Deadly Mile High Club (2020 Lifetime)

Deadly Mile High Club (2020 Lifetime)

Stars: Allison McAtee, Marc Herrmann, Anna Marie Dobbins

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Synopsis (via Lifetime)

A deranged female flight instructor obsesses over her handsome student, using her piloting skills to destroy the people in his life and seduce him into loving her.

Thoughts

The movie starts with some CGI lighting and special effects. Tayna and co-pilot are hitting severe turbulence and issue a mayday call. The place crashes, and Tanya wakes up in the hospital with some serious special FX makeup on. (She got the blood coming out her nose and bruises painted on her eyes.) The first thing Tanya asks is about her co-pilot and is bluntly informed that “he died.”

Six months later, at another airplane hanger, a handsome twink named Jake is an aspiring pilot in Tanya’s training class. When Tanya sees him, she is triggered and has flashbacks to her co-pilot, who died. (His name was also Jake.) Tanya cries at home and looks at pictures f her co-pilot Jake and also pictures of twink student Jake. Tanya’s brain is broken and is imprinting on twink student Jake, thinking that he is her dead lover come back to life.

Meanwhile, Jake is home with his wife Annie, who makes BOLD fashion choices. (See pick bucket hat and a matching tank top.) Annie has a Jewish mother named Margaret. (think Fran Drescher from the nanny.) Margaret is shady as hell and has hired Jake at her lighting warehouse. Jake talks to Annie with his shirt off and tries to convince her to let him be a pilot. Annie isn’t into it and tells him he lacks ambition and isn’t smart. (He didn’t graduate high school.) Jake retaliates and calls Annie a writer and says she is acting like her mother. (She makes him on the couch while she cries in bed alone,)

Flight school is sexy, and Tanya speaks in only double entendres. Like “lifting off, nice and smooth, with full power.” After a flight simulation, Tanya takes Jake on a flight just the two of them to deliver “airplane parts.” She flirts with him the whole time and admits to lying so she can have some alone time with him. Tanya proposes that they go to a hotel room and have some sexy time. Jake agrees, and they have a very extended Lifetime sex scene that Jake stops abruptly. He tells Tanya that he can’t cheat on his wife. (Even though he practically has.) Tayna goes to the bathroom and freaks the fuck out.

To make it up to Jake, Tanya takes Annie and Jake out on a special flight where she fantasizes about throwing Annie out of the plane. (Haha, it is so over the top and hilarious.) Tanya does do some flight tricks and freaks Annie out. Annie tells Jake to be careful.

On another training flight, Jake is flying by his house and sees Annie (in her pink bucket hat.) with another man. Jake confronts Annie when he gets home, or more like passively asks a few questions. Annie denies everything, but Jake moves out and tells her not to text or call him.

Jake opens up to Tanya, and she is sympathetic but still hot for him. While leaving flight school, Jake gets approached by a rival pilot school. They promise to make him “Top Gun” material. Tanya calls Jake to have a sexy late-night conversation. Jake answers and walks around with his shirt off. The call doesn’t go according to plan when Jake tells Tanya he is quitting her clas for the rival flight school.

When Margaret finds out Annie and Jake’s relationship are on the rocks. She ambushes him and tries to nag him to death. Speaking on death, Tanya tampers with one of the planes. Gonzo, the other flight school instructor, performs a demo of some flight tricks. As he is in the air, Margaret tears into Jake, calling him “dumb as a donut” and “ wiping the ADD smile off his face.” She is very unimpressed with Jake and the flight school, especially when It goes wrong, and Gonzo crashes and burns. (The whole scene is campy as hell. WAY over the top.) Margaret then decides to look into Tanya because she thinks Jake is having an affair with her. Margaret blackmails Tanya. If Tanya leaves Jake alone, Margaret won’t go to press with the fact that Tayna sleeps with her students. They reach an agreement, and Tanya offers to give Margaret a lift to Santa Barbera in her plane. Then Tanya REALLY does push Margaret out of the open door.

The police call Annie to inform her that her mom committed suicide. The funeral happens, but we don’t see it. Annie and Jake reunite and talk about selling the business. Jake is considering getting back with Annie out of sympathy until he sees some pictures Tanya took of Annie in her bucket hat canoodling with a man by the pool.

Jake is 100% in on Tanya now. When she tries to have sex with him while he is flying the plane, he says, “Huston. We have a problem.) Then they have sex in a hotel room and plan their new lives together.

Annie visits her neighbor across the street who has a doorbell camera, and she decides to review the footage (While wearing her stupid pink hat.) She sees a look-alike staging the scene of the affair that Jake saw from the plane. Annie gets the license plate of the car and finds the house. The woman was a model who was hired by a Tayna posing as a producer. (Note to aspiring models if it seems sketchy. It is.)

Jake takes a shower, which isn’t as sexy as it should be. Tanya sees the text from Annie come in about being framed, and she arranges for a meeting before deleting the thread. Tanya gets some coliform, shipping crate, and a pair of black gloves to head over to Annie’s house. Annie gets nabbed from her front yard in broad daylight and put into a shipping crate coffin. (Ties up for good measure.) Her plan is to load up the crate and throw it out of her plane.

Not knowing what is in the box, Jake offers to help Tanya and goes on the run with her. They set the plane on autopilot and have sex on top of the box. (in an almost porny way, the female gaze is lacking here in a significant way.) After the sex, Tanya has Jake throw the box in the ocean, claiming it is “fish food.” Just as he is about to throw the box out, Jake stops to wonder if the box is biodegradable???? This gives Annie enough time to untie herself and scream from inside the box. Jake realizes that Tanya is a bad guy.

Tanya sets the plane to autopilot again and rushes to the cabin to convince Jake why she is better than Annie. Jake calmly calls the police, but Tanya smashes him in the face with a fire extinguisher. Then she parachutes out of the plane after turning the autopilot off. With the airplane plummeting to the ground, Annie unscrews the latch on the crate with a set of keys and rushes to the cockpit to land the plane herself. (With ridiculous special effects.) Jake wakes up and takes over the landing, just in time.

On the ground, Tanya sees the airplane overhead, and it is making some fighter jet moves. (Swooping down near her.) Jake uses “engine pressure” to knock Tanya out so the police can apprehend her in the dessert.

Annie and Jake buy a plane. Jake admits to cheating on Annie with Tanya because he thought SHE was cheating! Annie forgives him, and she might have slept with her professor? WTF is this movie.

Side Note

Minority Report: Nurse with no bedside manner, Penelope, and some flight school students.

While I enjoyed the campy tone, the women were one dimensional and stereotypes. The leading man was maybe playing dumb but came off uncarasmatic and boring.

Marc Herrmann is a gorgeous man, but he needed a neck trim really bad.

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Overall rating

🔪 (1 Knife)

🍷🍷🍷 (3 glasses of wine required.)

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