Not
being familiar with Vanessa Hudgens her performance blew my mind in
“Gimme Shelter”. It wasn’t until I got home that I found out she was a
Disney graduate having played in “High School Musical” at the age of 17.
Now she is 25 playing a 15 year old pregnant girl without anyone to
help.

“Gimme Shelter” opens with a scene of her looking in a
mirror chopping her hair off and having a pierced eyelid and lip. She
has been abused, moved to ten foster homes because her mother is an
addict and prostitute and she doesn’t have any knowledge of who her
father is and after having a fight with her mother again she goes off to
find him just having his address.

She goes to her father who has
a lucrative job on Wall Street, a large home, wife and 2 pure as driven
snow children. The wife is not welcoming to her, the children complain
she stinks and upon hearing she is pregnant her father wants her to have
an abortion.

She runs away and after being sneeringly approached
by a pimp she steals his car and winds up in an accident that sends her
to the hospital. This is where her life takes a turn as she meets a
kindly Man of G-d who steers her to Kathy DiFiore who runs a shelter for
teenage mothers and pregnant teenagers.

This being a Hollywood
movie you should know where it is heading but it is based, somewhat, on a
true story and over the end credits they show pictures of the real
people.

Virginia Hudgens plays the lead Apple Bailey, bringing a
lot more to the script than the writer-director Ronald Krauss gives her
to work with. At some points when he can legitimately tug at the
audience’s heart strings he preaches the obvious messages.

James
Earl Jones plays the man of the church brings a gravitas that only he
can without over doing his voice or mannerisms. Rosario Dawson, with
yellow teeth, plays the addictive mother who knows how to handle a razor
blade in her mouth while Brendan Fraser acts as a milquetoast, which is
strange for an actor who looks and usually is strong, as Apple’s
father. Stephanie Szostak plays his wife in an underwritten tough role
while Ann Dowd plays the real DiFiore.

The film is a quick moving
1 hour and 40 minutes and has a PG-13 rating for a few brutal scenes of
abuse, drug talk and some rough, but apropos, language.

I do
know that if I was a writer, producer and/or director I would want
Vanessa Hudgens for my next few pictures and this movie is a MUST SEE
for her acting, taking a weak story and making it very interesting. By
the way when she cleans at a point in the film she is quite the pretty
woman!