Hallmark Review: Flower Shop Mystery: Snipped in the Bud (2016, dir. Bradley Walsh)


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Sure looks like the same place from On the Twelfth Day of Christmas and Murder, She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery. It may be the same place as in those movies, but I’m not sure. This is North Bay, Ontario you are looking, which is where the film was shot. That’s a step up here since last time they put the title card over a shot of Littleton, New Hampshire.

It looks like these Flower Shop Mystery movies are a thing now. I don’t mind. Especially not when they are written by good old Gary Goldstein. It seems you can always count on a Hallmark film written by Goldstein to have something odd in it. I would love to know if these things are in his scripts and if he does it on purpose, or if it is just a strange coincidence. Regardless, this one is no exception.

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The Chicago Cafe has still been changed to the Chicago Bar. Although, you will see Marco (Brennan Elliott) walk around the kitchen of his “bar” carrying groceries. Not sure what that was about. Art On Main has also still been changed to Bloomers Flower Shop via a tarp. It looks fine on her shop, but I don’t get why they bothered with his place. Also, if you go to Google Maps, then you’ll find a Asian character next to the word “Chicago”. I’m guessing that was photoshopped out or the place changed between July 2015 and when they made this. That’s possible seeing as it changed drastically between September 2013 and 2015 according to photos on Google Maps. I lean towards photoshopping because of a scene later, but let’s move on and talk about the movie now.

The movie begins and we get three for the price of one with this screenshot.

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First, Abby Knight (Brooke Shields) has been sent money anonymously to deliver black roses to someone. Second, Abby’s assistant Nikki Bender (Kate Drummond) was just reminded she truly works for a nutcase. Turns out Abby already compared the handwriting to signatures on old receipts. She also said she couldn’t get DNA off the envelope flap because it is self-adhesive. That is Nikki’s reaction. That was me when I saw a shot later in this film. Finally, they put the two prominent actors from Degrassi in the same cast listing. But that’s not all!

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That’s right! Someone involved with these movies realized they accidentally called it Mills College in the first film. They make sure you know they fixed it. Yes, the plot does revolve around the college, but they show that name a lot. They also have a scene where the news gets the name of the flower shop wrong and they repeatedly yell at the screen to correct them.

We find out that the black roses are for a Bruce Barnes (Daniel Kash) who happens to be the pre-law professor for Abby’s daughter Sydney (Celeste Desjardins). Abby is apparently terrified of him. We also find out that Kenny (Ricardo Hoyos), her TA, is the only thing keeping her in the class. It is pretty cool when your TA is Zig Novak from Degrassi.

Marco now comes in to remind us he still exists. Normally that would be me trying to be funny and cynical, but he seriously only gets in a couple of words before Abby is off and running to the college. Abby runs into an old lawyer friend of hers who teaches at the college. I think this screenshot sums up how much she likes him.

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They had some bad experiences in the past. Abby does bring up that up that he “dated and dumped half of [her] friends.” However, I don’t think it helps when one of your answers to that is “I showed every one of your girlfriends a great time, and I would’ve shown you the same, if you’d ever given me a chance.” So, it was all but her that he went out with rather than just half, and he would have shown all of them a “great time.” Good work, pal! No seriously, good job! You made sure no one will care when you are dead. A case they both once worked on that he won is also brought up here to give us information for the ending of the movie.

After talking with her daughter so Sydney can setup a red herring by telling us the guy getting the black roses has famous black pencils, she goes to his office. But first, we have to pass by his secretary to introduce her character and find out there is some obvious friction between her and the professor.

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He likes black pencils, is being delivered black roses, and has a black secretary. I totally didn’t spot that while watching the movie. Then we meet Bruce. She winds up calling him a “tool” to Marco, but this site isn’t Hallmark. His character is an asshole. Plain and simple. That’s all you really need to know about him. This is just another setup for Abby to become the prime suspect in the murder that is about to happen. This happens because Abby doesn’t put up with assholes. She decides to turn around outside and go right back to his office after having initially left the building.

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Actor Jeff Teravainen has part of a black pencil glued to his chest and isn’t moving. He’s dead. That’s when Abby runs out to get help and I realize just how obvious this film tried to make who the killer is so I’m skipping this part. All you need to know is that no one but Abby was in their with the body. I love how they have Brooke refer to the black roses as “theme roses.” It’s too bad he doesn’t ask what theme. This whole bit is the equivalent of an old murder mystery movie where the detective says the killer is somewhere in this room so nobody leave the house.

She returns to the shop where Marco and Abby have a little back and forth about Abby keeping a “low profile.” Then we find out that this must be the official news station of Hallmark movies…

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seeing as it’s the same one from A Christmas Detour.

A Christmas Detour (2015, dir. Ron Oliver)

A Christmas Detour (2015, dir. Ron Oliver)

Then we meet Connor McKay of the Illinois-Eagle Times.

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Pat Mastroianni can call himself whatever he wants in this movie, but he will always be…

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in my heart. By the way, between him and actor Ricardo Koyos, that means we have an actor from the first episode of Degrassi-discounting The Kids of Degrassi Street-and an actor from the most recent episode of Degrassi in the same movie together. That’s awesome! Sadly, he’s barely in the movie. Maybe he’ll be a recurring character seeing as the press is bound to keep popping up in these movies.

Now it’s time to vent to Beau Bridges, which also reminds us he exists because he’s gone as fast as Marco. This is followed by another fly over of the actual place they filmed this in. I can’t tell you how refreshing this is after that last few Hallmark movies I watched that pieced together stock footage from all over the place. Along those lines, I give them credit for this too.

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Often when a Hallmark movie shows a newspaper or an article online then they just use someone else’s writing. Sometimes they slightly modify it. The first film did it. That’s probably here as well, but they made sure to put this wrapping on it so that I wasn’t able to notice. Good work!

The detective comes in to remind us that Abby had knocked over pencils in the professor’s office earlier so that her fingerprints would be on the one that killed the guy. With his lines done, actor Paulino Nunes makes his exit. He has to get back to beating out other actors for having the highest number of acting credits in a lifetime. He’s a busy man.

Now the suspects board comes out.

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I hope you like that board because you will be looking at it and listening to a lot of conversations around it during this movie. Explaining all the info dropped at this board would be really boring. So, let’s laugh at this lady’s shocked look on her face when she sees Abby, who is now famous as a potential murderer, walking on the street.

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On the upside for Abby, business has picked up since she has become a prime suspect in a murder. People all want those black “revenge roses”. Nikki says they are “for bad occasions. Arguments, divorces, breakups, just to say ‘I hate you’.” That part is immediately followed by a scene with the detective where Brooke Shields does this after venting about the dead man, which included calling him a “womanizer”.

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After Marco and Abby talk to each other, they go on a stakeout like they did in the first movie. This time it’s of the dead guy’s funeral on the ground floor of a building with windows. Marco heads in to scope things out while Abby uses her binoculars. Joey Jeremiah stops by her car to remind us he is still in the movie before leaving again. In here Marco gets in a conversation with the dead guy’s wife so I can be proven wrong part way through writing this review. Turns out it’s “Chicago Bar and Grill”. He even calls it a restaurant. This only leaves me more confused. We can clearly see neighboring businesses have their real names. Well, they did seem to remove where it says “Lingerie & Luxuries” on Cintra May’s, which is next door to his Bar and Grill, but still. I guess they thought it would constitute official endorsement, or maybe that’s what it was called in the book. I don’t know.

We are also reminded that Barnes is a jerk to his secretary. Kenny also shows up to the funeral to again remind us he is in the movie still. I really think this movie wanted you to constantly think that it had to be one of the actors from Degrassi since they are kind of on the periphery of all the action. Heck, Joey is actually seen in the background looking in Abby’s flower shop in the dark at one point. We also learn that Kenny was real friendly with a guy who was involved in a case awhile back.

Board time!

Abby goes and talks with Kenny who mentions some internship that the dead guy supposedly secured him. He also mentions that the dead guy had just split up with a woman so that we suspect the secretary.

This is when Kelly Taylor popped up to tell me it’s time to dance.

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I will not! I looked through a bunch of episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 to find an onscreen writing credit for Gary Goldstein to include here, but failed. I’m not happy. Help me, Beau!

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Yeah, but I’m not supposed to eat ice cream anymore. However, we’ve now reached the point where you have the setup of this film. I could take you through the rest, but it would be me regurgitating their mulling over the board and getting information to add to that board by talking to people. It’s as boring as it sounds.

My final thoughts are these. They dropped the extra guy who was in the first one. That’s a plus. Another plus is that they didn’t have to do any setup so we could cut right to Marco and Abby solving a mystery. However, I swear I remember more snappy screwball comedy back and forth between them in the first film, and it just isn’t here. Luckily, we do have another one of these films coming in June. Gary seemed to try to improve between the first and second, so maybe the third one will bring in more of that kind of dialogue. Also, the board thing really gets annoying. It didn’t help to organize the facts, but seemed to just confuse me more. Maybe that was the intention. Regardless, I can’t recommend this one even if it did have Pat Mastroianni in it who I really hope will be playing a recurring character.

Now, if you want to know who did it, then scroll past this picture of another fine moment of Joey Jeremiah from Degrassi Junior High. This was back when he was probably small enough that Brooke Shields could have easily broken him in half. He’s really tiny in that first episode.

There are no songs to include this time so you can stop here.

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Okay, here you go. Kenny did it. He had worked on a case with the guy who was killed. A case Abby was on back when she worked as a lawyer. He wasn’t given the credit for his work. Kenny wanted to get away from his father. His father bribed the dead guy to not give Kenny a clerkship far away since he wanted him to take over the family business. Kenny saw an opportunity to kill the professor and blame it on Abby. He made sure to do it before the dead professor sent out any of the letters about the job. That way he could arrange to get it himself. Thus, he would escape his father.

Not too satisfying of an ending. Not too satisfying of a mystery. Not too satisfying of a movie. Skip this one.

Hallmark Review: Flower Shop Mystery: Mum’s the Word (2016, dir. Bradley Walsh)


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And look at all those American flags!!! Wow! I had no idea that North Bay, Ontario, Canada had a United States appreciation day where they take down all the Canadian flags that normally line the street to put up Old Glory. Actually, the city behind the title card is Littleton, New Hampshire, but the movie was done in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. However, they did take down the Canadian flags that normally line that city’s Main Street. Unfortunately, I don’t know the city they show just before the title card. Only so much I can do.

This time it was really easy to figure out. While they do make sure the license plates are Illinois…

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and American flags are even in the windows of motels…

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they left plenty of local business names just lying around.

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They even directly reference this coffee house and it really exists on 473 Fraser Street North Bay, Ontario.

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Figuring out Littleton, New Hampshire goes to the Hunkins & Eaton Insurance Agency, Inc. sign that just barely shows for a second before the camera pans up to the shot at the beginning of this review.

With that out of the way for now. This is Hallmark’s new mystery series. It takes place in the small town of New Chapel, Illinois, which is only about 4,000 km by car from Eden Lake, Minnesota where Hannah Swenson runs her bakery.

It starts off by introducing us to a dead man walking named Elvis. Abby Knight, played by Brooke Shields, once knew the man who has since run on hard times.

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After speaking in exposition dialog to introduce us to her, the flower shop called Bloomers, and her employee, Brooke sits down to have a talk with her daughter. A daughter who, I kid you not, is attending Mills College. Mills College which, according to Brooke’s flower shop friend, is “far enough away to live on campus, but close enough for Mom to drop in.” I had no idea Mills College had moved from the Bay Area to near Illinois, Ontario, Canada.

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Oh, and just in case we thought she was on vacation and not in the middle of classes.

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This scene only exists to tell us that Brooke used to be a lawyer, but stopped when her husband died and opened a flower shop instead because “none of it just seemed as important.” In other words, her husband died so that the character will be able to be a detective and Beth Davenport from The Rockford Files at the same time. Works out because her neighbor Marco Salvare, played by Brennan Elliott, shows up next at the flower shop. He owns a bar and was a PI. Oh, and Brooke’s car got hit by another car that may have been involved with the murder that happens soon.

And by soon, I mean now. Someone turns up dead at the Canadian American flag waving motel, Elvis is a suspect, and Brooke and Brennan are on the case. Not for any real good reason. They are really just busy body snoops, which is one of the reasons I kind of like this series already. Normally that would drive me nuts, but it makes them made for each other in this series. I liked that.

With Brooke on the case, she goes on her iPad to read a screenshot of a newspaper article about the murder, which apparently took place on November 2nd, 2016.

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Then she goes to the family album of her photos on the iPad where we see a picture of her husband who may have died the day before during a fishing trip. Either that or she only got around to importing her family photos onto her tablet the day before on November 1st, 2016.

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Next we are introduced to this series’ version of Norman from Murder, She Baked, but he barely exists in this movie. Then there’s a little girl talk back at the flower shop that I’m pretty sure has no customers that come into it. This is followed by a scene where Brooke sits down with a woman who wants a divorce so that we make sure we still remember she was a lawyer. Oh, and something plot related about a Green Thumb Nursery. I couldn’t care less about the plot because just like watching The Big Sleep (1946), you are watching for the Brooke and Brennan back and forth, not the plot. Also, Beau Bridges is in this as a sounding board and in case we need more exposition. Whatever is needed, you can count on Beau. I mean the man got the scroll weapon and he almost beat mega turtle at the end of level three in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES back in 1989. He can do anything.

Time to hit the “Internet” running locally at file:///C:/Users/Mike/Desktop/sc20-Chicago-GreenTumb/results1.html AKA ExploreNet to look up the Green Thumb Nursery.

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The local URL’s keep popping up in the lower left hand corner as a tooltip while she continues to browse the local filesystem for info on the nursery. I wonder who this Mike is? Did she take actor Michael Vincent Dagostino’s laptop? He plays a detective in the movie.

Anyhow, after Brooke reminds us again she was once a lawyer, she walks pass some street signs to make sure we know this shot took place at the intersection of McIntyre Street and Plouffle Street.

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Then Brooke and Brennan visit the Green Thumb Nursery to forward the plot and have some more back and forth. Might as well mention now that Brooke has some weird pseudo-feminist lines in this. You know those lines somebody who thinks they are a feminist, but really are just looking for any excuse to pick a fight over say. There’s only a couple of them, but it’s kind of weird. Maybe she can argue with Calista Flockhart about the semantics of calling her Supergirl.

Now they go on a stakeout! By that I mean they have some humorous lines and talk in exposition dialog. Who cares! All you need to know is that with a little more work they could be fun as a mystery solving couple in this franchise. And no, despite being written by Gary Goldstein, there will be no mention of Brooke’s feet. More plot and dead flowers left for Brooke, then finally Elvis is charged with second degree murder.

Plot, plot, plot. Nursery looks awfully shady and we know that’s where the mystery is going to lead us. Now Brooke and Flower Shop Norman take a trip to Partners Billards & Bowling Center on 361 Main St East.

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After more talking between characters, an inspector shows up and shuts down Brooke’s flower shop. Now it’s personal! I know this because I have almost run out of screenshots. Luckily, I have two more funny things to show before I close up this review. Also, Elvis is found hung dead in his cell. Winding down now.

At the nursery, Brooke noticed that one of the guys carried a gun. She asked him why and he gave a lame answer. No joke, I immediately said to my Dad that he should have said that they carry rare orchids and people try to steal them. So of course she figures out that an orchid bulb is hidden inside a pot of Mum flowers. Yep. This is also when Hallmark popped up to tell us that if we don’t like this series then not to worry cause it can go the way of Wedding Planner Mystery if necessary.

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And now the final goof, and it’s a whopper. She goes online to read an article about expensive orchids. Take a good look.

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And here are the excerpts taken to make that article from an SF Gate article from 1995 by staff writer Jim Doyle:

“U.S. inspectors broke the Kolopaking case in 1993, when they discovered he had sent 60 boxes of rare orchids into the United States via the West Coast clearinghouse for international mail in Oakland.”

“Fisher said the biggest threat to orchids is loss of habitat: Each year, millions of acres of rain forest, where billions of orchids live, are cut or burned down for mining, timber, farming and development.

He added that orchids taken from the wild are now growing in greenhouses and new plants including hybrids are made from them. ‘There are a lot of species in greenhouses that don’t exist in the wild any more due to habitat loss.’

Law enforcement officials insist that smuggling can hasten the death of a species. They contend that over-collection often takes place when a rare orchid’s habitat is nearly destroyed.”

I think Brooke Shields should contact Brooke Burns of the SFPD. Her and The Gourmet Detective should get right on this. This clearly means that Darcy from A Gift Of Miracles who plagiarized her PhD research pitch from an actual WWF report was writing under the pseudonym of Samson O’Doyle three years before the events of that film.

Obviously Brooke does figure it all out and brings the criminals to justice. The mystery is okay at best. It’s not too difficult to follow. Take the fact that the majority of this review is made up of jokes to tell you how enthralling the plot is. There’s a fair amount of setup here so don’t expect to escape a lot of those types of scenes and the exposition dialog that comes with them. The promise here is the stuff between Brooke Shields and Brennan Elliott. I really have a feeling this one is heading for the same bin as My Gal Sunday, Wedding Planner Mystery, and The Mystery Cruise, but if not, then I hope they really polish up the dialog and just drop the unnecessary extra guy. That kind of works on Murder, She Baked, but here I didn’t feel it added anything. Just have Abby and Marco hook up so we can enjoy them being screwball comedy murder mystery solvers. Otherwise, I am not looking forward to a poor man’s Murder, She Baked with touches of The Gourmet Detective.

Hallmark Review: Hitched For The Holidays (2012, dir. Michael Scott)


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Wait, this was written by Gary Goldstein? Well Gary, if there was ever one of your Hallmark movies where the characters should be singing When The Saints Go Marching In, then this is it! If nothing else, at least Joey Lawrence can sing. But I guess just rehashing My Fake Fiancee (2009) with a holiday twist is fine. At least this is back when Joey had some of his hair again.

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So there’s Joey Lawrence playing Rob. Rob is a bit of downer. His grandmother is in the hospital harassing him to get married since this is a Hallmark movie. He claims to be dating a woman named Rosemary.

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That’s Emily Hampshire playing Julie who doesn’t look happy because her mom, played by Marilu Henner, is harassing her to get to dating. But that alone doesn’t put that look on your face or cock your neck to the side. So let’s have her mom trying to make her date a guy with a foot fetish. This guy.

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Oh, and even at the end of this movie when this guy shows up again the movie switches from the kind of music you’d expect to foot fetish music as he stares at her feet. It’s pretty funny. Wait…foot fetish and this was written by Gary Goldstein. I wonder if Gary has a thing for feet? The leading lady put “nice feet” on her list of things that must be in the man she marries in The Wish List, which he also wrote.

Well, you’d think after Hampshire survived My Awkward Sexual Adventure (2012) that she’d be able to handle Mr. Foot Fetish, but she’s pretty non-confrontational. So how do these two meet? Well, through Rickyslist.org of course!

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They are each looking for someone to be a temporary stand-in lover for the holiday season. Seeing as this is a Hallmark movie, she can’t go with the more interesting and humorous option this screen affords. I wonder what “misc romance” means.

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Still, this movie probably would have been more interesting had she accepted that message from SatanSpawn.

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They hook up and go to a party together as a couple. Unfortunately, Rob tries to do the dance number from The Wish List, but seeing as there isn’t another dude there and his character is drunk, it doesn’t work out. Of course they end up making amends, but there’s another issue. She’s Jewish and he’s Catholic. They even throw Kwanzaa into the mix. Actually it’s snuck into the movie in a rather humorous way. At least it’s funnier than this scene.

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Julie of course tells her parents that Rob is Jewish too. So that means they need to light the Menorah. She leads him through this whole elaborate ceremony only to have him blow the candles out immediately after he finishes lighting them. Yeah, I believe Rob is that ignorant and stupid about as much as I believe Anastasia Steele didn’t know what butt plugs were in Fifty Shades Of Grey. At least the worst that happens to her is she breaks an old family ornament of Rob’s after trying to hang it on his family’s Christmas Tree, which later becomes a Hanukkah Tree.

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That’s this movie in a nutshell. It’s a series of religious misunderstandings that ultimately ends up with Rob and Julie finding out that their families care about them being happy before anything else. Even when Rob says he’s going to convert to Judaism he’s surprised when his family is happy about it because they know he obviously cares for Julie and that’s what matters to them.

Of course there’s a minor hiccup at the end. But it all works out because Rob ends up with a horse. I guess that’s what “misc romance” means.

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Actually, he does wind up on a horse in order to reach Julie through bumper to bumper traffic on New Year’s Eve. All I can think while writing this is that Crocodile Dundee (1986) did it better.

If the clip is gone and you don’t know what I’m referring to, then go watch Crocodile Dundee now.

In the end some title cards tell us what happened after they found each other. It includes that they were married by both a priest and a rabbi. There’s a joke in there, but I’m still busy trying to figure out the rest of that joke email about the brunette and the redhead trying to break out of jail from Midnight Masquerade.

This one’s okay if you can push past some of the ignorance it expects you to buy here and there about the characters and religion.

Hallmark Review: The Wish List (2010, dir. Kevin Connor)


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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And here’s what it cuts to.

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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.