[Warning: Spoilers in images, article, and preview.]
Lifetime’s newest original movie, Expecting Amish, is a thoughtful drama with a title that makes it sound sort of salacious when it really isn’t. The film follows 18-year old Hannah (AJ Michalka), an engaged young Amish woman whose Rumspringa trip to Los Angeles has her returning home ready to break from her fiance, faith, and family, and pregnant from a last-night goodbye tryst with a DJ, Josh (Jesse McCartney), who she meets and bonds with very quickly.
The film does a good job showing the disparity between Hannah’s restricted life at home as the matriarch of the family and her awakening in LA, which leaves her to make decisions that will have permanent ramifications for herself, her child, and her family and friends. I’m not sold that she isn’t trading one sort of indentured life for another, but you have to just go with it.
Michalka is solid as Hannah, and she and McCartney have a nice chemistry with each other. Brian Krause plays Hannah’s dad, and it’s funny to see both him and Sleepwalkers co-star Madchen Amick on Lifetime all these years later.
Hannah’s fiance, Samuel, is played by Jean-Luc Bilodeau, who I will forever adore for Kyle XY (and how he’s not landed in Mystic Falls yet via Julie Plec is beyond me). He’s very good as a young man who’s angry and betrayed and can’t understand why Hannah is ready to leave all they’ve known.
Expecting Amish airs Saturday night on Lifetime at 8/7c and repeats at midnight/11c. Here are some sneak peeks:
Hannah Meets Josh:
Josh Drives to Amish Country:
Samuel Offers to be the Father:
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This is the worse depiction of Amish life I have ever seen. I am a tour guide in Lancaster County and can’t believe the lack of reserch that went into this movie. It seems like it is open season on the Amish and their culture. Everything in the movie was completly false. They worship in homes not in a church. They do ride in cars,the girls do not wear white everyday,they are not baptized in rivers they are baptized by pouring on water,they do not sing hymms as depicted,they are only shunned after they are baptized.They use grey buggies here not black.Many of the youth have cell phones and even have facebook accounts. They are to be repected and admired for the way they live not exploited.
Thanks for writing, JoAnn. Lifetime isn’t exactly the bar for real-life accuracy. I appreciate your insight.
Although I can not in any way vouch for the depiction of the Amish and their accuracy in that department I don’t think that was the point of the film. The story was about two people from very different worlds finding a common ground and falling in love despite their cultural differences. It was a coming of age film where the protagonist has to look at her life and choose what she wants for herself. I thought it was a beautiful story and the main characters played well off each other. Jesse McCartney’s speech by the car is heartbreaking. This film tugged at your heart strings and made you feel young again. She could have been from anywhere, it didn’t have to be Amish she could have just as easily been from any culture which has arranged marriage. I loved the film and would love to own it if Lifetime ever sells it on DVD.