Abducted: The Carlina White Story (2012) Aunjanue Ellis, Keke Palmer, Sherri Shepherd, Roger R. Cross, Afton Williamson, Heather-Claire Nortey Movie Review

Abducted: The Carlina White Story (2012)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Keke Palmer in Abducted: The Carlina White Story (2012)

Abduction & Answers

Just 19 days after the happiest day of their lives when their first child, Carlina, was born, Joy White (Sherri Shepherd) and Carl Tyson (Roger R. Cross - What Color Is Love?) are tossed in to a nightmare when having taken her to the hospital their baby is abducted. Ann Pettway (Aunjanue Ellis - The Resident), having suffered another miscarriage and desperate to have a baby, is the woman who kidnaps their Carlina by pretending to be a nurse. Whilst both Joy and Carl struggle to get on with their lives following what happened, Ann sets about raising their child as her own. Many years later and having grown in to a young woman with a daughter of her own Carlina (Keke Palmer - Jump In!) begins to question whether Ann is her real mum and sets about trying to discover the truth. The question is will she be able to live with what the truth is?

After watching "Abducted: The Carlina White Story" a few thoughts flew around my head; the first of which is the writers clearly have tried their best to give the story as much detail as possible. And then secondly is that there are so many made for TV movies about abducted babies and adult children discovering that their parents are not really their parents that it is impossible for a movie like this, even one based on a true story, not to feel a little cliche at times. It is the problem which "Abducted: The Carlina White Story" has because the writers have tried to cram in as much story as possible but can't do all the parts of it justice whilst certain familiar parts of the story feel cliche.

Aunjanue Ellis in Abducted: The Carlina White Story (2012)

Now I don't know the facts when it comes to Carlina White's true story so I don't know how accurate "Abducted: The Carlina White Story" is but as I said the writers try to cram in plenty of story. As such after the abduction of Carlina we see how Joy struggles to carry on especially with Carl reminding her too much of their missing baby. But it is a single scene which leads to them separating and then we get a single scene later on when having gone their separate ways still keep in touch on what would be their daughter's birthday, which leads to an emotional scene. It is the same throughout as all the aspects of the story never get the full development needed to make the story genuinely flow rather than at times coming across almost like a series of single scenes to make a statement.

I suppose what I am actually saying is that the storyline in "Abducted: The Carlina White Story" appears to be too big to be crammed in to just 86 minutes and would have been much better turned into a two part mini-series with the natural break point being Carlina's discovery of who her real parents are as there is plenty of drama which follows this point. And what is a real shame is that the acting in "Abducted: The Carlina White Story" is a lot better than you find in a lot of made for TV movies but due to the writers trying to cram so much in the abruptness of the script makes the dialogue at times feel clunky and forced.

What this all boils down to is that "Abducted: The Carlina White Story" is a made for TV movie which almost breaks free from the usual low expectations of a TV movie and becomes something more. But in trying to put too much story in to the space of just 86 minutes it ends up feeling rushed and at times clunky.


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