Mommy's Secret (also known as Mommy's Little Secret and My Mom Robs Banks) is a 2016 Lifetime Movie of the Week directed by Terrance Miles.
Anne Harding (Charisma Carpenter) is a recently-widowed hairdresser and literal soccer mom: her daughter Denise (Sarah Grey) is a star player on her high school soccer team. Her son Kyle (Adam DiMarco) has taken to gambling to help the family, and has fallen deeply in debt to an underworld figure named Quinlan (Amos Mitchell). Denise doesn't know about Kyle's gambling, just that he constantly asks to borrow her lunch money. She also doesn't know that her mom has been robbing banks on Quinlan's orders to help pay down Kyle's debts, but seeing news stories about a string of bank robberies and observing Anne's odd behavior has made her suspicious.
Mommy's Secret contains examples of:
- Artistic License – Sports: In the real world, college sports coaches will have hours of game footage which they can watch to evaluate a high school athlete, and whole coaching staffs who scout the athletes. In this movie's world, recruiting involves sending one person out to watch the player in a single make-or-break game, and they're apparently not allowed to consider anything else in their decision. Also, a player missing a shot-on-goal in soccer (which is quite common) is enough of an excuse to deny them a scholarship.
- Big Fancy House: The family has a rather huge suburban house, leading to the question of, if they're having money problems, why don't they just sell the house and downsize into something smaller?
- Chekhov's Gun: The coat that's seen in a picture of Denise and her father is the same coat Anne wears in her robberies, and Denise recognizes it in the camera footage of a robbery she sees on the news, leading her to start suspecting her mom is the bank robber.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The exact nature of Quinlan's operation is never explained, but apparently he has a legitimate front business, but also has lots of illegal side activities and uses other side activities to launder the money. Why he's devoting so much attention to barroom poker games is a mystery.
- Faux Affably Evil: Quinlan, despite his no-nonsense exterior, is quite nice to Anne, buying her presents and taking her out to dinner.
- Fixing the Game: Not stated outright, but in the Illegal Gambling Den scene it's pretty clear that Quinlan is rigging it so that Kyle will lose.
- The Gambling Addict: Kyle, still grieving his father's death and wanting to help his mom out, turned to gambling, but it's starting to consume his life. The movie teases the audience by at first making it look like he's a drug addict.
- Halfway Plot Switch: Due to the Tomato Surprise, the final half-hour shifts quite suddenly from Melodrama to Action Thriller.
- Illegal Gambling Den: Denise finds Kyle playing poker in a seedy bar.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: An unusual daughter-mother pairing for this contrast. Blonde Denise (Light) is a morally upright Tomboy, brunette Anne (Dark) is a troubled woman who's turned to crime.
- Mama Bear: At the climax, Anne helps Denise escape her captors and turns the tables on Quinlan.
- Morton's Fork: Denise flat-out asks Anne if she's been robbing banks. Anne gives an evasive Non-Answer."Do you really think that your mom's capable of robbing banks?"
- No Communities Were Harmed: The movie seems like it's supposed to be taking place in the Pacific Northwest, but it never gets more specific than a car license plate that says "Evergreen State". It was filmed in Vancouver.
- Passionate Sports Girl: Denise's life is devoted to soccer, and she also jogs around her neighborhood.
- Patched Together from the Headlines: There were several news stories in the years before this movie was made about mothers in dire financial straits who get involved in bank robberies. One was the case of Kentucky mom Crystal Little. One of the early titles of this movie was Mommy's Little Secret.
- Police Are Useless: The cops actually seem like they're doing a good job investigating the robberies, but the Plot Twist establishes that while the police struggle to figure out what's happening, the FBI was able to nab Anne after her very first bank hit, and got her to cooperate with them.
- Senior Year Struggles: Denise is trying to get a college soccer scholarship.
- Struggling Single Mother: Anne is a widow having problems keeping afloat financially, including rejected insurance claims, which partly inspires her turn to crime.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Anne wears a fake goatee, a stocking cap and a coat in her robberies.
- Tomato Surprise: Denise finally catches Anne in the act of robbing a bank, which marks a major turning point in the story. However, it's merely setting up The Reveal for a major Plot Twist—Anne is an FBI informant in their investigation of Quinlan, and has been committing the robberies under their watch.
- Villainous Crush: Quinlan seems to have one on Anne (and, since she's played by Charisma Carpenter, who can blame him?), but between her shutting him down and his focus on getting money, it's not a major theme in the story.
- Would Hurt a Child: Quinlan apparently thinks nothing of threatening a teenage boy over gambling debts, and his henchmen later kidnap Denise.
