Pregnant at 17 (2016)

About

A wife discovers that her husband's teenage mistress is pregnant, and sets out to help the girl rather than punish her.

Chelsea is a 17-year-old high-school dropout whose life is going nowhere until she witnesses a violent crime. Things appear to turn a corner when she falls for Jeff, an older and accomplished man who promises her the future she has always wanted. The complication is that Jeff is still married, and when Chelsea discovers she is pregnant he wants nothing to do with the baby.

The film's central turn is that Jeff's wife, Sonia, does not react as expected. On learning of the affair and the pregnancy, she chooses to empathise with Chelsea instead, taking the younger woman in and becoming her unlikely champion through the pregnancy.

The danger arrives from Chelsea's own past. The crime she witnessed has not been forgotten, and when the man behind it returns, Chelsea, Sonia and the baby are all put at risk, pushing the film from issue-led drama into thriller territory for its final act.

Pregnant at 17 is part of Christine Conradt's long-running "at 17" cycle of Lifetime television films, each a self-contained story about a teenage girl whose life is derailed by a single event.

Where to Watch

• Premiered on Lifetime (United States), February 20, 2016
• Search Amazon for Pregnant at 17

Details

Director: Curtis Crawford

Writer/Screenplay: Christine Conradt

Producer: Curtis Crawford, Donald Osborne

Running time: 90 minutes

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Released: February 20, 2016

Music Composer: Richard Bowers

Cast

• Josie Bissett as Sonia
• Zoé De Grand Maison as Chelsea
• Roark Critchlow as Jeff
• Rogan Christopher as Greg Foster
• Corina Bizim as Laren Foster
• Jake Manley as Adam Wilson
• Luigi Saracino as Rascal

Franchise

One of nine Lifetime films written by Christine Conradt under the "... at 17" title pattern:

• Dead at 17 (2008)
• Accused at 17 (2009)
• Betrayed at 17 (2011)
• Stalked at 17 (2012)
• Missing at 17 (2013)
• Guilty at 17 (2014)
• Pregnant at 17 (2016)
• Murdered at 17 (2018)
• Zombie at 17 (2018)

Related

• Double Daddy (2015)
• Double Mommy (2016)

Trivia

• The film is the seventh of nine Lifetime titles written by Christine Conradt whose names follow the pattern "... at 17".
• Josie Bissett is best known for playing Jane Mancini in Melrose Place, which she appeared in from 1992 to 1999.
• Zoé De Grand Maison had already played Gracie Johanssen in Orphan Black, and later played Evelyn Evernever in Riverdale.
• Curtis Crawford went on to direct Murdered at 17 (2018), the next film in the series.

Critical Reception

Pregnant at 17 is a representative entry in Lifetime's cycle of teen-jeopardy thrillers, pairing an issue-led premise with a late turn into suspense. The film is unusual within the cycle for making the wronged wife a sympathetic ally rather than an antagonist, and Josie Bissett's performance as Sonia carries much of that reversal. On IMDb the film holds an average user rating of approximately 5.7 out of 10 from around 540 votes, placing it mid-table among the network's output.

Reviews

• IMDb users give the film an average rating of approximately 5.7 out of 10 from around 540 votes.

Links

• Pregnant at 17 at IMDb
• Pregnant at 17 at The Movie Database

Production

Pregnant at 17 was directed by Curtis Crawford from a screenplay by Christine Conradt, and premiered on Lifetime in the United States on February 20, 2016. Curtis Crawford and Donald Osborne produced, with Pierre David, Tom Berry, Neil Bregman, Sebastian Battro and Christine Conradt as executive producers.

The film sits in the Pierre David and Tom Berry stable of Canadian-shot television thrillers, a production line directly comparable to the Johnson Production Group titles behind Double Daddy (2015) and Double Mommy (2016). Cinematography was by Bill St. John, editing by Jordan Jensen and music by Richard Bowers, with production design by Csaba András Kertész and costume design by Kayla Irwin.

The "at 17" series

Christine Conradt wrote nine Lifetime television films sharing the "... at 17" title pattern, running from Dead at 17 (2008) through to Murdered at 17 (2018) and Zombie at 17 (2018). The films are not a continuing story and share no characters; what links them is a common formula, in which an otherwise ordinary teenage girl makes one decision that exposes her to adult danger.

Pregnant at 17 is the seventh in the sequence, following Guilty at 17 (2014). It is one of the few entries to place an adult woman, rather than the teenager herself, at the moral centre of the story.