It’s time for a dramatic film that incorporates a lot of second hand cringing. You can really sympathize with the tough spots that the main heroine was put into here. It’s definitely a tough situation for the kids and a general reminder that it’s okay to have dreams but you have to be responsible about them. If not, then you are really just setting yourself up for defeat. It definitely will not end well and the longer you put off your reality check, the bigger the consequences will be.

The film starts off by introducing us to Ray who has had to raise his two daughters Sonya and Greta by himself after his wife passed. Ray has always been a bit of a dreamer. He doesn’t want to work a standard 9-5 job, he acts as if this is beneath him. No, he’s going to get super rich and is quick to mention this at all times. None of his plans have worked out yet but he knows that they will at some point. He’s been conning people for years and lies as he breathes. Now he has managed to get Sonya into school but the lies are starting to catch up to him. Is he about to ruin everything?

Right off the bat I can say that you don’t feel too much sympathy for Ray. It’s one thing to be ambitious and want to do things your own way but the instant you start becoming a chronic liar about it, then you are knowingly doing something bad. By around the halfway point you start to doubt that Ray is as insane as he appears and instead it really seems like he just enjoys spinning his stories. He had to know where it was going and yet he kept on doubling down over and over. If anything he is incredibly lucky that he didn’t try that in a worse neighborhood or he would have been thoroughly beaten up a long time ago. You just can’t get away with these kinds of actions for very long. He had plenty of outs and at the very least could have kept the situation from snowballing out of control. Unfortunately he did not make that choice.

Meanwhile for Sonya, this often meant that she had to take care of her little sister Greta which limited the amount of free time she had on her own. She wasn’t able to be a kid in the ways that she should have been allowed to. Then Sonya is also old enough to know that her father is lying about everything which is super awkward for her. It’s not like she can do much to stop him and in the meantime has to just keep her head low and try to make the best of the day. Even when she does her best to try and cut Ray off or prevent him from making the lie worse, he just ignores her.

She definitely has the wort situation out of the group by far as a result. Fortunately she does her best and I give her full credit for taking care of her sister since that wasn’t always easy here. In the end she also makes the right decision to look to her future instead of taking the easy way out and making for a new location with Ray. You have to face up to things eventually after all and the sooner she gets it over with the better. She also met a nice teacher at the school who really helped her out by polishing up her writing abilities and looking out for her. Even having just one ally helps out a lot and in general the town seemed like a very nice one. That’s why it was a real shame that Ray was cheating them out of money.

One last fault for Ray is that he also appears as a very unreasonable guy. We get a flashback where his wife won some nice plates from a local raffle and he immediately starts insulting them. He seemed to take it very personally that she got the plates from somewhere else instead of him being able to provide for her. It was just in such a childish way that it makes him look so petty. She had always been patient enough to put up with his endless boasts and promises that would never come to fruition. The least he could do is be happy for her when she finally won something.

Additionally, during the films we see Sonya’s stories that she would submit to the school which were loosely based on her life. They were intentionally exaggerated so you don’t know exactly how much was true or not but in those stories we see Ray quickly rebounding with other women and generally looking like a rather terrible guy. So even if only a little bit of that was true, it just makes him look even worse. The problems that he created were all of his undoing and that is why it’s hard to feel bad for him. I just felt bad for the kids who had to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Overall, Imaginary Crimes does a good job of getting across that feeling of how hopeless things can be when you’re a kid and you know that something is not right. The main problem is that no matter how much you know, there’s not much a kid can do. I can’t really say that they could have done anything differently here. That’s why it all comes down to the father’s failure here because he needed to provide for his family. That’s the top priority and it has to come before pride and his visions of striking it rich. By this point he had to know that wasn’t going to happen and to continue trying for it would just be plain irresponsible. It was not a good idea. I’m not a big fan of the film but it’s not a bad title either. If this sounds interesting then you should check it out.

Overall 5/10