If There Be Thorns Dares To Ask: Is Corrine Dollanganger Maybe Not A Great Mom?

Much like the books they're based on, Lifetime's adaptations of V.C. Andrews's Dollanganger books -- better known as "Flowers In The Attic and the other ones" -- have each been just slightly less fun and scandalous than the one that came before. The latest, If There Be Thorns, is the greatest departure from the series both in book and movie form: the book deviates from its predecessors in that it's told not from Cathy's point of view but from that of Bart, her son with her mother's second husband. And not only is Bart too young to get up to any incestuous sexcapades: he's also, as the story wears on, too much of a twisted fundamentalist Christian, manipulated by his grandmother's longtime butler John Amos (no, not that one) into treating all women as the cause of sin, yawn.

The relatively boring story isn't really served by Lifetime's lacklustre production. From the fly hanging out on the dinner roll...

...to the puncture wound-infected arm that I really think might be a chorizo with a mannequin hand stuck to it...

...no one on the production side is really bringing his or her A game. I spent most of the movie trying to figure out if someone had decided to give up on the period conceit: the last one was set around the late '60s/early '70s, and just about everyone here who isn't supposed to be a twisted old recluse pretty much looks like they just bought their wardrobe at Old Navy or Ann Taylor last week. Literally, this early '80s-looking handheld videogame is the ONLY THING in the episode that pins it to a time period that isn't right now.

But there is one line that suggests SOMEONE involved in the show put some thought into giving it the tiniest zing of camp energy. After weeks of cultivating Bart as an ally and dribbling out as much information about his mother and adoptive father as she thinks he can take, Corrine finally admits that both Christopher (now played by Jason Lewis, you guys) and Cathy (no longer Rose McIver, boo) are her progeny. Since Bart has only recently creeped on his parents while they were in the car pool lane on the highway to Bone Town...

...the face he makes at this announcement is, if anything, not disgusted enough.

But here's where the movie has its first and kind of only great moment. "My dad is your son and my mom is your daughter?" stammers Bart. "Then...." "I think you understand," says Corrine. She goes on:

LOL. Oh, Corrine. I don't know if this was intended to be one of those situations where someone denigrates herself in the hopes that her listener will contradict her? But yeah, turning your two eldest children into ONE ANOTHER'S SPOUSES is definitely not among your greatest parenting wins. Andy Cochran, the credited writer of this teleplay, on the other hand? He deserves a magnum of champagne for sneaking that line into this baloney so that SOMETHING about it could be both memorable and delightful.