Rachel Leigh Cook, Engineer

Stealing Paradise has been on my Amazon watchlist for so long that I can’t remember how I found it or when I added it, but today is the day that I finally review it (All We Had, you’re next). This 2012 TV movie is better than I thought it would be and not as good as I was hoping for, but to be honest, I probably only bookmarked it because of Rachel Leigh Cook. At least it’s not a Lifetime movie. Anywhoo…

The movie opens with Amanda Collier (Rachel Leigh Cook) at her desk at work, where she’s busy on a side project. Her supervisor, Brendan (Richard Robitaille) comes up and asks when she’s going to be done. Workaholic Amanda looks up and notices that everyone else has gone, so she follows Brendan out of the office and into a conference room, where her co-workers have a surprise party planned.

Amanda’s birthday extravaganza continues when she gets picked up by her boyfriend, Neil (Steve Belford) for a nice dinner out and a wild night in bed. Their pillow talk the next morning consists of Neil telling Amanda that he’s gotten a job in Phoenix.

Long story short, these two break up offscreen later in the movie, but no one cares too much, least of all Amanda. Her brother, Steven (Graham Abbey) has come to live with her for a while because he’s getting divorced and needs to get back on his feet. Plus Amanda’s got bigger problems.

Like her project getting stolen.

How does Amanda find out? She looks in an aviation trade paper and notices Brendan taking credit for her work. He’s even gotten a patent. Fortunately Steven is a public defender and he offers to represent Amanda in court.

Amanda’s idea, which involves a special engine that would revolutionize commercial air travel, is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, so naturally her next move is to meet with Brendan, CEO Howard (Roc Lafortune) and legal counsel Kevin (Jonathan Higgins). Naturally, they think Amanda is lying about the project being just her thing, but then Amanda hits these smug fellas with a one-two punch: She stuck a flaw in her design in case it got stolen. Have the geniuses at Lonsdale found it yet? What? No? Too bad…

Things get a wee bit complicated after that. Amanda goes to see Brendan at his apartment against Steven’s advice, and Brendan basically confesses that he stole Amanda’s designs. Problem is, he gets murdered by some mysterious personage in black leather and matching latex gloves and Amanda is the prime suspect. It doesn’t help that Elice (Tammy Gillis), star witness and Brendan’s girlfriend, mysteriously dies from a fall one night after a visit from Amanda. Or that Steven gets knocked off his motorcycle in a hit-and-run. We also find out that Brendan was working with someone, maybe from outside the company.

Lonsdale hasn’t given up trying to avoid going to court, either. They try to offer Amanda a deal in which she’ll share patent credit with Brendan, but Amanda doesn’t go for it. She’s more interested in taping the conversation, just in case.

Things work out for the best, of course, but there’s quite a bit of hurry-up-and-wait, as there often is with TV movies that need to hit certain marks in certain time frames because time slots and commercial breaks. There are also two crack detectives, Maureen Usher (Paula Jean Hixson) and Mike Sanders (Neil Napier) who are working on the case. They’re hardly Mr. and Mrs. North; in fact, Mike is kind of a non-entity, but Maureen grew on me.

In the end, Stealing Paradise is just OK. The sets look as if they’ve been cobbled together by a real estate staging company. The title is a little awkward because it looks like a case of the writers either trying to be clever or being stuck for ideas. It’s predictable; the culprits show themselves mostly by process of elimination, and it’s not much of a shock that Brendan stole Amanda’s designs, because he’s always trying to lure her away from her desk. The dialogue is also a little bit awkward and cliched in spots, especially in the beginning, although to be fair, that’s because Neil chooses to drop a bomb on Amanda the day after her birthday:

Neil: It’s an amazing opportunity, Amanda. They’re giving me the whole package. They’ll double my salary, stock options, profit participation, everything.

Oh, Neil. It’s always the stock options and profit participation.

Amanda, for all she’s such a genius, makes some pretty dumb decisions over the course of the movie. I mean, I’m not a lawyer or in law enforcement, although I work with cops, but if I suspect something is rotten at my workplace, I’m going to make a point to interact with as few people as possible and keep track of everything I do. Even if I’m not personally guilty, I still have to make sure I don’t accidentally incriminate myself.

Meanwhile, Amanda goes off to talk to Brendan. Another day she goes to Elise’s house. Steven warns her talking to people could hurt her case, and the people she visits wind up dead. One would think after Brendan gets knocked off Amanda would learn her lesson, but she doesn’t seem to have made the connection. Oh well.

Another thing is what Amanda does when she suspects she’s being followed or someone wants to get her alone. Put it this way: If it looks as if someone is following you home, it’s best to go anywhere but home (Amanda goes home). And if it looks as if someone wants to pull a gun on you or mug you or something else on that line, always, always, always stay where there are as many people as possible, especially if it’s somewhere the perp may not conceivably go, such as a Gap Kids (Amanda takes a walk in the woods with a guy who pulls a gun on her.).

Then again, characters making dumb decisions moves a plot forward. It’s always worked that way and always will.

So yeah, Stealing Paradise isn’t a waste of time. It doesn’t quite cream Lifetime, but it delivers a pretty good smackdown, anyway.

Coming up in September (click on the images for more info)…

Yeah, wow, the year’s going fast (as usual). All right, a new Substack recap is coming out on Thursday. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…

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Stealing Paradise is free to stream for Prime customers.

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