"Truth" (7.4.06)

Thea Gill as "Laura".

I was looking forward to this television movie. It had been some five years or so since Stephanie Zimbalist’s last tellymovie outing in “Malpractice”. However, there was a problem. After watching “Truth”, I wasn’t so much disappointed as puzzled. Why did anyone actually bother to make this half-baked murder mystery?

In essence, the plot sounds ok. Thea Gill plays Laura. (It’s a good thing TV heroines always have nice sounding names. It would be too bad if she were christened something bland such as Mavis or Hilda or Zimble like the rest of us.) Laura intended to become a journalist but instead has become a lightweight TV entertainment reporter.

Laura decides to put on the old 'professional journalist' hat to investigate the murder of her best college buddy Amelia Moore. Amelia was killed whilst investigating real estate fraud in regional Southern California.

It turns out that Meredith Beckerman (Zimbalist), the girls’ old college professor, was running Amelia and tries to do the same with Laura in order to take revenge on the rich evil family that destroyed her own career in journalism and that is now perpetrating the fraud.

Meredith continually pans Laura for not pursuing a "proper" career in journalism but in the end, Meredith sells her soul by trying to blackmail the baddies and is arrested in a sting arranged by none other than the supposedly hopeless Laura. (Come on now, we couldn’t have an American telly movie without a “the good hearted will always triumph” lesson could we?)

So far so good. The movie starts promisingly with very contemporary shots of LA but then things get weird. Throughout the film, the lighting gives a strange goldy-beige colour. It’s looks glary but no one is fussed with sunglasses.

Meredith, Laura and Christie (one of Meredith’s current college students) are playing at being “serious” journalists but parade around in summer skirts and low cut blouses as though they are going to meet for drinks afterwards at their local Mexican resto. (Thank goodness Zimbalist had the good sense to put on a cardigan.)

I could handle these minor production anomalies but it was the very strange characterisation that really had me beat. Take the Laura character for instance. Her motive seems to change as quickly as the weather. First she’s mourning the death of her friend who she felt was "like a sister" but hadn’t bothered to visit in years. Then she pals up with Meredith and we’re off on a road movie when we’re not cozying up with red wine and classical music. Then we’re on a pizza date with the investigating police officer and then, just when it couldn’t possibly get any weirder, we’re walking away from Amelia’s grave, hip to hip with the grieving widower.

Zimbalist’s performance also had me scratching my head, at least for a while. Normally Zimbalist plays her characters with a great deal of sympathy but not here. Meredith is consistently anxious, a bit loud and mostly unfriendly. What is going on, I thought. Then it became clear. Meredith’s line “I’ve been in a downwards spiral for a decade” explains the performance. Zimbalist salvages an otherwise mediocre and very odd movie.