Another Day (2001)

A bland TV movie with an inexplicable time travel twist that serves little dramatic purpose. Shannen Doherty plays a young woman who gets a scholarship to medical school and falls pregnant on the same day – which makes for a soapy estrangement from her river patrolman boyfriend (Max Martini). She takes off for a drive to sort things out in her head (the film can't bear to mention the a-word) and comes back just in time to find a factory on fire, glimpse someone inside with her burning-to-death boyfriend, who is tagged as an arsonist. She makes it through, with the support of her devoted number two guy (Julian McMahon), and has an adorable bratette (Courtney Kidd) – only when the kid is five, she falls into the raging river and while being nearly drowned rescuing her, Doherty is somehow zapped back in time to live through that fateful day again, mixing it with all the people she knew back then even as the real her is off on her drive. She learns that her boyfriend took undeserved blame for the fire, and that she herself was the person she glimpsed in the window – but it's clear she can't do anything to change the timeline, though a time-loop thing to do with an amulet is set up but made nothing of. All the heroine does is return to the present and posthumously clear her dead boyfriend's name before getting on with her life. It's soft soap, and rather whingingly drab: despite the fantastical premise, the message is that all things aren't possible - though at least the kid doesn't drown. Directed by Jeffrey Reiner; written by Helen Frost and Don MacLeod.

First published in this form here.

Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com