As a mother, Nicole Phillips feels that her daughter Skylar (Sky) was a miracle baby. After a rough experience with asthma in which Sky had to drop out of school, she is now returning to formal education after years of home schooling.

While "The Shoplifting Pact" (aka, "Stealing in Suburbia") includes a convoluted scheme of young shoplifters, a tawdry love affair, and blackmail, the heart of the film is really the mother-daughter relationship of Nicole and Sky. Is Nicole the quintessential helicopter mom? Or, is she relying on a sense of mother's intuition that leads her to recognize how deeply enmeshed her daughter is in a dysfunctional school environment?

The shoplifting scenes involving the tag team of Heather, Marnie, Tabitha, and Vera were not very credible. Also, the numerous scenes of the girls' basketball practices suggested that the Pioneers would not be winning many games. But the relationship of Nicole and Sky was moving and heartfelt.

Audiences may be conflicted about the character of Coach Sandy. How culpable was she in drawing the unsuspecting Sky into a net of deceit and subterfuge? The screenplay included a clever connection between Sandy and Nicole, who was on the receiving end of bullying in high school by young Sandy. That detail helps to explain Nicole's concern about her daughter's well-being in the asphalt jungle of high school.

In the film's denouement, there was a deft touch on the part of the screenwriters to reveal Sky's interest in participating in the FBI's Youth Leadership Program. Her exposure to the shoplifters and blackmailers has thoroughly prepared her for this program!

This wasn't very realistic. Many of the characters are wooden and some of the scenes are silly. I wonder why they pick actors who look so old to play the children. As an asthmatic, I found Skyla's wheezing and sudden puff of the inhaler to be the wrong way to do it. Also the manner that the group of girls were shoplifting clothes in a store very open. Didn't any of these stores have cameras? It showed on of the stolen clothes with the shop's security tag, when Skylar found out that her friends were stealing clothes, but that should've triggered off an alarm in the shop, yet it didn't. Later the girls ripped off one of these alarm tags and threw it away before leaving another shop. It's shocking that the film forgot about the missing girl and her mother from the earlier plot. I also wonder how Skyla was kidnapped by another girl in a busy street, then whisked off to a remote cabin and no one ever noticed. Did they teleport?