Yes, the title of this post should strike fear into the hearts of Hallmark movie watchers. But I can make it worse. Not only was this made by the director of Strawberry Summer, but it was written by the same guy, Gary Goldstein. And you can tell because this movie also has some characters sing When The Saints Go Marching In. On the other hand, he also wrote My Boyfriends’ Dogs, and that wasn’t bad. And you can tell that too because this movie features a scene where the boyfriend dumps his dog on the female lead. Take that scene, repeat it across multiple boyfriends, and make the right guy work at the pet store. That’s My Boyfriends’ Dogs. I’ve seen too many Hallmark movies.
The Wish List opens with a little girl in her room talking about prince charming and drawing in a coloring book that has a prince and princess. Then we see a todo list on a blackboard. Can you smell a movie about a woman who makes a list of qualities that a man must meet for him to be marriage material? No? Good, that means you’re not as jaded as I am. Sadly, that is exactly what the movie is about.
Fortunately for us. This guy is the very first one we meet and he is exactly what she is looking for so the movie ends right there. This truly is the shortest Hallmark movie I know about.
Actually, it turns out he was hiding a lot of qualities that she can’t stand such as smoking and being a kleptomaniac. That is her Americana Xpress card that fell into her soup after he pulled it out to pay for the meal. Of course, Major League (1989) came to mind.
Portrait Of Love had Corbin Bernsen in it as well, which was produced by Larry Levinson and Randy Pope who also produced this movie. Just a coincidence, but a humorous one.
Of course we now get a little montage of obviously wrong guys for her. The guy with piercings and the guy with dreadlocks. This means it’s time for Sarah Fischer (Jennifer Esposito) to break out the whiteboard and write down exactly what she demands in the man she’ll marry: NO exceptions!
My favorite is nice feet, but the best part is something that isn’t on the board. They later show a histogram showing what the probability is that she will eat a whole tub of ice cream.
Ah, I love when I can watch something where I can easily take screenshots.
With her firmly set on a path to meeting the wrong guy, she runs into the right guy named Fred Jones (David Sutcliffe) at a coffee shop.
He is the local lovable Barista prick. Seriously, I can’t think of a better way to describe him. While Esposito plays our protagonist in this and is humorous in how she keeps coming back to the coffee shop he works at even though he grates on her nerves. If you are going to watch this movie, then you’re doing so in order to see David Sutcliffe and the wrong guy Dr. Erik Cavallieri played by Mark Deklin.
They are the reason to see this movie. Come to think of it, one of this movie’s problems is that we actually like the two of them so much, we wish she could marry both of them. This is no more evident then when they all go to a night club and it goes all Saturday Night Fever (1977) with the two of them dancing.
They actually have to reach a bit near the end to try and make us really favor the one over the other. And the rest as they say, is Hallmark.
There’s only two more things I want to mention. First, this movie is split screen happy. I blame Pillow Talk (1959) for this stuff. While it works well with the dancing scene, the phone calls and the Barista contest at the end are a bit much. There’s a scene where they are talking on the phone and the center dividing bar shifts at least three times just a little to the left, then back right, then left again. Also, there are times when you’d think it’s just leaving black space on the side because it was 2010 so it was composed for a smaller screen. But then you get a shot like this.
Just know that they go a little overboard with this whole split screen thing.
The other thing is a computer screen goof to look for. It first shows a properly done screen, cuts to one that is a mess, then back to a proper one. Here’s the good one.
And here’s what it cuts to.
Not even remotely close to the awful ones from Strawberry Summer, but I would like to know who this rrowen@mac.com is. It’s a shame that they went through the trouble of reskining Google to this JetSearch.com, but they didn’t change the URL in this shot or the title on the browser tab. One final thing, it’s a little fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure one of those bookmarks is to Hallmark’s website.
As long as you know it’s one of those The Rules type movies and that you are watching it for David Sutcliffe and Mark Deklin, then this one is fine.
Well, it’s been 100 Hallmark reviews. This being 101. I think from now on I’m going to review each of them separately. It’s easier for me. It will make it easier for people to find a specific movie I’ve reviewed. Plus, it’s more fair to the movies themselves because I will be able to come off of viewing one and immediately write a full review.
So, what do we have here? The title does remind me of the Verizon guy and I think it’s supposed to. The movie opens with Kellie Martin on the beach with her husband and two kids. A boy and a girl. She shoots a short video of them all together. Then Martin and the kids go home while the husband goes off in his boat. He doesn’t make it back alive.
Cut to two years later and you can tell none of them have moved on because they still visit the same beach and watch the video together.
Martin is a baker in this movie and while on her way to deliver some pastries, Kavan Smith backs his car up and nearly kills her. That’s how they initially meet. Then they part ways. Of course by part ways, I mean they go to the same party for different reasons. For her, it’s a delivery. For him, it’s his family having the party. Running into each other again kicks off their relationship.
Now this is where it kind of becomes a Movie A, Movie B type thing. Movie A is Kellie Martin and Kavan Smith just doing their thing much to my delight. They’re good actors. They fall in love while the two of them work to open up a bakery for Martin. This part worked very well for me. The problem is Movie B interjects itself from time to time and then a bunch near the end.
During their time together, Martin is getting messages from beyond from her dead husband through her cellphone. Well, sort of. It basically amounts to a couple of words that summed up mean: move on with your life already. I’m sure this worked better in the book this is based on because there was time to flesh that out and have the relationship part too. But here, when it happens, you just want it to stop so you can see more of this.
And this.
I even like the kids and kids don’t always fare that well in Hallmark movies. I feel for Julie Sherman Wolfe who wrote the screenplay for this movie. She even tweeted me because of a response I had to some of her dialogue. This.
I feel for her because adapting a book into a Hallmark TV Movie must be the equivalent of what Tod Frye faced trying to port Pac-Man to the Atari 2600. Or any arcade port back then. You are taking something from a more powerful medium and have to try and squish it into a much more constrained one.
Oh, Kellie Martin does look a little goofy back there doesn’t she. Well…
there! Now they’re even.
The only real resistance these two meet in the movie comes from Martin’s daughter and Smith’s mom. Smith’s mom tries to set him up with someone of their class, but that doesn’t work. He has his heart set on Martin. Martin’s daughter is worried that he is going to leave if he is allowed to get too close. Both of those things are just minor friction and never really threaten to derail them coming together.
It was a little disappointing for me because I do like these two actors on their own and together, but that dead husband kept poking into my fun. There are also a couple things that seemed to reference a scene that I sure didn’t remember seeing. But I’m fallible. If you don’t let those parts bother you, then this is worth seeing. Definitely better than the usual middle of the road formulaic Hallmark romance.
Now we just need a sequel where Alison Sweeney plays an evil baker with Smith and Martin trying to catch her. This time the husband tries to give them clues from beyond. Make it happen!
Well, it was going to expire from the XFINITY app in a couple of days. Also, I have seen Howard The Duck (1986) and Mac And Me (1988). Those two and this, were the three films I remember from childhood as having a reputation for being some of the worst movies ever made. At least from the 1980s. Mac And Me is bad. Howard The Duck gets a bit of a bad rep. Leonard Part 6 deserves it’s reputation.
While I’m here, I love that this particular part of the opening credits looks like it could have been made in the NES game Color A Dinosaur.
I’m going to summarize this nonsense and then just show you some highlights. Seriously, this movie only really exists for the morbid fascination of how awful it is. Before I do that, I have to say that while I expect garbage from Bill Cosby outside of The Cosby Show, having seen Ghost Dad (1990) as a kid. Why the hell was Tom Courtenay in this? Seriously, he was in The Dresser (1983) just 4 years prior and was nominated for an Academy Award! I’ve seen it. He was good in it. In this, Tom Courtenay is Cosby’s butler a la Batman.
Let’s get this summary over with so we can point and laugh. The movie is about Leonard who is a retired CIA agent. He retired after his wife left him. It had something to do with a 19 year old, but honestly, I’m not sure if that was referring to a human being or an animal. There’s a mad vegetarian woman who uses a special sphere and chemical to convince animals to turn on humans en masse. In other words, this movie is a giant parody of animal monster movies like Night Of The Lepus (1972) while also making fun of James Bond. That, and product placement. Michael Bay’s The Island (2005) was bad about product placement, but dear lord what happened here?
That’s it! He comes out of retirement in the hopes of getting his wife back and tries to take down the evil vegetarians. I can’t possibly show you every ridiculous thing, but here we go.
Yeah! One of the opening shots of this movie is Bill Cosby jumping off a building riding an ostrich. Also, he does a little ballet dancing too. I’ll skip over the barking fish that eats humans, but first stops to look at a Playboy magazine.
By the way, this review is sponsored by Coca-Cola. Official beverage of the Leonard Part 6 review. This is one of several times that Coke is prominently featured. All the product placement is prominently featured and usually doesn’t make any sense. Why would there be a giant fridge full of Coke in a restaurant kitchen? Then again, this whole kitchen scene has bullets flying everywhere, but the cooks just go about their business. I mean even when it’s machine gun fire.
But at least those bullets hit olive oil into pans just when it’s needed for the cooking. Oh, and Star Brand olive oil. Official olive oil of the Leonard Part 6 review.
Beware the cats! And the squirrels. And the rabbits. If you live in Sacramento, then watch out for the “caterpillars on the march”. Folks in Piedmont, you need to watch out for the possums. They are “awaiting orders”. Oh, and remember, according to Leonard Part 6, if Oregon falls, then that means all hope is lost.
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you. Those are frogs lifting a car to toss it in some water. I guess that’s why Ray Milland didn’t leave in Frogs (1972). He knew they would stop him. Sadly, that’s really the only shot where you see the frogs. The subsequent shots don’t have the frogs, but the car is still lifted and tossed in the water anyways.
Jane Fonda workout videos. Official workout videos of the Leonard Part 6 review. Fonda speaks to him personally through the TV as he works out.
I’m really glad they never explained what this anteater was trained to do. It’s bad enough I’m aware of E.T. and Sasquatch porn.
Johnson’s Baby Powder. Official baby powder of the Leonard Part 6 review. Also, massive amounts of alcohol work for watching Leonard Part 6 just as well as they did for this bullet removal scene.
I can handle this movie making fun of movies like Night Of The Lepus and Frogs, but if I want bee fighting it better be William Smith from Invasion Of The Bee Girls (1973)! Accept no substitute!
Lava soap. Official soap of the Leonard Part 6 review. This is probably the weirdest piece of product placement in the movie. There’s just this huge mound of Lava soap backstage at this theater. They show it several times, and not once does Vincent Vega show up to wash his hands.
A bunny to the throat! Monty Python did it better.
Safeway. Official grocery store of the Leonard Part 6 review. This is where Tom Courtenay buys some dishwashing soap to help take down the bad guys.
And of course he buys Palmolive! Official dishwashing soap of the Leonard Part 6 review. It later turns out that dishwashing soap does nothing. It’s just there so you see it’s Palmolive.
As someone with one testicle, this disturbs me. Also, this shot follows shortly after he is holding a hot dog wiener.
Action Max. The official video game console of the Leonard Part 6 review. I love that a couple of kids are just playing this in the back of a van as it does the requisite flying over the top of San Francisco streets shots.
You see this is the brilliance of Leonard Part 6 here. Only here will you see the Goldfinger (1964) laser to the crotch scene if it were done by angry lobsters who just watched Annie Hall (1977).
This is probably something I’m going to have to vote on during the next election. Seriously, living in California, I’ve had to vote on propositions to split it up like this.
Ah, we now know what really happened to that guy in Scanners (1981). He was a vegetarian who ate some meat. Seriously, Cosby threatens this guy with a sausage, the guy takes a bite, and his head explodes. Also, he throws beef at the attacking vegetarians and it burns them.
Alka-Seltzer. Official antacid of the Leonard Part 6 review. Leonard uses it to toss in some vats that then destroy the evil vegetarian’s lair.
Swap out Cosby for the audience, the food for feces, and you probably have the experience of seeing Leonard Part 6 when it came out.
Now if you’ll excuse me, there are a lot of turkeys where I live and they are obviously going to try and kill me in my sleep. I need to get them first.
Unfortunately, there is no cowbell in this movie. Okay, this one is about a lady named Gwen Green (Andrea Roth). She works as an assistant editor. Delta Burke plays Dahlia Marchand who writes romance novels, but is going to pen an autobiography. Turning down more experienced editors, she picks Green to be her editor as soon as she sees her. I honestly had to watch this twice because the first time around I missed a few things so I was rather confused as to what Burke’s obsession with this woman was. Honestly, I thought she was a lesbian for a minute there and this shot near the end of the movie didn’t help.
The movie begins with one of Green’s friends getting married. Then her friend catches the bridal fever and becomes obsessed with getting married. She drags Green into her nuttiness. So we go speed blind dating. I have seen this scene done in numerous movies, but I think it’s the first time I’ve seen this in one of these montages.
Didn’t work for me no matter how much of a resemblance he might bare to Jeffrey Combs. Green doesn’t find her man here. Instead, she is passing by a bookstore and decides to go in and replace the window display with books by Dahlia Marchand. Sadly, this didn’t feel contrived because I can remember my Dad buying things from his business clients to support them. It doesn’t surprise me that now since she is editing one of Marchand’s books, she would do this. Of course a little slip and fall in the store, and she meets the guy she will end up with. He works at the store.
Sorry, I really didn’t mean to catch him with his “you’re gonna die now” look on his face. The rest of the film plays out like this. Marchand is going to launch her book at his store. Marchand oddly avoids the store. Green works with this guy getting closer and closer. Since her friend has poisoned Green’s mind and since the guy didn’t propose to her on the spot, she gets engaged to the wrong guy. Then we find out that Marchand picked her because she wanted someone who wouldn’t do their job and thus wouldn’t ask her about gaps in her biography. The big gap being her years working at that bookstore. Turns out it’s the guy’s uncle who owns the store that once had a thing with her. It wraps up like you think.
This was okay. Very cliched and it’s one of those ones I like to say sleepwalks through the formulaic plot, but the actors were likable enough, including Delta Burke. I did like that they borrowed the comparing scars scene from Lethal Weapon 3.
You can do worse, but you can also do better.
Audrey’s Rain (2003) – Where the hell did this Hallmark movie come from? It’s got cursing, people who act like real people (kids included), suicide, a mentally challenged or at least mentally cracked in some fashion character, sexual references, direct reference to breasts as “buzzards”, making out, use of the word horny, the kid tries to say Audrey’s sandwiches taste like shit, fart jokes, a fart joke directed at a reverend who just asked Audrey to consider returning to the church, and more.
Seriously, is this the kind of movie Hallmark initially made? Cause this is a far far far cry from the kind of stuff they make today and have for many years. I actually thought I was watching a real movie here. The only things I saw in common with other Hallmark movies were that Larry Levinson was involved. Well, I guess I should talk a little bit about it.
It starts off with Audrey (Jean Smart) trying to blow away a rodent with a rifle. Yay! That scene is the one time this film censors itself. Despite the word “bastard” showing up in the close captioning, the sound falls silent on that word. Funny they did that considering this follows shortly afterwards.
Sure, the sister got her hand on his mouth before he got the full word out, but still. I’ve seen Hallmark censor the word “butt”.
So, you’ve got Audrey, two kids from a sister who killed herself, and another sister who has mental issues. I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to be mentally challenged, but I don’t remember there being enough details to tell you any more than that. And that’s where this film’s real issue is. While you really don’t care too much about this sister, the film does feel like it jumps over sections that were once there or should be there telling us more.
A man from Audrey’s past gets close to her and they do end up together. There’s a quirky friend. There are flashbacks. The kids have problems with the memories of their dead mother. There’s a pretty gut wrenching scene where we think the little girl might have hung herself like her mom did. It all works quite well, but it feels like it should have been a mini-series rather than just a movie. Maybe it was, and then was edited down.
At the end of the day, if you like Hallmark, see it. It’s like no other Hallmark movie out of the 106 I’ve seen so far. Just know that it will feel like it was chopped up.
Love On The Air (2015) – I kind of felt bad watching this when it premiered cause some guy who claimed to have worked on the film tweeted me twice saying he was glad I was enjoying it. I felt bad because the majority of my tweets were complaints about the movie. I don’t think I even mentioned the problems with the actors. Oh, well.
Love On The Air begins with our two leads doing their radio shows on the same network. I don’t remember what the name of their shows were, if they had any, but a modern equivalent would be tweets with #NotAllMen attached for hers and #YesAllWomen for his. It’s that kind of stuff being slung at the beginning of this movie. The largely writing off the other gender based on bad experiences thing. Only it’s far tamer than the stuff you hear online and not as complex. Thank goodness. But it does have that isolationist/separatist rhetoric to it that people cry foul over when it’s skin color, but not as much with gender. She even says “be an island”. I honestly could have done without this as the setup seeing as it’s stuff like this that makes places like Twitter depressing, but that’s the setup.
Our leading lady is Sonia (Alison Sweeney). Our leading man is Nick (Jonathan Scarfe). The two of them end up going at it on the air for a few minutes and that leads to them doing it on a regular basis. You can guess where this goes.
A day for night shot, along with shots that were under lit or shot on cloudy days.
Odd choices of things to focus on or I swear at times the camera just going out of focus.
This blinding light that keeps shining at you during this scene.
And random obstructions in front of the camera for reasons beyond me.
What? You thought they were going to fall in love? Well, that happens too, which is another problem. They have both been burned by certain experiences in their past. Problem is, I think they needed to even out the two of them out a little more. He is noticeably easier to get along with than she is. I know it makes for a little more of a traditional romance of him winning her over, but it would have been nice for them to have dialed down Sonia a little bit. I also know that it begins with her engagement being called off so she’s fresh off a recent bad experience, but I still wanted them to be on more even ground.
However, if you can get past the odd cinematography and the characters starting out on uneven footing, I know I sure didn’t feel they had any chemistry together. Scarfe is kind of warm and a little likable. Sweeney not as much. I understand how spending time with each other reminds them that no matter how many or intensity of experiences you have with a section of the population, you can’t right the whole lot off. However, I didn’t really buy that they should end up together as anything but good friends who do a show together.
I guess this is the kind I say won’t kill ya!
A little personal side note. I think I have mentioned it before, but Sweeney also does a series called Murder, She Baked on Hallmark. I wish that had her killing people with her cooking. She really comes across to me as someone who could play a villain well. I never saw her on Days Of Our Lives so maybe she did there.
All Of My Heart (2015) – This is another one of those Hallmark movies that borrows a screwball plot that you’d find in the 1940’s. It begins with Jenny Fintley (Lacey Chabert) and Brian Howell (Brennan Elliott), I kid you not, each inheriting half of the same house in the country. Being a cook, she sees it as business opportunity to open a bed and breakfast. Being a stockbroker, he sees it as an asset that needs to be liquidated. Hilarity ensues? Not really. This isn’t like Growing The Big One, which is a Hallmark movie and not one of those late night cable movies I’ve reviewed. I still don’t know how Hallmark lucked out on that name.
It’s just them falling in love by spending time with each other. She’s there cause she wants to open a business. He gets stranded there after his job slips out from underneath him. Oddly, the film teases that it’s going to do something humorous like Funny Farm (1988), but doesn’t follow through.
That’s Ed Asner who you probably know as the guy who shoots people in the back on Hawaii Five-O. The other guy is Daniel Cudmore who is probably best known as Jaffa #1 from the Homecoming episode of Stargate SG-1. Asner sits on the bench in front of the General Store and makes humorous comments as well as some important ones at the end of the movie. Cudmore is the colossus who runs the store and is the local plumber. They are both funny in this movie. I wanted more quirky characters. Sure, hoping for the crazy mailman from Funny Farm would be asking too much, but I could have done with more of these two. I would have preferred Chabert and Elliott coming together dealing with the odd, but lovable town rather than just coming together because it’s Hallmark.
My only other complaint has to do with Lacey Chabert. I didn’t watch Party Of Five back when I was kid and have very limited exposure to her work. Largely just Hallmark, but I really want more personality out of her here. Along with looking like she’s wearing more makeup then I care for, she seems to act like she is a kid who just entered her first planetarium. He has some more personality, but I really wanted something like what Shannen Doherty and Kavan Smith had in Growing The Big One.
So, which one of these does this poor dog from one of the commercials on Hallmark say you should see? Audrey’s Rain. Despite it’s problems, it’s so different. If you like Hallmark, you should see it. I’m a little biased though, cause I like Jean Smart.
Yay! I’ve cracked 100 of these Hallmark movies now and with this post I will have reviewed 96 of them. Oh, yeah! There’s more of them.
Healing Hands (2010) – When I read the plot summary for this I thought of the movie Powder (1995). That’s reaching back to my childhood there. Then I thought of the hilarious Mad TV sketch where the Terminator is sent back to protect Jesus. In particular, when Jesus keeps resurrecting Judas because he is supposed to betray him.
Sadly, that sketch is better made and has more interesting things to say then this movie. It really is amazing the difference in quality between Hallmark movies. Same thing can be said about late night cable movies. As the title suggests, this movie is about someone who has “healing hands”. It’s about a guy named Buddy (Eddie Cibrian). Buddy works as a janitor. One day Buddy is on a roof with his friend. Buddy’s friend hurts his finger, but is stubborn about putting a bandaid on it. Buddy finally convinces him to, but then Buddy falls off the roof.
Now Buddy is in the hospital and apparently his temperature is 105, which a nurse says is the highest a body can survive. While that doesn’t sound right to me, what happens next certainly isn’t right. If this were ER they would probably try inducing hypothermia. In Healing Hands, Buddy is put in water. Not ice, but water. I’m sure it’s meant to remind us of baptism, but it looks like they’re not even trying to save Buddy. Luckily, Buddy recovers anyways, but not without a really odd musical choice first. During the fever, we get a flashback, but at this point we really have only seen Buddy and his now fiancee, since Buddy did propose, for only a few minutes. So it only has like two scenes to show because that’s all of the movie so far. During this part, it plays what sounds like Quiet Storm jazz. It’s a strange choice of music to play.
Well, now Buddy has “healing hands”. It takes him a little bit of time to figure it out, but after he heals this…
with just his touch, Buddy knows something is up. We can also see that it is taking a lot out of Buddy doing it. I usually don’t care, but I don’t really want to spoil the surprise. I’ll just say that Buddy is adopted and that comes in to play. Of course, the news and the townfolk eventually catch on to Buddy and his miracle hands. It’s about Buddy trying to help, while the world either wants to treat Buddy as a freak of nature or just a tool, rather than a person. That’s giving it a lot of credit.
This whole movie just feels like amateur hour in every way. I don’t know of any other way to describe it. It’s like a high school production of a play called Healing Hands that a student wrote. Something like Highlander or Heroes did more with this kind of material. The movie barely does anything with it, which is a shame cause it’s not a concept doomed from the start. Too bad.
Oh, and notice the number of times I called him by his name? The movie does it even more. It kind of sucks the seriousness out of the whole thing when people keep saying Buddy over and over again.
Freshman Father (2010) – Ah, college. Six yeas of education at a junior college, then three years of suicidal inducing hoop jumping at Cal. But at least I passed first semester calculus on my first attempt. Cause apparently, when you go to Harvard at 18, married, and with a baby, the hardest thing will be passing first semester calculus. No joke, this movie inspired by John Wand, a guy who actually did go to Harvard with a wife and baby in tow, makes almost the entire movie about him passing first semester calculus. It’s kind of a disgrace to John Wand. Especially when they were even to lazy to copy some actual Calculus problems from a text book, but instead we get this.
You see part d! It says find and simply f(0) when f(x) = (x+1)(2x+1)(3x+1)(4x+1)(5x+1). In other words 1*1*1*1*1 = 1. Also, c which says here’s a function, don’t take the derivative of it, but just write it again. This after a question that spells out exactly what the subscript on the function means. And look at the rest of that test. I see no summations anywhere. Those are just derivatives. The test layout doesn’t makes sense. None of it makes sense. If they couldn’t even get that right, then wow!
Before we lay more stuff to bare, let me tell you the setup. It begins at senior prom where we meet John Patton (Drew Seeley) and the future Kathy Patton (Britt Irvin). Notice they didn’t use John Wand’s actual name nor do they say it’s based on, but only inspired by a true story. Of course she gets pregnant and they get married. After her mom tells her the key to marriage is a “happy boss”, it’s off to Harvard on a full scholarship to the nicest apartment ever for a student on scholarship, married, with a kid, going to a very expensive school.
Yeah, in what world does this movie take place? In a world where this is Calculus 101. On the first day if I’m not mistaken.
I love when she brings home a fan and he says they can’t afford it. Sure, because it’s the fan that doesn’t make financial sense here. None of this would matter if the whole film wasn’t about this kid overcoming the very things that are totally misrepresented. And it never gets better. The only thing I can say in it’s defense is that it does get across that the kid cares about his child. However, I would bet John Wand has a few choice words for how they present his ex-wife. She barely exists except to complain about how the baby doesn’t seem to like her, confess she got herself pregnant, then she just abandons the baby with him. You thought they would explain how she got herself pregnant? Of course not! That would possibly make John Patton seem like an idiot for not wearing a condom. And no, I don’t think she poked holes in a condom she gave to him like in the movie Your Sister’s Sister (2011).
Oh, and this is another one of those Hallmark movies that censors itself. The two of them are at a theater when she starts having contractions. She curses and the movie bleeps it. This is one of several Hallmark movies that censor words as innocent as “butt”. Sometimes inconsistently like in The Last Cowboy. If they can’t air it that way, then why is it shot that way? There must be something to the process of making these movies I’m not aware of or there is that much of a disconnect between the producers and the network.
He keeps trying to do the herculean task of passing first semester calculus, which seems like it takes him several semesters. The timeline in this movie isn’t exactly clear. It must go more than one semester though because we see he celebrates Halloween and appears to be at a Christmas party with his calculus professor. Also, I believe she has the baby during the holiday break.
Yeah, we meet two of his professors and they are remarkably kind to him. That part isn’t misrepresented. I did encounter several professors who were very nice and personable people when I went Cal. I can even say that’s it’s not unheard of for a professor to give you a passing grade when you should fail because it isn’t important that you actually passed. That happened to me. Granted there were health circumstances involved, but you get the point.
Which reminds me, my upper division computer science courses still had way more students in them then his first semester calculus class. The only time I saw classes that small were labs and discussion sections. Those two things are also oddly missing from this movie. It makes it seem like it’s just you, the professor, and the material. I doubt things were that different 7 years before I went to a four year college. This movie takes place in 2000.
There’s also this ridiculous back and forth with the dean as if she is there anytime you need to talk to her. Granted he is a rather unique student that she would be aware of, but it comes across as pretty ridiculous. Especially when he says to her that he thinks she got her PhD in 5 years, but she corrects him and says 6. Really? 6 years? Seriously? That’s pretty quick to get a PhD in physics. A simple Google search says 8.2 years. I mean it takes 4 just to get a bachelors, how is possible to get two degrees higher with only two more years? Makes no sense.
None of this makes any sense. It guts, flattens, and trivializes what this guy did in real life. At least they didn’t show some footage of the real John Wand at the end like The Blind Side (2009) did just to make sure we knew how much they screwed up. Don’t put yourself through this.
Portrait Of Love (2015) – And don’t put yourself through this either. Although this is just boring rather than almost offensive. This is just absolutely paint by numbers Hallmark. Just like the movie Chance At Romance is. A woman who is a successful fashion photographer is offered a job in Paris. Take a minute and see if you can guess what happens next?
Did you think she goes back to the small town she came from because of a flimsy excuse by the writers so she can reconnect with an old flame? Of course you’re right. I really wonder how many of these Hallmark movies are the exact same movie.
Oh, and how small of a town?
So small it’s just called Bank. How hard is it to just come up with a fake name for things like this? I’ve seen them do it in other Hallmark movies. In Second Chances they needed an author for a book so they took one of the screenwriter’s names that worked with the producer Larry Levinson and just dropped the ‘c’ in Rachel to get Rahel Stuhler.
See! It’s not that difficult.
When she arrives it turns out there is an art contest going on and all you need to know is that he has a daughter who helps to push them back together. You know how it plays out. There is a little bit of nice genuine emotion near the end that the film does deserve credit for. However, the rest feels like it was made by zombies with their aspiring acting zombie friends. There’s a continuity error at one point and this horrible go to out of focus transition that is used at least twice.
And it’s not short either. It hurts the eyes. Also, the same director who did this uninspired film did the uninspired Just The Way You Are. I’m almost 100% positive that he even uses this exact same shot in that movie as he does in this movie.
I’m beginning to feel for the directors of these movies. They must be handed some awful scripts, shoestring budgets, and very little time in order to make these movies. I refuse to believe that these same directors would make these kind of stupid mistakes or take such generic stuff if they had any choice in the matter.
Won’t kill ya, but it may put you to sleep.
A Kiss At Midnight (2008) – Thank goodness I watched this film for this batch of Hallmark movies cause it’s actually enjoyable. No, not because it’s script is any less generic. No, not because they get computer screens correct. It’s because of the actors young, middle aged, and old. The kids do a good job. Faith Ford is funny. Hal Linden of Barney Miller is in this and is a welcome presence. Even if he does make a sexist joke that is meant to be sexist, but is oddly out of place. But most importantly, it has the Got Milk? guy.
Just like the games Truxton and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are running jokes on Classic Game Room and AVGN respectively, I take every opportunity to reference Tammy And The T-Rex, in which he gets killed in by a T-Rex with Paul Walker’s brain in it.
But back to this movie. The plot is that the boy and girl run competing dating websites. The girl, played by Faith Ford, signs up on the guy’s site to bring back information that his computer dating site doesn’t work. Of course, the guy has two little girls who get involved to ultimately bring them together. Also, Faith Ford’s mom and Hal Linden get married as a little subplot. It’s all just well acted and pleasant enough to be an enjoyable, all be it forgettable, hour and a half or so. I think that’s all anyone asks of a Hallmark movie. It’s just remarkable how illusive that can be at times.
This one did have computer screen screw ups or at least stupid attempts to make generic versions of Google.
Clearly, GMail is dead and we should all be using Toogle Mail. Also, notice that it looks like you are seeing a screenshot of a browser being looked at within a browser.
Of course Toogle is also a search engine.
The religion listed in this dating profile is “Spiritual”. They didn’t have a problem showing a dating profile saying a person was a Christian earlier, but then there are two of them listed as “Spiritual”. I’m guessing those people are Satanists and don’t want to scare away potential sacrifices. At least that seems to have been the logic that went into the video Katy Perry, the Super Bowl and Satan based on the quote in it’s description.
Out of the four here. This is the one to go with. It’s a good time.
Lead With Your Heart (2015) – At this point, I have seen 98 Hallmark movies. I think this is the best one I have ever seen. Honestly, there isn’t a whole lot to say either. The movie is about a couple played by Billy Baldwin and Kari Matchett. Their children are leaving for college and she gets a temporary job out of town. As a result, the two spend more time apart then they probably have in close to 20 years or more. What follows is just a nice little story about how they adapt to their situation. It doesn’t go the easy way and have one of them cheat, or almost cheat, then reconcile. That’s what you would expect. That’s not to say that some people don’t show interest in them, but instead of being a true temptation, it acts as a signal to them about how they need to change to keep their relationship together into this new territory. I especially liked the ending because it involved real compromise and not some fairy tale giving up success for something humble.
You have no idea how refreshing this was to see. Especially considering Hallmark then aired a movie called Just The Way You Are, which I will talk about, that is basically the same, except terrible.
For a Hallmark movie, I can’t recommend it enough.
Family Plan (2005) – This is more of the standard middle of the road Hallmark movie based off of a plot device that would have made for a screwball comedy in the 1940’s. In this case, Tori Spelling’s company is taken over and for no other purpose then to give this movie a reason to exist, she is advised to pretend she is married. Seriously, this other lady gives her a ring, she puts it on, then she can’t get it off. So, she has to pretend to her boss that she’s married. She hires an actor to play her husband. She also picks up a daughter from her friend. You know how the rest goes.
This kind of movie sinks or swims on the charm of the actors involved. They are no Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, or Katharine Hepburn, but they work well enough. Spelling has never been a great actress, but she does a certain kind of part well and this is one of them. The other actors are in the same boat.
It does get a little boring because it’s so by the book, but that just means it’s a little below average. Like I’ve said before, it won’t kill ya.
One funny goof. In the credits, they forgot to capitalize this guy’s last name.
Just The Way You Are (2015) – This movie on the other hand can kill you. It will make you beg for another Aurora Teagarden mystery movie where you can just watch Candace Cameron Bure run around like she’s high on cocaine. Also, you won’t be able to listen to Billy Joel’s Just The Way You Are for awhile. At least there’s still She’s Got A Way!
It’s basically the same thing as Lead With Your Heart. It even used a licensed song like Lead With Your Heart did. In this case, it’s the original. In Lead With Your Heart, it was a cover of Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong. A couple a ways into their marriage are getting stale in their relationship. Unfortunately, Candace Cameron Bure’s character works for a matchmaking company that uses stupid rules for making relationships work. Yep, it’s one of those movies.
Bure’s idea is for her and her husband to start blind dating while following the rules. It’s all a bunch of boring and stupid nonsense. I remember when that book The Rules came out in the 90’s. Why are we still doing this stuff 20 years later? It’s always the same thing. Yes, statistically certain things show up as significant, but of course following them blindly won’t work. Human beings are far more complex than any set of rules you can attempt to derive through study of them. This isn’t news, and we don’t need yet another movie to remind us of this fact.
Don’t watch this one.
Perfect On Paper (2014) – I usually save the computer screen goofs for the end of the review, but I think this time they belong at the beginning.
Near the start of the movie, they do a decent job of faking a site called SomebodyDateMe.com.
But later in the movie, they show a horribly faked website for a fictional school called The Horrock’s School.
Look at that thing! First, no school would have a webpage that looks like that in 2014. Second, notice the URL is a local file. Third, notice the specific HTML document they are looking at is called “donovan2.html”. Finally, notice that the URL clearly shows they did, or tried, to setup an XAMPP LAMP stack, then either couldn’t figure it out, or just didn’t run it for some reason.
The whole movie is kind of like that. It feels slapped together. It’s about a book editor who is offered a glamorous position in Los Angeles. The whole thing is about her friends trying to reshape her into an LA power girl stereotype to keep their major client played by Morgan Fairchild. Of course, it’s Hallmark, so there’s also a guy.
See that little bit of grey peeking out from behind that bush? That’s the guy. She throws the coffee over her shoulder and hits him. If you don’t pay close attention, then you won’t see what looks like shears drop from his hand and it’s not mentioned. In other words, you’ll likely think this guy was just behind that bush for no reason except to have coffee land on him and meet her.
He’s the opposite of the “Perfect On Paper” guy that her friends want her to be with for her job. Of course, she was never the glamorous type to begin with. Here, I have to give them some credit because they went with a girl who honestly isn’t glamorous. She’s not especially attractive. That was really nice to see and it fit her character.
You know how it all works out. The only thing to mention is that since they want you to clearly see the difference between the main character and the other girls, questionable trendy clothes show up. I hope they burned this thing after they shot the movie.
This one is definitely below average. Like I said, it feels slapped together, people kind of stumble through it, and you just want it over with.
A Stranger’s Heart (2007) – This is a movie A, movie B, type film. Movie A is about being in a hospital morbidly awaiting someone to die, but have a heart left over for you to receive via a transplant. Movie B is about how all those things we ascribe to our heart in metaphor are literally transferred by what the film calls “cell memory”. Movie A works. Movie B is honestly a little creepy.
The movie begins by introducing our leading lady as a child. This part is kind of unintentionally funny. I know why we need to kill off her mom, but did it need to happen by her stupidly wandering onto a street while singing Oh, Susannah? Then we learn that the little girl had heart problems and then suddenly we’re in the present with her grown up in the hospital. Like I said before, this part works. She is in there with several people including the guy she ends up with. The movie does a good job of getting across trying to find humor in that kind of a situation while waiting for something horrible to happen to somebody else in order to save your life.
Then movie B kicks in. She gets a heart, her female friend gets a heart, and her future boyfriend gets a heart. The female friend starts craving something she hadn’t drank since she was little. Then a little later in the film she goes and meets the family whose daughter’s heart she now has. She comes back complaining that the family basically didn’t see her as their daughter reincarnated. That’s where this film switches from your biological structure changing to a literal transference of high level thoughts and feelings via the heart.
It turns out our boy and girl both received their hearts from a couple who died in a car crash leaving behind their daughter. Then the two of them basically start stalking the little girl who is now without her parents. It’s kind of well meaning, but it is creepy because the movie does want you to believe they have somehow received the love her parents had for her through a heart transplant complete with dreams about the little girl. And yes, it carries this idea all the way through to having the little girl with them as essentially new parents carrying their old parents within them as if the heart is like a symbiotic creature we carry within us.
This movie is a mixed bag, but since it is a Larry Levinson Production, that does mean computer screen screw ups.
If you can, read that fake webpage. It’s like reading someone’s template rather than an actual post. Also, look at the bottom left hand corner. They took a screenshot of a Windows XP machine and have her looking at it on a Mac.
The Confession (2007) – This movie is a standard you’ve seen it a million times before soap opera type plot. You have a rich lady who gave up her daughter for adoption a long time ago and is fading health wise. You have her husband who is a gambling addict that wants to inherit her money, but has just been cut out of the will because of his addiction. He runs into an aspiring actress and hires her to play the long lost daughter so he can get the estate through her. The actual daughter turns up a little late and gets taken in as a servant. You know how the rest plays out.
The only difference here is the girl is Amish. That’s it. This is the second in what is either going to be a trilogy with the upcoming film The Reckoning or an ongoing saga. There is enough open ended stuff attached to this movie to warrant another film.
There are two actors you’ll recognize here. Sherry Stringfield from ER is the rich lady and Adrian Paul from Highlander is the husband. I thought they did a good job. The only real problem I had was with the Amish girl who is played by Katie Leclerc. She tries to do a Pennsylvania Dutch accent and it doesn’t work. She’s Texan born and raised in Colorado. Also, it doesn’t help that the actress in the movie fakes a Pennsylvania Dutch accent, thus making us notice Leclerc’s fake accent even more. That is, when she’s actually doing it. When Leclerc gets hired as a servant she magically switches to an American accent. I get why she needs to do it, but people don’t naturally have that ability. I haven’t seen the first film called The Shunning (2011) where the same character was played by Danielle Panabaker, so I can’t speak to whether she was any better at pulling off the accent.
If you don’t let the accent part bother you, then this is fine little soap opera. I am curious how they are going to reconcile her suddenly being in the money with her Amish past since they don’t do it here.
Oh, and no, it doesn’t end with Leclerc chopping off the fake Amish girl’s head because there can be only one. Adrian Paul also keeps his head.
Be My Valentine (2013) – Since Hallmark just aired a new movie called Lead With Your Heart (2015) with Billy Baldwin, they played this one that also has Billy in it. The movie begins with Kate Burlingham (Natalie Brown) who is about to watch Alec Baldwin in It’s Complicated (2009), when Billy climbs in through her window and rescues her. Just kidding. Her flower store is in a fire and Dan Farrell, played by Billy Baldwin, is the head firefighter. Of course the two are going to come together during the upcoming Valentine’s Day.
Just like Second Chances (2013), while the adults are supposed to be the feature presentation, it’s the child actors that are the most enjoyable part. In this case, it’s Baldwin’s kid and a girl named Rebecca. I don’t know why the adult romance had to be here at all. The story of the two kids is far more interesting and I think Baldwin does a good job as the dad trying to guide his son through young love. It’s also where one of this films funniest parts comes from. When he first meets Rebecca, she is reading a book. He asks her if she plays the games too because apparently, the books don’t make sense if you don’t play the games as well. She says she plays the game on her phone, notebook, and computer. But then he says a version just came out on “the cloud”. He says it’s “majorly interactive” to which she responds “I’m so going to hook into that.” What I want to know is if I can play Teddy Boy on “the cloud”.
Or, since this is a Hallmark movie, will my Bible games play on “the cloud”?
It’s stupid questions like this that come to mind when the characters say stupid things because the writers wanted to sound hip. Or maybe that’s just how Canadian kids actually talk. Oddly, while that part of trying to make the kids sound like kids, they get something else almost right on button. Baldwin suggests that instead of brining Rebecca flowers or chocolate, he get more creative and make a mixed tape. After a little confusion for the kid, he figures out that he can make a DVD composed of videos (I think music ones) for her. That’s kind of a reasonable update of the classic mixed tape. Kudos on that one.
This is one of those films that is shot in Canada, but Baldwin walks around with an American flag on his uniform so it’s totally the United States.
It’s fine and enjoyable. It’s a little out of the blue when an old boyfriend shows up to sort of disrupt things a little, but he goes as quickly as he came.
Chance At Romance (2013) – This one is a real skipper. It doesn’t get much more generic and forced for a Hallmark romance movie, then this one.
It’s about a girl named Samantha Hart (Erin Krakow) who wanders into a photo gallery showing. Heath Madsen (Ryan McPartlin) is the photographer. She likes his work so she goes to his website to look at some of his photos. In this movie he’s a pioneer of HDR photography. She decides to shoot him an email to tell him she likes his work. However, the email ends up in his son’s hand who proceeds to have a back and forth with her pretending to be his dad. He wants her to meet his dad. Her invites her over, something happens weather wise, and that’s how the two are forced to spend time with each other till they fall in love. This movie goes so far as to have him literally show up on a white horse at the end to take her away.
It’s really boring. There are much better Hallmark romance films out there. Go with Be My Valentine out of the four movies I mentioned here.
However, it does have one thing that is of note for someone like myself who has seen too many Hallmark movies. In three other Hallmark movies they either mention or outright have one of the actors play the Wii. In this one they have moved from pushing that Nintendo console to pushing the Wii U.
Since I want to watch and review all those animated movies that have come out in the last 5 years or so called Monster High, I thought I needed to watch this. Dear God, I hope they have nothing to do with each other. So let’s talk about this Monster High that is totally not supposed to resemble Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986) in anyway.
It begins by giving us a warning:
“WARNING
Some scenes may be considered objectionable by sensitive viewers, dead people and farm animals. On the other hand, if you like that sort of thing…”
I’ve sat through Salo, among other things, so I wouldn’t say I’m a sensitive viewer. I’m dead inside, but I don’t think that counts. I’m definitely not a farm animal even though I guess I can be milked. That’s the kind of jokes to expect in this movie. It’s 80’s lowbrow shlock. So what’s next movie?
“Picture in your mind the farthest point in the universe. Our story begins just a couple of blocks past that.”
This is a lot of build up for a movie that’s just a series of bad jokes with monsters in a high school. Now we are introduced to a guy with the longest name and title I think I have ever seen in a movie.
He notices that for some reason the destruction of Earth has been postponed. Apparently, Mr. Armageddon is to blame. So the Monster In Charge orders a report on the last 24 hrs of Mr. Armageddon’s existence. Why? I can only guess because they thought the movie wasn’t annoying enough without one, so we need a narrator. The Monster In Charge puts a CD that looks like a GameCube disc into his computer and starts to watch the video report. We meet Dume and Glume who have stolen the “ultimate weapon”. Unfortunately, they don’t get far. The box drops on and kills a dog (Shicksah Anne Spear) in front of a high school.
And yes, that is the actual name of the dog in real life. I love when a movie credits something that isn’t human so it ends up in IMDb as an actor. The dog is just continuing in the fine tradition of it’s predecessor’s such as the chicken named Friendly in Supercock (1975).
The doomsday weapon turns out to be a basketball. This happens at exactly the same time when Mr. Armageddon is woken up by his alarm clock. Oh, and if you think that means there is going to be a 25 minute long sequence where the kids play basketball with Mr. Armageddon and some monsters for the fate of the world, then you’re sadly correct.
Yeah, that clock is probably the only actual funny thing in the movie. So, of course Mr. Armageddon comes to the school and puts Dume and Glume on ice. Then he goes over to a statue and turns it into a “horny rubber monster”. Think that’s the only condom joke in this movie? Of course not!
Now the mayhem begins. Mr. Armageddon has some weird priorities in who he kills. First he offs one of the Cheerleaders/Pep Club members, which makes sense for a horror movie. But before he gets to the second one, he finds Todd Uppington Smythe AKA Dickhead to his friends and uses a “Can O’ Condom” on him.
But he gets it off and I guess he’s the one who becomes a zombie as a result? I’m not sure. Then another cheerleader dies. Well, now Mr. Armageddon needs to get some allies. Oh, and Dume and Glume woke up during this time. He makes a mummy come alive. He creates a monster with a computer monitor for a head. He starts growing a killer weed. And since it’s random in the movie, there’s this guy who keeps appearing to wake up from a nightmare, but it’s just reality again.
Need another low brow joke? Now we are informed by our useless narrator that Dume and Glume’s ineptness can be illustrated by the fact that they were once a “third-rate song-and-dance act.” Let’s hear those lyrics!
“You got your penis and your prostate and your ovaries.
You got your fimbriae and your scrotum sac.
And if your hymen is gone it ain’t coming back.”
Truly the Lennon and McCartney of their world. Wait, why am I describing this garbage? Here’s the highlights.
The monster that comes out of a guy’s shoe after that’s all that is left of him.
The advanced sex ed classroom. No joke, that’s what they call it.
Because this was 1989. Do I have to spell out what this is from?
When you do weed. A literal giant weed will come and drag you away.
Now the surviving kids strike a deal with Mr. Armageddon to play a game of basketball to postpone the destruction of Earth by 1,000 years. Yeah, it’s as dumb as you think it is.
Pretty sad looking team, huh? Not as sad as their cheering section.
Mr. Armageddon is winning the game because his computer player is an excellent shot. So the kids figure out a way to reprogram him. To do that, they need to fight a zombie. Once that’s done, the humans win the game. Oh, but only after a scene of the winning shot where the ball dances around the rim. This must go on for a minute and a half or more. it’s really stupid.
Then Mr. Armageddon and the monsters are sent away. That’s it! That’s really it. It’s basically a poor man’s version of Class of Nuke ‘Em High. A bevy of sex jokes with some actual bare breasts. Poor attempts to make fun of movie cliches. In particular, making fun of horror movies. I like a good piece of 80’s garbage as much as the next person, but this is just lousy. I can’t recommend it.
I need to learn how to keep my mouth shut. Back when I reviewed Safari 3000 (1982), I mentioned this film exists. I got it from Netflix and finally buckled down to watch it. I think I may have found the Tromaville version of The Holy Mountain.
No, not the German mountain film with Leni Riefenstahl. I mean this The Holy Mountain.
Yes, that is The Holy Mountain I’m referring to. And yes, that is The Hall Of 1,000 Testicles. But when you don’t have the budget to make something that bat shit insane and it’s the 1990’s, then maybe you end up with something like Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills. The movie begins by showing us what Beverly Hills looked like two million years ago. And wouldn’t you know it? It looks just like the movie Planet of Dinosaurs (1977).
Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills
Planet of Dinosaurs
Then we cut to modern day. But don’t worry, because the stock footage from Planet of Dinosaurs is seen again several times. That’s one of the meta jokes in this movie that the stock footage keeps getting in the way or is used as someone’s dreams. Well, two guys are doing a dig in the area when Salvador Dali shows up. No joke, that’s his name.
Salvador Dali
He does the angry native bit, but has some magic to back it up. He turns one guy into a lizard and curses the other guy’s wife to become a Pterodactyl. That wife is played by none other than Beverly D’Angelo. And boy does she just go all out in this movie. I could stop writing right now and just show a serious of screenshots of her throughout the movie. But let’s talk a little bit about it.
You young ones might not no, but back in the 1990’s, this is how we were taught about sex in the United States. That, or this is a Troma film so of course there is cock and dick humor. I’m not trying to be nasty, her husband is named Dick and they make penis jokes in this movie beyond that screenshot. In no time, D’Angelo starts acting weird.
Yeah, just go ahead and swallow that whole thing there Beverly. People won’t remember the pictures of dicks you were pointing at only a few minutes before. They’ll just think you are swallowing a fish while Dame Edna points at you.
Now D’Angelo turns into a Pterodactyl at night and acts weird the rest of the time. After a particularly hilarious sex scene where her husband screws her as a Pterodactyl because it’s a Troma film, we then see her in all her glory.
Well, there goes the neighborhood. Now the family, friends, and neighbors have to come to grips with her being a Pterodactyl. Some of the neighbors get together for a meeting and this is actually a weird scene. Not because of anything they are saying, but because it keeps cutting to the back of them for some reason. Made me think of those long lingering shots of nature in A Talking Cat!?! (2013).
And that’s not the only bizarre thing happening with the cinematography. There are frequent uses of a fish eye lens on the camera.
I’m guessing just to remind us how weird everything is. I didn’t need that to remind me I was tripping balls because shots like this did it just fine.
This movie moves pretty quick so that sex scene earlier means she’s pregnant. But before she has the kid, I’m guessing they felt the need to poke fun at David Lynch? That’s my best explanation for this strange sequence in which D’Angelo is slipped a “blue mickey”, dances around, then CGI’s into a Pterodactyl.
Once that baby comes, then the film winds down pretty quick.
The husband remembers now how all this happened and takes the family to the desert to find Salvador Dali again. This scene is loaded with stock footage, self referential jokes, lot’s of fish eye lens, and plenty of D’Angelo acting nutty. Salvador Dali even talks to the stock footage at one point calling it stock footage and telling it to go away. The Dali cures her and that’s the end.
I did leave some stuff out, but it doesn’t matter. You don’t need the play by play. It’s a bunch of stuff that is wacko. It does seem to want to have a bit of a message of acceptance. But mostly, I think it’s Troma Productions Lloyd Kaufman 101. Think up the most ludicrous, freakish, and outlandish stuff you can, figure out a way to string it together, then film it. I mean even The Battle Of Love’s Return (1971) basically followed that formula, and I believe that was Kaufman’s first Troma film. This one was done by Philippe Mora. Whereas the collection of incredibly fantastic scenes in The Holy Mountain somehow gel. In this film’s case, I think it’s a mess. I really can’t recommend sitting through this.
But I guess it was worth it for me. Gives me a good excuse to revisit The Holy Mountain.
A Wish Come True (2015) – If Pete’s Christmas (2013) is Hallmark’s Groundhog Day (1993), then A Wish Come True is kind of their Big (1988). The movie is about a girl named Lindsay Corwin (Megan Park). For a a good chunk of the beginning of this film she looks like a teenager. The opening scene may even be of her as a teenager. I’m not sure because the next thing I knew, she was about to turn 30, but looked the same. And this picture later of her supposedly at 18 sure didn’t help.
Each birthday she makes a wish, and each time it doesn’t come true. Until her thirtieth birthday, when they all come true at once. Just like Big, this catapults her far beyond where she is supposed to be at her age. Promotion, big house, etc. She even receives a toy house that I’m pretty sure Celine and Julie were once trapped in (pretentious cinema snob joke).
As is almost always the case, there is a romantic interest. The movie is one of the average ones of this sort. You really can’t spoil it because of the nature of a Hallmark movie, but I will say it doesn’t quite end like Big. Same sort of result, but a little different. This one is worth seeing. Just remember she’s actually supposed to be 30 even during the scenes where she has glasses and her hair up. Trust me!
Love By The Book (2014) – You see that picture of the girl (Leah Renee) in the poster. She doesn’t look like that in the movie. That poster makes her look like she could be believable as a smart, kind, business woman with a passion for books. This is closer to the way she looks in the movie.
Even that isn’t completely accurate. I apologize for the lack of a proper screenshot, but you’ll have to take my word for it. She’s the girl you cast for the stuck up high school cheerleading bitch. This is a David S. Cass Sr. movie and just like Class (2010), Keeping Up The Randalls (2011), and Uncorked (2009), one or two of the leads has been cast against type. In this case it’s the girl. The guy is fine in the role. Nothing amazing, but he fits. She does not. She looks like she belongs in Mean Girls (2004) with her squeaky voice and I don’t buy her being able to add, let alone run a business. Whoever keeps doing the casting for David S. Cass Sr. Hallmark movies should be fired. It isn’t fair to the actors and it ruins the movie. They aren’t good enough to play against type, so cast them appropriately so they can do their thing.
The movie itself is about a girl who owns a bookstore and has a business consultant thrust upon her by a big investor in her business. He tries to help her, she resists, she has a boyfriend who obviously doesn’t belong with her, and you know where it ends up.
It would be average, but Leah Renee is totally miscast and it nearly completely ruins the film. It’s not a total crash and burn though.
Oh, and kudos to the Art Department for bothering to setup an XAMPP LAMP stack to run their fake webpages on.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Truth Be Told (2015) – We are going really far back to my very first Hallmark movie roundup. I even received what I think is my one and only thumbs down so far. I assume because of my rather harsh review of Signed, Sealed, Delivered: From Paris With Love (2015). I try to tell you what I thought having watched it. And having watched the most recent entry in the series, I stand behind it. This is one series on Hallmark where they really need to air at least from the Christmas episode up to whatever they are currently showing before the new entry airs. This isn’t one where you can just jump in anywhere like the Aurora Teagarden or Garage Sale Mystery movie series. Hallmark really seems to be carefully trying to craft something special that is notches above their usual material. It’s not fair to you and the series to just jump in at any point. At least not without then going back and watching the earlier ones. I still have to see the pilot/first movie myself.
So, the movie itself. We once again join the Postables as they call themselves at the dead letter office of the United States Postal Service. There is a letter that has been in a fire, but clever Norman (Geoff Gustafson) knows a way to bring the ink back to life from his time in the system as a kid. I really liked this short little procedural part. It honestly made me think of Dan Aykroyd’s character in Sneakers (1992) when he tells Robert Redford how to defeat a keypad lock form an old friend who was in Desert Storm. On the other side of the conflict. They give Redford what sounds like complex instructions, but it turns out it’s just kick the door in. I would love them to have Norman do more tricks like this in the future that he has picked up from his many childhood friends. I also want more procedural elements in general. I think I would enjoy the show more from seeing them work together rather than a personal backstory revealed through an encounter with something from one of their pasts.
This one does that though. This time poor Oliver (Eric Mabius) gets a visit from his father who he has no desire to see. Let me take a moment to say, can we please both give Oliver a break, and give him a marijuana brownie or something to let him loosen up for a bit. The poor guy is wound tighter than a drum. Also, I half expect him to open up a letter and find it has anthrax in it or something else horrible happen to him in the next film. In this one, his father has a bomb to drop on him (not literally).
While Oliver confronts his past, the letter leads Norman and Rita (Crystal Lowe) into the life of a young girl who’s Mom mysteriously disappeared in Afghanistan. It turns out the letter was written by someone else, not the mother. She hires them to find out who wrote it. At present, the mother is presumed to have worked with the enemy. The “Truth Be Told” of the tile is something that Oliver didn’t know about his father and the young girl finding out the truth about her mother. Although, I think we are going to find out even more about her in the next entry in the series.
The only other thing I can think to mention is that Rita has a romance novel she is writing. Apparently, there’s a scene in it where a woman is accidentally branded. I have no reason to believe otherwise, but I think she means branded like Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat (1915) branded. I want to hear more from this novel. She certainly seems to have more of a sexual imagination than the guy who directed Bikini Spring Break (2012) and Jailbait (2014).
I think you can come in to this without having seen the prior ones, but really, if you can, record it and hold on till you see the previous ones. I think you will be doing yourself a real favor.
A Ring By Spring (2014) – This is paint by numbers Hallmark. You can tell from the title. Hell, that picture would probably have you thinking it’s offensive to women. It’s not.
The movie is about a business consultant played by Rachel Boston. She is called in to help a company that buys used college supplies, then resells them. She gets a reading that says she will have a ring by spring or she never will. Honestly, she doesn’t seem to take it very seriously, which is nice. It’s just kind of in the back of her mind. Of course, we know she is going to end up with the nice guy who runs the business rather than anyone else she might meet.
The two things that work are the ending and Boston herself. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s not a proposal. It’s a nice little, ah, I get it moment for Boston’s character followed by her ending up with the guy. While the stuff leading up to it didn’t work so great for me, the ending did.
The other thing that works is Boston’s facial expressions. I think it’s her big eyes, but she does some great shocked looks.
Seriously, the movie is worth seeing just to watch her face.
Unfortunately, this movie is one of those that screws up computer screens. And again, it’s a stupid mistake that they for some reason beyond me decide to show in a lingering closeup. In this case, Boston is talking to a guy via her iPad, but we can clearly see it’s just video playing that she is talking to. It’s only made worse when in a following scene she is shown a video and we can clearly see it looks the same as her supposed chat.
I really don’t understand why the closeup was necessary. Especially when in the same scene it’s fixed because presumedly the top of the video went away since they weren’t touching it or they touched it to make it go away. Probably they noticed it, touched it to make it go away, but didn’t reshoot the earlier scenes.
I said the ending worked for me, but the real reason is to see Boston do her looks. She does the same sort of thing in A Gift Of Miracles (2015). I forgot to include screenshots that time, but I did describe the expression on her face like she just saw Chuck Norris eat a Cadillac. I haven’t enjoyed an actor almost solely on the basis of their facial expressions since Jim Carrey.
Through the Shattered Lens 