Last night (April 8) I wanted to watch the latest TV-movie on Lifetime, Pride: A ‘Seven Deadly Sins” Story,the fifth and latest in a series of movies produced by T. D. Jakes and based on the works of “inspirational” author Victoria Christopher Murray, though for some reason she doesn’t have a credit on this one. Felicia Brooker is the sole credited writer on the movie. even though Murray's Web site lists Pride as Murray’s latest novel, and the synopsis on Murray’s page – “Mortgage broker Journee Alexander as she tries to escape the secretsPride as Murray’s latest novel, and the synopsis on Murray’s page – “Mortgage broker Journee Alexander as she tries to escape the secrets of her past without losing all she has worked to build in the present” – bears at best a tenuous relationship to the plot of Brooker’s script. The central character in the film Pride is Birdie Moore (Stephanie Mills, who’s good but nowhere nearly as effective as Whoopi Goldberg was in a similarly plotted Lifetime movie, A Day Late and a Dollar Short), a Black woman who’s old enough to have an adult granddaughter, Gabriella (“Ella” for shirt, though there’s no indication that she has a great jazz voice, or indeed can sing at all). Decades before she abandoned her plans for college when she got pregnant out of wedlock. She had a daughter, Tisha, and later a son, Gabriel ”Gabe” Moore (Thomas Miles). Tisha, like Birdie, gave up her college plans to raise Ella and then got cancer and died, and since then Ella has been living a troubled life. At the start of the movie Ellla is arrested by Houston police, and Birdie flies down there and arranges for her release on condition that Ella move to Chicago and live with her and her uncle Gabe.
Birdie owns a successful bake shop called, inevitably, Birdie’s Bakes, since baking was the career she fell back on once she had to raise a child on her own. The bakery is the site of a “reality” TV show and its obstreperous Black woman producer and her camera crew are seemingly omnipresent, turning supposedly intimate moments into ratings fodder. Ella’s arrival at the bakery zooms up the popularity of the Internet telecast big-time,and her re-introduction of her mother’s famous pie recipe (Birdie had tried to make it, but Ella could tell the difference between Tisha’s version and Birdie’s) sends both the bakery’s business and the show’s ratings through the roof. At the same time we learn that Ella is allergic to tree nuts (well, you know what Chekhov might have said; when you tell the audience in Act I that one of your characters is deathly allergic to a particular food, she’ll be forced to eat it in Act V), and at the end we learn that Tisha’s original pie recipe contained pecans in the crust, though she changed it because she wanted her daughter to be able to eat it. Birdie’s home is burglarized and her jewels are stolen, and since Ella is already a convicted burglar Birdie immediately suspects her – though it’s not surprising to realize that the true culprit is [spoiler alert!] Gabe,who’s incensed that Birdie, who’s just been diagnosed with leukemia, is planning to leave equal shares in Birdie’s Bakes to Gabe and Ella.
Gabe is resentful that after all the hard work he put into building Birdie’s Bakes, he’ll have to settle for only half of it. Gabe is also having an affair with a woman and embezzling the money Birdie gave jim, to open a branch of Birdie’s Bakes in Detroit to get more money to lavish on her and drink and gamble with his no-account friends. At the same time Ella ends up with a boyfriend, Khalil (the superbly sexy Jaime M. Callica), and though it’s nice to see his hot, muscular chest topless in their ex scene, I couldn’t help but wonder whether Ella will be the third woman in her family’s generations to have to give up her career and college plans to raise a baby born out of wedlock. Eventually there’s a typical Lifetime confrontation scene in which Gabe holds a gun to Ella’s head and forces her to eat a sample of Tisha’s pie with the original pecan-laden crust while Khalil is tied up elsewhere in Gabe’s house after Gabe overpowered him and then used his phone to lure Ella there. Fortunately Birdie arrives in time to save her granddaughter’s life with an EpiPen, and Gabe is arrested – and is so bitter he refuses to pu9t Birdie in his permitted list of visitors.
The main problem with Pride is there are almost no characters you actually like – aside from Khalil, who at least has ambitions to be a filmmake3r, and at the end of the movie he and Ella plan to relocate to Los Angeles to pursue his dreams, and also possibly to open a Birdie’s Bakes in L.A. Birdie herself is an imperious, self-righteous bitch, Gabe is an embezzler and pootential murderer,andElla is a mental basket case who gets so fed up with Birdie’s world, including the “reality” TV show camerapeople who are constantly filming them, that through much of the movie she threatens to go back to Texas even though she knows the big thing that awaits her there is a jail cell. Though there are a few moments of real emotional weight towards the end, for the most part Pride is one of those maddening movies in which you get so tired of watching these horrible people you can’t wait for it to end already!
