieces together. Please.

Instead of putting the pieces together, Denise eats dinner with Anne and Kyle. Kyle ducks out early because he has an extremely real job interview, and also because someone stole his dumpy little car. For parts, probably. It’s a hot parts market. Denise assures her mom that Kyle’s not going to gamble, he promised he wouldn’t. She’s so sweet.

The next day, Anne gets home from work to find a brand new bike with a bow on it in the garage, and a cocktail dress and a white rose on her bed. Quinlan texts to ask if she likes her gifts, and I think about how often men in Lifetime movies buy cocktail dresses for women. I suppose they can just assume they’re all about a size 2. When Denise gets home, she tells her mom some guy has maybe been following and watching her, and Anne assures her it’ll be fine, and she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize their family. Robbing banks is perfectly safe these days, and anyway Denise has that recruiter coming to watch her play soccer. Focus on that! Rather than focusing on that, Denise retreats to her room to watch the news. Of course she does. The news is like, “Denise, your mom is robbing banks,” and Denise is like, “hmm, well there’s only 30 minutes left in this movie I’m in, so.”

Time for more soccer! It’s the playoffs, the end is in sight for us all, inshallah. The college scout is here to watch Denise, whose rolled ankle isn’t doing great. Despite this being the playoffs, there are about a dozen spectators, and they’re just in lawn chairs on the sidelines. One of those dozen spectators is Quinlan, here to ask Anne again if she likes her gifts. You can’t bully a woman into liking a cocktail dress, sir. Anne informs him that she will only rob one more bank for him, then she’s out. Quinlan nods and leaves, having suddenly become reasonable. “Hey, wait a second, it is really weird that I’m depending on this random mom to prop up my criminal enterprise by robbing banks for me,” he reflects. Denise misses a shot and the scout writes something on her clipboard. Uh oh!

As they arrive back at their gigantic house, Denise laments that she just lost her scholarship, and Anne insists that they’ll do whatever it takes to get her through school. “Oh, like robbing banks?” asks Denise. Ha ha, no, and then they get distracted by a license plate propped on their front door. California is one of those states that makes you have a license plate on your front door and your back door, you know. The plate belongs to Kyle’s car, which wasn’t stolen after all, Quinlan is holding it as collateral. What! No. Kyle says he hasn’t been back to the Rose since he promised Denise he wouldn’t, but he owes some amount of money over six thousand dollars, which is both strangely specific and not nearly specific enough. Quinlan texts Anne with a new bank robbing instruction. The last one, perhaps. Later that night, Denise tells Kyle that she thinks Anne is doing something crazy to protect him, she thinks she’s robbing banks. Kyle laughs and says, “she doesn’t rob banks, she makes casseroles.” She’s a whole person! She can do lots of things.

In the morning, Denise goes for a run but is followed by a car again. She evades the car by hiding in someone’s backyard and watching a kid eat cereal, in a scene that kind of seems like it’s going somewhere but does not. At least it got her away from the local news for a bit. When she gets home, her mom tells her she’s going to talk to the soccer coach about getting the scout back out there, when Denise’s ankle is better, and she’s like, yeah sure, why not. Anne leaves the room and Denise picks up her phone, which has the texts about robbing banks just, right up on the screen. There’s no code or anything, just “hey rob a bank for me / ok”. Brook picks her up and they drive to school, but Denise isn’t going to school today. She needs to borrow Brook’s car because her mom robs banks. Brook is like “lol ok, sure, borrow the car! I fully believe you and it’s freshly washed!”

Even though the texts from Quinlan clearly state that Anne should rob the bank at 4:00, Denise heads over immediately and sees her badly disguised mom walking into the bank. Maybe Denise is in night school. Or maybe it’s 4:00 a.m., maybe that’s what 4:00 a.m. looks like in California. When Anne comes out of the bank (with money?? unclear), Denise is there to meet her, but so are one of Quinlan’s goons and the guy who’s been following Denise around. It’s crucial to have a good support system. The dudes are simply here to observe and report though, don’t worry about it.

Anne and Denise get home after robbing a bank no problem, it’s so easy, and Anne apologizes to her daughter. “For lying, or for robbing banks?” asks Denise, like a person can’t simply feel bad about their whole deal without itemizing it. But before they get too far in their argument, the guy who’s been following Denise is at the front door. Oh hello sir! It turns out he’s from the FBI! Ha ha ha ha okay. Okay! This is a sting operation, a woman just can’t rob a bank whenever she feels like it. I see how it is. Kyle gets home and Denise smugly informs him that she was right, Mom was robbing banks. Fine! See if Kyle cares. Actually he does care, he feels really bad about it and runs out of the house, and the FBI guy’s female partner assures Anne that it’s fine, “Grimsby will keep an eye on him.” Grimsby! Wonderful. Grimsby’s partner Kincaid explains that they’ve been working with Anne since the first robbery, trying to bring Quinlan down, since the Rose, an illegal gambling den, is simply a front to launder money. Don’t you want to do something less illegal with the money to launder it? A laundromat or an auto repair shop or something? Please google “money laundering” and explain it to me in the comments. Anne’s going to rob one more bank for Quinlan, but the bills will be marked and they’re deffo gonna get him this time. Speak of the devil, Quinlan texts Anne to meet him outside.

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Anne meets with Quinlan under the eye of the FBI, and he gives her a gun and an assignment. Yes, the last job was the last job but this is the last last job, there won’t be a last last last job, that would be absurd. She goes back inside and Denise is like, “what the hell, Mom,” and we get a flashback of Anne going to the Rose in search of Kyle but finding Quinlan instead. Quinlan pours her wine and waxes rhapsodic about truffles while Anne tries to figure out how to get Kyle out of debt to this man. Yes, that’s very interesting that the white truffle season is so short, Quinlan, cool, sure, I can rob a bank for you if it will erase my son’s (stepson’s???) debt. In the present, Denise assures her mom she understands why she did what she did, which, to be clear, is: rob banks.

In the morning, Anne tells Denise that the crackerjack team of Kincaid and Grimsby is almost ready to move in on Quinlan, but they need to get through today acting normal. Denise needs to act like she’s not a teen girl in 2016 named “Denise,” for one thing. So she goes to school and is like, “haha! I’m normal! There’s not an FBI agent walking just a few steps behind me and lurking outside the changing room for teen girls, this is normal!” Denise hears a crashing noise outside the changing room so she goes to investigate, but then someone chloroforms her, and she wakes up in a car being driven by one of Quinlan’s hired goons. I’ve never been more disappointed in Grimsby. Oh he’s dead or unconscious or something in a bathroom stall and no one has noticed even though the stall door is wide open. Well, I’m still disappointed.

Quinlan calls Anne while she’s at the salon to tell her he got her a present. She’ll like it. She agrees to come out and gets in his Suburban, while Kincaid, in her car, barks questions and commands into her earpiece. We need a visual on Grimsby! Where’s Quinlan moving the money! I don’t know! I don’t understand money laundering!

Quinlan pulls up to his….office? He says it is his office, but what it is is: an airplane hangar, with a small plane in one corner and a fancy car in another corner and all the furniture you would expect in a small-time kingpin’s home office just, right in the middle of the hangar. It’s nice furniture! It’s also truly an arrestingly strange arrangement of things. There’s a reception area! You can sit on a midcentury modern couch while you wait for your 2:00 racketeering check-in with Quinlan. He keeps you waiting even though you can see he’s not busy. There are no walls. He’s just winding his watch and holding it up to his ear to make sure it’s ticking. It’s 2:05, jesus. Okay, sorry. Quinlan tells Anne that he knows the money from the last robbery is marked, and he knows she set him up, so he has to get out of here. A helicopter is landing outside and he’s gonna be on it, and he’ll never see his son again, and he barely sees him now, because of his bitch ex-wife, you remember. And if he has to lose his son, Anne has to lose her daughter, it’s only fair. The goon is delivering Denise to the office hangar as Quinlan explains this, and Anne pulls out the gun and aims it at Quinlan. But, obviously, he wouldn’t give her a loaded gun! He’s not stupid. He knows about truffles. Quinlan tells his goon to take Denise to the chopper but Denise breaks free and runs for it, kind of. She just gets in the little plane. Anne manages to whack Quinlan over the head with a piece of pipe, the kind we all have in our home office hangars, but he’s only down for a moment and he tells his goon to take Denise and Anne out. Before Goon can do that, Kincaid shoots him in the back, the feds are here to save us, they’re our friends after all. Quinlan is loaded into a cop car. “It’s over,” Anne says to her daughter as she pets her hair.

And we finish where we started: thrilling soccer action. She has a great game, and the coach tells her that he got the scout to come back after all, she has another shot at that scholarship. Yeah, the scout is just sitting at a folding table on the sideline, we can all see her. Anyway it’s over, for real, everyone is “[chatting together happily]” according to the caption. Great! Happy for them.

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