‘Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret,’ TV review

By David Hinckley
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tania Raymonde as Jody Arias

The year 2013 isn’t half over and we already may have a winner for Worst Girlfriend of the Year: Jodi Arias.
Lifetime also may win this year’s award for “fastest turnaround of a sordid real-life story into a creepy TV movie.”
The real-life Arias, as HLN devotees remember from just a few short weeks ago, killed her ex-boyfriend because he refused to become as obsessed with her as she was with him.

Nor did she just kill him. She butchered him. By the time she finished, it’s surprising she didn’t run him through a meat grinder and serve him on hamburger buns.
It’s a sad, tragic, awful story, of course, and viewers might wonder why we need it retold in dramatic form so soon after the real-life case ended with her murder conviction.
The question is valid. The answer is Tania Raymonde, who plays Arias with a disturbing intensity that makes her more than just another psycho stalker.

Viewers who were glued to the trial may note a misplaced detail here and there, but in general they are likely to find this 87-minute movie a solid summation of Arias’ disintegration.
That’s the core of the film. It isn’t until 15 minutes from the end that we get to the killing, while the trial is telescoped into a series of quick-cut vignettes

That’s not a problem, because by then it’s clear what happened and there’s a solid case about why.
An interesting footnote here is that Lifetime built a good part of its reputation on movies about women victimized by sociopathic men.

While Travis Alexander (Jesse Lee Soffer) won’t win boyfriend of the year honors, it’s interesting to see the psycho killer torch pass to the other side of the gender aisle.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/jodi-arias-dirty-secret-tv-review-article-1.1379149#ixzz2X0nY3qmB
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