The Perfect Husband: The Laci Peterson Story (2004)

Admirable film.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

This is such a true story and hit so close to home that I'm sorry to have to rate it. The 8 is for the quality of the acting and portrayal of the story available before the trial. We live in Fresno, about 90 miles from Modesto. At the time this story first broke it was on Christmas Eve, 2002. We were busy with holiday family stuff--my birthday-- but it caught our attention because my daughter had met the couple, the previous February. She was stunned. Scott and Lacey had come up to where she lived at the time, in Mountain View. She shared a condo at the home of a long time friend of Scott, from high school. The friend told my daughter about the couple and how close they were. Just the "perfect couple". Then they met at this party in the condo's rec/party room. My daughter said they were a beautiful couple. Lacy was very bubbly. At one point Scott was hanging with a group of guys. Later my daughter referred to an observation that she thought Scott was surveying the room and thought he could be a "player". This thought did not come up until after the girlfriend, Amber Frye, went public. THAT was a huge shocker. Up to that point, we thought him to be this loving part of this "perfect couple". No way was he involved. That changed instantly upon the public revelation from Amber Frye on the news. Then, day by day, we watched the news and awaited more information. Where was Lacie? Where was Scott! when the town vigil was taking place? (he didn't want to be seen on TV--girlfriend!!) When her body was recovered from the San Francisco Bay, along with the baby's body, Scott's fishing story started to link up with how Lacy ended up where she did. As to how it all occurred, we may never know, but make no mistake, he did it. It is still a mystery HOW could HE do THIS!! It is probable that Lacie found something that exposed the infidelity and they had a physical altercation in which she was injured or killed, or even started delivery. Remember the fresh bleach cleaning in the home. In the story, Scott is portrayed to appear innocent, by his demeanor, but as my daughter suggested, he was that way. Very smooth. And I almost neglected to mention, before Scott was arrested, sometime in January, he went up to his friend's condo, in MV, where my daughter still lived. He needed to escape all the news blitz and suspicions in Modesto. This was after Jan 17th. I remember my daughter calling me and telling me Scott Petersen was there that night, sleeping under the same roof. I was so not comfortable. Neither was my daughter. Seems so dumb now that she stayed there that night, and just closed her door. It is such an eerie memory. He wasn't arrested until April 18, 2003--4 days following decomposed body remains of the fetus on the 13th and Lacie's on the 14th. So terribly sad! Sorry this movie was made too soon and prior to any trial. And strangely at the end of the movie it states: "The views of the convicted killer presented in this program are his own and not those of the producers or A+E Networks." Now THAT is really weird. Firstly, he had only been arrested when it ends. Why would they do that! $$ Sick!

I watched this on TV a couple of months of ago and then recently after the trial was over, I watched it again because a friend of mine had a tape of it. First of all, Dean Cain tries to do a good job playing Scott Peterson and even sounds a little like him. It's sort of creepy but I kind of get the impression that Dean watched a lot of Scott's interviews and listened to him over and over again, trying to imiate him. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. The movie is poorly written. It came out way too soon before too many facts were out and it's also way too favorable to Scott Peterson. It's not too often that the film casts a shadow of guilt on him. It does try to make the cops involved in the case look bad. The movie tries to convince us that they are more concerned with framing Scott than actually finding Laci Peterson. It also makes Laci's family and friends look bad. They are seen as people who turn on Scott very quickly, because of his selling of Laci's car and his affair with Amber Frey. The attempt to recreate times that Laci's family and Amber went to the press are also bad and look poorly staged. Since the conversations between Scott and Amber weren't public at the time, the writers tried to write out dialogue on what they thought Peterson might have said on his cell phone to Amber. Those scenes are pretty short,lol. There's also a fictional (guessing) couple who are supposed to be friends of Laci's and Scott's who fight over whether or not Scott did it. Typical idiot writers portray it as though it's the hysterical women (Laci's two friends) who think Scott is guilty and the cops who are after Scott. I'm really so sure that the cops and her female friends were really anxious to see Laci's husband on trial for murder instead of the who did this. I'm sure justice meant nothing to them and they were fine with the idea of the killer of the friend being on the loose as long as Laci's husband (whom they probably had to their houses dozens of times and who they knew thought they knew pretty well) getting sent to jail. That is beyond stupid. It was most likely difficult for them even beginning to think that Scott did it but they could no longer no ignore Scott's behavior or the evidence pointing to the fact that Scott most likely did it. The annoying part in the movie that I'm sure never happened in real life was everybody going around hollering "How'that going to look when you do that?" "It's going to look bad if you do this, Scott". Everybody was probably too upset about Laci to worrying about how things were looking, unless of course you've got something to hide. Why would friends advise Scott on how to behave unless they suspected he was guilty and want to help him look innocent? One of the earlier scenes where they are talking about giving a press conference and Dean goes, "The press has a victim, now they need a villain." That was really poor writing. The press conferences were about trying to get people to give tips about finding Laci, not about looking a villain, lol. Basically, this movie might have been interesting before all the facts and everything was out but now, it just makes you roll your eyes at it.

To present a real happening as in a movie is unique and always interesting to watch. However, smooth as the story line may be, the ending is rather cynical, without the 'real' presentation of the real case, if any otherwise it was only based on presumption. It is 'presumed' that Dean Cain MURDERED his wife but without court verdict nor findings. I don't know much about the real life story behind, or if the case has been closed or still an open end case or was it just the conclusion of the police and if so, why then made a movie based on real life story that has not ended with a finding?. Is Hollywood expecting us to judge as like in a fiction movie?.

The Perfect Husband: The Laci Peterson Story is a TV-movie starring Dean Cain as Scott Peterson, the man accused of killing his 8-month-pregnant wife Laci (Meredith Lieber) and who'd had an affair with Amber Frey (Tracy Middendorf) in 2002.The movie was filmed before the murder case against Scott had even began, so of course the movie has to be rather ambivalent in its treatment of him. That is one of the major flaws of the movie. Without a settled case, the movie really beats around the bush as to whether or not Scott did the murder or if he was just a man with a bad secret who was wrongfully accused.For his part, Dean Cain plays the role well with hints of guilt, but the part was scripted as such it seems and he is not an endearing character. He could have been more convincing early in the script, before the revelation that he was a suspect, then shown as more conniving. From the get-go, his character just shows too many guilt signs and ever action of his says "look at me, this is a warning sign" instead of being more subliminal early.In all, there is a complete lack of a true central character. Laci is non-existent as a character in the movie, mostly just referred to in the past tense. The parents, rightfully so, share a large portion of the screen time and most of the sympathy of the viewer. But there are a lot of useless actors with bit roles (investigators, for instance) in the script to keep it true to the real-life people instead of amalgamated into a few more meaningful, dramatized characters.Overall, a lackluster effort and a movie made too soon with no real connection to the murdered individual. It just seems like the TV movie that it is instead of something more. 5/10