Neeve Kearney (Connie Selleca), a high-fashion boutique owner and evidently, crusading investigator of sweat shops in NYC's garment district, finds herself pursued by an unknown stalker. Her father, Myles (Beau Starr), a former police commissioner, has a blood vendetta with Nicky Sepetti (Frank Pellegrino), a mob boss that Myles put away for ten years, and who has recently been released on parole. Myles blames Nicky for murdering his wife, as revenge for his prison sentence. As well, Neeve faces danger when her close friend, gossip columnist Ethel Lambston (Patricia Gage), is murdered, perhaps due to the investigative piece she's undertaken, at Neeve's insistence, about the sweat shops that thrive in the rag trade. Romance for Neeve comes in the form of TV journalist Jack Campbell (Simon MacCorkindale). Will Neeve find Ethel's murderer, before she becomes the next victim?

It's not too difficult to pin down where Mary Higgins Clark's While My Pretty One Sleeps goes wrong...because it's all wrong. Nothing in it works right, starting with that ridiculously overripe title that may have worked for a cool 1940s film noir, but which has absolutely nothing to do with this tame, tepid mafia/fashion world hybrid. Most critical to Mary Higgins Clark's While My Pretty One Sleeps's failure is its inability to create a believable milieu, either for the Mafia angle or the cutthroat fashion world. With so many mob movies and television shows out there, you have to either bring something new to the table, or treat old conventions with respect. The mob elements here, though, are strictly from hunger, with the obligatory, clichéd scenes of a mob powwow and restaurant hit, filmed in a desultory, dreary fashion.

As for the nasty, bitchy world of high fashion, where is it in Mary Higgins Clark's While My Pretty One Sleeps? Selleca owns a smart boutique in Manhattan (really Toronto here), and yet she's running around the backstreets, spying on crooks hustling in illegal workers. Why? Her role in this investigation is never properly explained, and besides - she has time for this? Her gossip columnist friend, Ethel, isn't content with running pieces on the latest celebrity breakup; she also wants to run investigative pieces on illegal immigration, apparently (as if Liz Smith is poking around New York for the latest breaking hard news feature). We get one brief glimpse of a fashion show (six model total on the catwalk), but that's it. Selleca's romance (with a totally disinterested MacCorkindale), which should be a major element of the story, is so dispiritedly put forth that MacCorkindale disappears for big periods of time, only to pop back up as we wonder, "Why bother? She's not all that interested, pal." As for the murder angle, it's enough to say that I've seen Snoop Sisters episodes with more complicated mysteries.

Selleca, a real beauty, doesn't seem tough enough to run a boutique in the rough-and-tumble, competitive world of Manhattan high fashion. Always ready with a wry smile, Selleca, more suited to comedy than this kind of faux-hard-edged drama, has little to do but put out a feathery-light "New Yawk" accent and toss that shiny black mane of hair. Starr, a big, gruff character actor no doubt familiar to you when you see him, looks weary and a little put out, probably because he doesn't have anything to do in the film, either. The production never comes close to approximating the hustle-and-bustle of the garment district in Manhattan (the Canadian location shoot definitely doesn't help here), and the largely head-and-shoulders framing and 1-2-3-editing pattern further lulls the viewer into a decidedly apathetic mood. When the seemingly twice-as-long, 93-minute Mary Higgins Clark's While My Pretty One Sleeps finally ends, a far more appropriate title would have been, Where My Three or Four Remaining Viewers Finally Fell Asleep.

The DVD:

The Video:
The full-frame, 1.33:1 video image for Mary Higgins Clark's While My Pretty One Sleeps isn't the greatest, with plenty of grain and blacks that don't hold, along with the usual print anomalies associated with a ten-year-old telemovie that no one is going to restore.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 stereo mix is adequate for this dialogue-heavy drama. There are no subtitles or close-captions available.

The Extras:
There are no extras for Mary Higgins Clark's While My Pretty One Sleeps.

Final Thoughts:
Not ballsy enough for a Mafia flick, and not respectful to the "chick flick" conventions to give us some vicarious romantic thrills, Mary Higgins Clark's While My Pretty One Sleeps does a real disservice to both genres, and winds up a pretty bore. Selleca fanatics may want to check it out via a rental, but all others may safe skip it.