More College Cover-Ups
When someone steals exam papers form a professor's home, Mary (Melissa Joan Hart - Christmas Snow), a campus reporter, starts to snoop especially when campus security mentions that he thinks that one of the football players was involved. It is also a player from the football team who Mary's friend, Holly (Lisa Dean Ryan - Mystery Woman: Vision of a Murder), claims raped her at a party but a little while later retracts what she said. It doesn't stop Mary from continuing to investigate, especially as the college seem less than bothered about doing a proper investigation and more keen to cover things up. But the more Mary digs the more she finds herself coming up against those who want to silence her, especially as the player Holly claimed raped her was, star player, Clay Roberts (Josh Hopkins - Northpole).
There would have been a time that "Silencing Mary" might have garnered higher praise from me instead of me telling you that it is just another okay TV movie. But the reason is that like with so many made for TV movies "Silencing Mary" uses the college cover up storyline which has been used many times before and since, coming a long in one form or another every few years with new, younger actors in the main roles. As such watching "Silencing Mary" almost 20 years after it was made and the big draw now is that it features Melissa Joan Hart.
So what you get in "Silencing Mary" is a look at college life where the top sports stars get away with things and are often protected by the college system as bad publicity would be bad not just for the student. As such whilst we follow Mary trying to get to the truth when it comes to Clay raping Holly we also get a glimpse at the cover ups which goes on in the college with some who are victims of rape not even coming forwards because of the system which fails to protect them. And whilst all this is going on we also have the campaign of intimidation as various people want to silence Mary.
The thing is that whilst "Silencing Mary" is entertaining and educational it is also on par with not just other movies which delve into college cover ups but also on par with many a TV movie from the late 90s. As such it is the fact that this TV movie stars Melissa Joan Hart which makes it slightly memorable although her character in this is as standard as everything else in the movie.
What this all boils down to is that "Silencing Mary" is just another one of those movies which looks at the whole college cover up storyline, doing an okay job of it but never managing to stand apart from the crowd.
