Flawed Film, But Still OK/Enjoyable

[Spoiler Alert]


I just watched this film on one of the Encore movie channels, and while it was certainly not a great film and had serious flaws, I enjoyed it nonetheless. Mainly due to the acting of Emmy Rossum, who I found to be utterly charming in the role.

But the film has some serious flaws:

1) An 18 year old girl from a trailer park in Kansas is not going to be nearly as intelligent, worldly, or street smart as Rossum's character was. She adjusts to life in NYC almost immediately with no real problems and seems as if she has lived there her whole life. All of this made her character not very believable or legitimate, even by Hollywood storytelling standards.

2) The whole thing with the transvestite and the billionaire - - turned the film into too much of a freak show.

3) How convenient it was that she just happened to get hired in a coffee shop owned by a Madam who knew a guy who turned out to be her long lost father. Out of all the men in NYC, she essentially finds him in the first place she looks, right under her nose the whole time. Would have been better if she actually had to look a little bit and make some effort to find her father.

All these convenient contrivances and flashy stunts ruined the film. The basic story idea, a girl looking for her biological father in NYC, had potential and could have made for a much better film if done properly.