The Girl He Met Online (2014)

I don't mean to be cruel, but why in the world did the producers ever cast Ms Zima in the role of Gillian? This lovely young lady couldn't act her way out of a paper bag. The supporting cast overshadowed her by a mile. Personally, I would have preferred seeing the 'storeowner' play Gillian, than the other way around.Ms Zima seemed to stall or at the very least pause before speaking her lines. Was she unsure of herself in her role, or was this simply bad direction? Someone should have explained that acting bipolar does not mean acting zombie-like. Her 'downs' were pitiful and her ups were ridiculous.Overall, I was extremely disappointed with this movie. I think it had promise, but someone dropped the ball.

Seriously, this is one of- if not THE - most amateurish movies I've ever seen on the Hallmark Channel, which is not known for compelling drama or quality acting. The main character, Gillian is supposed to have bipolar disorder but her behavior is more symptomatic of schizophrenia. The acting is so poor, that regardless of the label put on the character's illness, the result is laughable. Yvonne Zima, who plays Gillian, has no business calling herself an actress. Her lines are all delivered in the same flat, wispy, little-girl voice and her face is expressionless. Her bipolar rants are amateurish and she is unconvincing as someone who would be so appealing to all the men in her life. Don't waste 90 minutes of your life on this one.

"The Girl He Met Online" turned out to be surprisingly engaging even though it was very much to the Lifetime formula - one of those in which Christine Conradt was not involved directly but it's clear the people who were have absorbed her plot templates and situations and know how to crank these things out at least as well as the Old Mistress. The directors (plural) were Curtis Crawford (in previous productions he's been Curtis James Crawford) and Anthony Lefresne (though CRAWFORD's name was in BIG LETTERS across the screen and Lefresne's was in tiny type below it) and the credited writer was David DeCrane, but overall it's pretty much a chip off the old Christine Conradt block. When the movie starts we see the girl some poor sap is going to meet online, Gillian Casey (played by Yvonne Zima as a blonde, though otherwise with the same kewpie-doll appeal of Rose MacGowan in the first "Devil in the Flesh" movie from 1998 and Jodi Lyn O'Keefe in the 2000 sequel), trashing the home of her previous boyfriend, spray-painting everything in sight she can't render totally nonfunctional (like his TV - she sprays the letters "TV" behind where it used to be - and his stereo). We get the point immediately: this is a girl that doesn't take rejection well.What's most interesting about "The Girl He Met Online" is that David DeCrane gives Gillian such a hellish background - her real parents died in a car accident when her age was still in the low single digits, and she and her sister Bethany (Tara Spencer-Nairn) were adopted by Agatha Casey (Mary-Margaret Humes), who made it clear to Gillian throughout her childhood that she never loved or cared about her and the only reason she adopted her was she wanted to raise Bethany and the adoption agency insisted that the sisters come as a package deal. Gillian has literally slept her way into a nice job as receptionist with an OB-GYN, Dr. Harris Kohling (Gary Hudson), who insists on her performing sexual services for him whenever his wife is out of town, which seems to be a lot. But that hasn't stopped her from trying to land a rich guy whom she can get to marry her and Take Her Away from All That. Her current target is Andy Collins (Shawn Roberts, at least marginally cuter than most of Lifetime's leading men), who works for a software company founded by his father and managed since dad's death by his mom Susan (Caroline Redekopp), and whose sister Heather (Samantha Madely) is also a major player in the firm. Most of the film is taken up by Gillian's intense pursuit of Andy and her ability to look normal and even genuinely charming when she's on her best behavior, though as the plot progresses the obstacles start to trip her up and writer DeCrane seems to go out of his way to put Gillian in contact with people who can expose the worst sides of her character.What I liked about "The Girl I Met Online" was the writing of Gillian's character - though Curtis Crawford and Anthony Lefresne are hardly in Alfred Hitchcock's league as masters of suspense (nor is DeCrane anywhere nearly as good as the writers Hitchcock used), they do manage to play the double game Hitchcock pulled off in a number of his films: making the villain, if not sympathetic, at least attractive and put-upon enough we're kept hoping he - or, as here, she - will get away with it even as we know his or her actions are evil and she deserves arrest and punishment.

So, it's about an unstable women named Gillian, who was adopted at young age with her sister. She has troubles with men, clearly meaning she doesn't know how to keep them without scaring them off or beating them. With that said, she's bipolar to the extreme! She lives with her mother who's been recovering from a heart attack and you know right off the bat that there is some very heavy tension and hostility between Gillian and her adopted mother. She decides after a break up with her boyfriends, she searches for another man. She finds a successful man, things at first go smoothly till it spirals downwards as things and people get in her and the relationship way.-I, personally can say for a girl growing up not knowing who she truly is... Not having anything she's very jealous of other women she meets who she thinks have it all... Not a bad movie, it does for some reason keeps you a little interested. I guess it is with a watch!