Mrs. Claus (Mira Sorvino) has left the North Pole and is living it up in Las Vegas!
Now, don’t panic. The plot of 2012’s Finding Mrs. Claus does not involve the Kringles going to divorce court. Can you imagine how traumatic that would be? It would ruin Christmas for everyone and I have a feeling that Santa probably wouldn’t put much effort into his job afterwards. Or, even worse, the court might award the Workshop to Mrs. Claus and she might let her new boyfriend, Tony the Gigolo, take over the business. If that ever happens, I hope everyone’s okay with their chimneys smelling like Axe body spray on Christmas morning.
Fortunately, Mrs. Claus and Kris (Will Sasso) are still very much in love. It’s just that Mrs. Claus gets upset when she sees how exhausted Kris is at the end of the day. When she comes across a letter from a little girl in Las Vegas who wants her mom to find a new husband for Christmas, Mrs. Claus decides to give her husband a break and take care of it herself. With the help of Calvin the Elf (Geoff Gustafson), she loses his white wig and her old German clothes and she is transformed into …. well, Mira Sorvino. Mrs. Claus heads to Las Vegas, intent on spreading Christmas cheer.
Kris, when he wakes up, is not happy to discover that his wife is missing. Grabbing Calvin, he heads down to Vegas to find her. (He loses the beard on the way to America.) If Kris can’t find Mrs. Claus before Christmas, there’s going to be a lot of disappointed children in the world. While Mrs. Claus tried to find a husband for Noelle (Laura Vandervoort), Kris tries to find his wife.
And yes, as you probably already guessed as soon as I mentioned that this movie takes place in Las Vegas, there is an Elvis impersonator sight gag. It happens quickly but seriously, it’s a Lifetime Christmas film that’s set in Vegas. There has to be an Elvis impersonator somewhere!
What’s that? Do I hear you being cynical out there? Well, stop it! It’s a cute movie! It’s a holiday movie that features Mira Sorvino being glamorous as Mrs. Claus and Will Sasso being cheerfully clueless as Santa. Both Sorvino and Sasso really throw themselves into their roles and the fact that both of them are so well-intentioned but yet so naive about life outside of the North Pole actually make their story a rather sweet one. While Mrs. Claus understood the importance of blending in with Las Vegas, Santa never seemed to get why anyone would doubt him when he explained what he did for a living.
In the end, this is the type of silly, sentimental, and earnest film that works nicely during the holidays. The holiday season is a good time to be reminded that not everything has to be dark and depressing. Towards the end of the film, a character spots a shooting star and makes a wish and it’s hard not to feel that it’s a moment that the film has earned.
Hello, It’s Me stars Kellie Martin as Annie, who loses her husband to a freak accident at the start of the movie. Two years later, Annie is still struggling to accept his death. She’s a baker who sells her baked goods on the beach and she tries to be a good mother to Ella (Erin Pitt) and Milo (Jack Fulton). A chance meeting with James (Kavan Smith) leads to an unexpected friendship, though James wants it to be more. James helps Annie to open her own bakery. (Why do people in Hallmark movies always want to open up a bakery?) Even though she is attracted to him, Annie cannot bring herself to move on from her husband’s death. But then she starts to get messages from her husband, encouraging her to move on. Just as Annie starts to open up to James, Ella gets angry and starts acting out. Will Annie and James’s love survive?
Hello, It’s Me was the last movie that I watched for this Valentine’s Day blogathon and it was also the best. It’s a Hallmark movie but it’s also realistic about the grieving process and Kellie Martin gave a really good performance as Annie. The movie really didn’t even need the supernatural element to be memorable and to work. I was cheering for Annie and James all the way. I could also relate to Ella and understand why she was so upset and worried to see her mother getting close to another man. Losing a loved one is never easy and I appreciated that, even at the end of the movie, Annie was still learning how to keep moving forward in her life. There is one embarrassing scene that takes place at a comic book convention, just due to some of the costumes that the movie has the background extras wearing. But it doesn’t detract from the movie’s effectiveness as a whole.
Some movies really touch your heart. Hello, It’s Me touched mine.
Pro tip! Don’t stay up till 3 in the morning trying to figure out the locations used in a Hallmark movie. Sure, it means you can make some nice jokes, but the next few days you are exhausted. Plus, I was going to go hiking today. Now that’s shot. Oh, and so is some guy in a shack because boat guy, shown above, showed up while “haunting bluegrass music” played according to my captions.
Now we cut to San Francisco because of the Golden Gate stock footage. Inside we meet our interior designer named Sayre Hoyle played by Shenae Grimes-Beech. Hmm…I guess she got married. However, she”ll always be Darcy from Degrassi: TNG to me. While her name is Sayre, they just call her Sar throughout the movie, or at least that’s what my captions kept saying. She’s making a sales pitch. I’m not sure what Latin gibberish on her laptop has to do with interior design,…
but when her phone goes off, she simply says “cue music” and the deal is done! Good job on the phone too!
All the shots of cellphone screens are done well in this movie. Unfortunately, the call is from Beck Merchant (Sean Faris), her father’s lawyer, telling her that her brother Danny (Kelly McCabe) is dead. She is told that she has a message on her voicemail with the details, but we cut to her office to find out her brother has left a cryptic and foreshadowing message as well.
Now we cut to a swamp to establish they are in Louisiana before cutting to this…
to make sure we don’t forget that Camden, Maine exists.
Now we meet the family lawyer Beck Merchant who represents her dad’s company called Hoyle Enterprises. He invites her back to the family estate. By the family estate, I mean the house from Unleashing Mr. Darcy.
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (2016, dir. David Winning)
Unleashing Mr. Darcy (2016, dir. David Winning)
I forgot to mention that the J.R. of the family, named Huff Hoyle, is played by John Schneider. If Schneider wants that house, then he’ll have it torn down and moved from New York to Louisiana piece by piece!
Next we meet Sar’s only surviving brother Chris played by Jeremy Guilbaut.
Am I the only one that thinks Jeremy could do a good impression of Kyle MacLachlan? Take a look at this shot.
See! Also, I’m sure Schneider imports cherry pie from Twin Peaks. Only the best for his family.
Now we go inside and meet Sar’s mother Alma played by Marilyn Norry. Then the cops come in to talk to her brother, Huff, and the lawyer.
They’ve come to tell them that frogs have entered town and appear to be headed for Huff estate. That’s my requisite Frogs (1972) joke. They have actually come to tell them that the dead brother named Danny appears to have died from an accidental firearms discharge. Old cop believes that determination, but young cop isn’t so sure. He raises some good points. To the best of his knowledge Danny was never an outdoorsman so why the heck would he be out fishing where they found him. There was also no bait. The whole thing smells funny to him. But Schneider is having none of this.
Sar then talks to the lawyer and an old boyfriend named Clark comes up. This is when we go to visit Danny so that we can meet the crazy guy from this movie.
It’s funny. I can totally see this guy in another movie warning kids not to go to Camp Crystal Lake. This is Slap Watkins (Primo Allon).
We now go to a school to meet Jessica (Kristen Comerford). She’s a former close friend of Danny’s. This scene exists to tell us in no uncertain terms that not only did Danny hate fishing, but also guns. It is suspicious that he supposedly was fishing at the time and found with a gun.
Now we cut to a shot to remind us that Telluride, Colorado exists,…
before cutting inside a clothing store so that we can find out she and Clark were an item in high school before the lawyer shows up. They decide to go and talk over breakfast.
They go to Schneider’s favorite diner. He saw Rae’s at 2901 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica, CA, and had a duplicate made in Louisiana, but with the generic name Diner. That was Rae’s one request.
All jokes and plot summary aside for a moment. Here is what the stock footage Hallmark bought for this shot from FootageBank actually looks like.
Look at how they changed the signs and added shadows to it. I’m not an expert in Photoshop so that may be incredibly easy for all I know, but I’m impressed.
Edit: Look to the comments section to find out how I was wrong to be impressed here. Chuck does a great job explaining why this doesn’t look right.
Back in the movie, the scene in the restaurant is there to tell us how the lawyer went to LSU with Chris, pledged his fraternity, and when the company lawyer retired, they hired him. The lawyer also drops the information that the father pushed for a thorough investigation after the recent death, but they found nothing so that it will be suspicious later when Sar instantly finds something the cops didn’t notice in plain sight.
Sar now goes to visit Jessica again to find out more information. We find out that Danny was well liked by the workers at Huff’s factory. She also brings up a recent accident at the plant. Apparently, as a result, Danny’s tires were slashed. Also, we discover that Danny cancelled plans for a picnic on the day he died.
Now we cut to a police station that I don’t know where it’s from, but they did the photoshopping thing to it too. This time you can actually see it just below where it says “Sheriff”.
Of course there’s an American Flag. There’s one inside too hanging on the wall. Sar’s not happy with the sheriff and neither am I. Look at that!
Guy gives Louisiana, British Columbian sheriffs a bad name. Just in case we didn’t know the sheriff isn’t on the level.
The young cop and Sar go to visit the fishing shack where they meet up with the lawyer. This scene is to tell us that her and Danny used to hide things in the walls. Sar also finds a nightclub matchbook meaning the cops didn’t do their job, or someone planted it. We go back to the house to remind us Schneider is the head of the family, wants this matchbook looked into, and we find out that Danny didn’t go to nightclubs.
Off to the family factory and we run into Clark (Sean Poague). The lawyer takes her on a tour of the factory. This is when we discover the recent accident that killed a worker is not what this cross is referring to.
A man named Sonny Holzer died a long time ago when the lawyer was a kid.
Next important thing is that we learn a reporter is saying that Danny might have been killed in revenge. Who am I kidding? It’s John Schneider going into his angry father mode again.
If the crazy guy in Hearts of Spring was the real highlight of that film, then Schneider’s outbursts in this make him the equivalent. After Schneider reluctantly leaves the room after finishing his dinner table scene, we find out from the lawyer about that recent accident. A guy named Billy Pollock died only a month prior. The story is that he was drinking a lot when it happened.
We go and meet Billy’s wife, but it really isn’t important. What’s important is that Sar appears to go onto some cross between Pinterest and Facebook.
Kind of weird, but it’s there because of the baseball photo. The people in the photo are tagged. The person in the middle is Danny and the person on right is Slap. That’s when who else but the lawyer calls her up. They go to a cajun restaurant.
You have no idea how much I searched to find where this was located. It’s a cajun food restaurant, appears to have the address 8667, and I knew the stock footage sites to search because they are in the credits of the movie, but nope. Even with all that info, this is still a mystery to me. Sometimes you have to let things go, or not because the lawyer and Sar now sit down to talk so we get some more details. Turns out that after information was leaked to the paper about the accident that killed Billy, Slap was fired and Pollack was “cut…from the payroll.” Danny was the one who had to give Slap his pink slip.
Now someone pretends they are going to run into Sar’s car with theirs while she is parked.
That doesn’t faze a Shenae Grimes! The woman survived this creeper who was just as much of a threat many years prior.
Degrassi: The Next Generation
That means it’s off to the factory so Clark can drop some info. He had stumbled upon Danny and Chris arguing because Danny thought that Billy was murdered. Chris apparently didn’t care how he died. Don’t dig up info on the company. End of story!
Now the spotlight starts to turn on Chris. That’s when Schneider bursts into the room because John knows it’s been too long since he did his thing.
This outburst winds him up in the hospital because this time it was too much for his heart. They take him to the photoshopped version of the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.
We really can jump over a lot now. Slap tries to kill Sar with a knife. We have a conversation between the lawyer and Sar that hints Huff may have had something to do with the really old accident that we now learned happened 20 years ago. After Sar talks with the wife of the guy who died 20 years prior, we find out his lawyer died too. Turns out also that Huff ordered Clark to be beaten. We saw him in the hospital looking pretty bad.
Now we can really really skip over things. Slap takes Sar hostage with a gun. He ends up getting shot by the cops in Mission, British Columbia where they shot this, which is close to where they did parts of Garage Sale Mystery: Guilty Until Proven Innocent.
This is when I say, if you don’t want the ending spoiled, then stop here. I recommend this one so you can stop here if you don’t want to know the ending. To separate this from the ending below, I have embedded the famous coffee scene from the Twin Peaks inspired game Deadly Premonition since I did reference Twin Peaks earlier.
Okay, here’s the deal. Huff killed the guy 20 years prior. We also find out that his lawyer didn’t die by accident either. It turns out Beck is the son of said lawyer. He got close to the family in the hope of exposing Huff for the murder of his father and Huff’s general corruption that lead to this whole string of incidents. As for the more recent murder, that wasn’t Huff. Well, not directly. Huff told his son Clark to deal with the issue with Billy Pollock, which he did. He got Slap riled up by making sure he got fired by Danny. Slap then went and killed Danny as a result. Danny caught it on a tiny camera, which Sar found in one of those hidden places I mentioned earlier. The matchbook was placed by Beck to help lead Sar while maintaining his cover with the family. So off to jail goes Huff and Clark.
Then even in this movie it ends with a kiss between Sar and the lawyer.
I already said it, but I do recommend this one. I’m not a fan these cozy mysteries that Hallmark is churning out lately. The Gourmet Detective being an exception. This, and Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise, are just better. The cozy mystery ones tend to be too whitewashed, obvious, and sometimes they really don’t go for it. By that I mean like in Flower Shop Mystery: Mum’s The Word. They needed to cut a lot of the setup between the two crime solvers. Just let them do their thing. The acting here is good all around. I especially liked John Schneider and his over the top moments. It was also nice to see Shenae Grimes again. Those are my final thoughts. Check it out!
Since including the music I was listening too while writing the review went over swimmingly last time *cough*, here’s a song that was a hit during the mini-Swing revival of the mid-to-late 1990s (Go Daddy-O by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy).
I think this is also a particularly perfect choice for this film as well because while there are three other characters in the film, this is really the father’s film. The father being Tanner Gray played by John Schneider.
The film begins with some dancing in kind of a dance floor nowhere. It just exists. By that I mean something like the eternal dance floor where there is always a couple dancing. Every time the film would come back from a commercial break there would a couple dancing in the dark for a few seconds before returning to the characters.
Now we are introduced to our leading lady named Cyd Merriman (Brooke Nevin). Named after Cyd Charisse of course, but the film will have the father be ignorant of that just in case the audience didn’t know even though his character would absolutely know that fact.
She runs a dance studio in a small town. We also meet her fiancee in these opening scenes named Zach Callahan (Christopher Jacot).
Notice the lighting in these shots. They will keep that style of lighting throughout the film whenever they are in the studio. However, those scenes will stand in rather strong contrast to the rest of the way the movie is shot. It’s a neat way of visually making the place special to us in order to fit with the way the characters think of it.
In short order, we are also introduced to Laura Williams (Roma Downey).
She’s here to plead with us to not let her next movie be Keeping Up with the Randalls. Actually she’s here because she’s a friend of the family who is also their lawyer. Cyd’s mother recently passed away and there is a stipulation in the will that the father she didn’t know she really had–he didn’t know he had a daughter either–now are co-owners of the dance studio. It also works out for him, unfortunately, because he is let go from his job at the same time he finds out.
In reality it’s plot convenience, but nevertheless. Meanwhile, we spend some more time at the studio, with Downey, and with the fiancee. Spoiler alert! The fiancee is not played like a bad guy as you might expect from a Hallmark movie. He’s a really good guy in this. Now the father shows up in town with the legal papers he received to talk with the daughter he didn’t know he had.
I mentioned it at the start, but I really want to drive home that while Cyd, Zach, and Laura have roles in the movie that are important, this really is the story of Tanner Grey. He sits down with his daughter to talk about who he is and what happened in the past. It basically comes down to that he wanted to see the world and he eventually did just that. He never really says he regrets going out and seeing the world or anything. It was a good thing for him and he appreciated what he was able to see as a young man, but you can tell that the loss of his wife over it is something that has always dragged on him.
Cyd wants to sell the dance studio to some developers who want to revamp the town so she can take that money to work towards becoming a child psychologist. This film does have some of the standard big business evil/we need to defend our small towns nonsense that you see in other Hallmark movies, but here it’s really out of place. Especially when that isn’t the reason Tanner isn’t ready to just sign over his half of the studio. We find out two things as the film progresses. One, now that Cyd’s mother is gone and seeing as she appears to be on a similar trajectory to leaving town the way he did, he wants to take it slow to make sure they all have a real grasp on the situation. In particular, why the mother essentially grabbed him out of her past and forced him into the current situation via the will. He doesn’t take that lightly. We also find out that Tanner likes to dance.
And honestly, that really sums up the movie. There isn’t a whole lot to talk about with this film. Hallmark movies don’t really have the time and money to spend on having a plot driven story, but that doesn’t seem to stop them by trying to maximize plot and minimize the amount of character development needed to crank out a movie. This time they really did try to go the character driven route with this studio that almost exists outside time as a centerpiece of the film in a similar way that the film Love, Again did with the bridge.
Throughout the film we get closer to Tanner as we see him teach more of the dance classes and in conversations with Downey. All the while, Cyd tries to come to grips with this turning point in her life while her fiancee is always on her side. He always stays on her side. I remember him having a scene at the end of the film that was similar to a scene the father had in the recent South Korean film Marriage Blue. In that film, an older man’s daughter is going to get married but she hides a much more wild side of herself from a lot of people, including her father. She shows up to tell him the truth. At first we think we’re going to get the response you often see in movies where someone comes out as being gay to their parents and in turns out they already knew, but not quite. He’s just happy for her, is a little surprised she bothered keeping it a secret, and is a little ticked off that his future son-in-law has known more about his daughter than him this whole time. Zach has a similar moment where he isn’t happier or sad for her when she decides to keep the studio. As long as she was being true to herself, then he’s happy to be right there with her.
One other thing I want to mention is a scene actor John Schneider has near the end. It’s a sweet and understated conversation he has with Downey.
He basically pours his heart out here about everything he has been thinking about concerning the whole situation and why he is ready to walk away now if it is necessary. It’s a nice and well done piece of acting that you usually don’t see in these Hallmark movies.
My final verdict on this one is that I do recommend it. There are little things I would have tweaked like the big business threat thing which was just out of place, but it’s still one of the good ones as far as Hallmark goes.
Clearly though, the only thing missing from this movie was Billy Idol singing at their wedding.
And okay, I know you saw the title and I mentioned music so you all probably expected it. Here’s Ballroom Blitz by Sweet.
Gotta admit, I was worried when I started this movie up. No, not because Mark Jean directed it. I was worried because it was written by Nancey Silvers. Nancey Silvers is the one who brought us the scripts for A Country Wedding and The Color Of Rain. But, it turned out to be decent.
The movie opens up and we meet Zachary Stone played by Brandon Routh. Yep, the abandoned 2006 Superman himself. The firehouse he works at is putting together one of those hunk calendar things. Even the photographer hits on him.
Now we meet Marilee White (Kimberly Sustad). She’s a veterinarian student and works at a pet store.
He finds a cat named Ambrose. She is a cat lover herself, but her landlady has a strict no pet policy so she has to hide it. Although we don’t see the bar graph for it like we did in The Wish List, it does look like there’s a high probability she’s going to eat a whole tub of ice cream.
They meet at a grocery store and either I’m going crazy and seeing it everywhere at this point, or that is the boom mic popping in from the top of the frame.
There honestly isn’t much to this story. I mean there is some product placement like this.
They make sure you get a good look at that Folgers coffee. There’s also this rather unfortunate line.
Finally, trying to figure out where this movie is supposed to take place and this shot not helping matters.
Some shots will say Portland and others will say Jamestown. Luckily, the filmmakers left in this shot…
in case we really wanted to know this was shot in Fort Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Or at least that one scene was done there.
Otherwise, what you have here is a straightforward, but well acted enough standard Hallmark romance. Just add cats. I mean he’s dating a girl who’s a stuck up female dog. She’s tossed aside pretty quickly. Marilee’s friend does put her on a dating site, but they don’t do anything with that. They keep spending time together, so do their cats, and eventually they end up together.
Well, there is this with the dating site.
Uh, doesn’t that mean she has selected she is a man? I mean given there is no other part to that profile page that indicates her gender and it is above the “Looking for a:” box.
There’s really only one problem I had. This film kind of ends, but still has running time left. She hangs up some mistletoe hoping for a kiss from him. He cleverly pretends to not see it for a bit, then swoops in and kisses her. They are already living together at this point. The movie should end there, but it doesn’t. Instead, she mistakenly thinks he went out with some blonde, they’re apart for a bit, and then they find each other again. It should have ended on the kiss, whether that meant stopping the film where it occurred or moving that scene later into the film. It’s an unnecessary last minute speed bump.
That’s a minor complaint. There isn’t anything special here, but I liked the two leads and believed they actually liked each other. This movie even did the moving focus from one actor to another pretty much right. You’d think that is a given, but not in Hallmark movies. Sometimes they move the focus too slow and it gives you time to dwell on the change when there’s no reason to. This movie doesn’t do that.
Sorry there isn’t more to say. At least we can leave it on a shot that makes Brandon Routh look like he’s a psycho with a sign that says “Merry Christmas” behind him!
Jeez! That title card is even more generic looking than the one for Erotic Ink.
This movie picks up where The Confession left off. Katie is now rich, but remembers to remind us she’s Amish in case we’ve forgotten.
Is it in bad taste to use that particular screenshot after referencing the movie Erotic Ink? Nah, that movie was all one on one so it’s okay.
At least this time she doesn’t just flat out tell us she’s Amish. Actress Katie Leclerc can also do her fake Pennsylvania Dutch accent throughout the whole movie. Thank god! It doesn’t make it any less fake, but at least she doesn’t magically drop it like she did in The Confession. And neither is there a lady in the movie playing an actress playing an Amish girl doing a fake accent that we are supposed to recognize as fake. Since this movie is just a retread of a typical Hallmark romance with a bonnet thrown on it, here’s the wrong guy.
Oh, remember Daniel Fisher played by Cameron Deane Stewart in The Confession with wonder and a blind love for Katie? Yeah, he had to go because it’s imperative we replace him with the Jesus archetype family man guy played by Jacob Blair.
He even works as a carpenter in this movie. Speaking of characters who aren’t played by the same actor again.
Remember Katie’s biological mother played by Sherry Stringfield? Well, that picture is all you’ll see of her character in this movie. By that, I mean you won’t see her again, but you will hear a voiceover from her done by a different actress later in the movie.
So let’s lay out the plot. Katie decides to invest in a place Oak Vale: Home For Boys. A guy who worked as a janitor and grew up in homes like Oak Vale shows up and is hired as a counselor. Fisher shows up to tell Katie he’s not dead.
As you can see she takes it quite well. Of course Fisher starts working on the boys home. Gotta have someway for him to spend time around Katie!
Oh, there’s also a little subplot involving Katie’s adopted parents, but really it’s just there to tie up that loose end so that they can show up at the end of the movie.
The movie is about a girl moving forward with a marriage to the wrong guy while hanging around the right guy and helping this boys home out. Also, in reminding us she’s Amish.
I must say that as much as having the kids raise this barn to get them doing something positive together is a good idea, the size of it does make me chuckle.
Everything else is exactly what you expect from a Hallmark romance movie. If you think about it for a bit you can even figure out who the janitor turned counselor is. Some of the shots are quite nice. Oddly, once again, this Hallmark movie reminded me of another late night cable movie called Passionate Intentions which also had similarly nice cinematography.
All in all, it works well enough. Just know that the Amish bit really has nothing to do with anything and that this movie really exists just to give closure to this series of movies. Now I just need to watch The Shunning so that I will have reviewed all the movies in the series. Unfortunately, I can’t con my Dad into watching that one with me after watching this one. That means I’ll get to it eventually after the many more I have sitting on my DVR and the even more to be recorded in the coming months.
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!
Mystery Woman: Game Time (2005) – For those of you counting. This is my 7th Mystery Woman film. I believe that leaves me four more to see. As for this one, it’s average, which is honestly the best you can expect from most Hallmark movies. Although, my cable box seemed to disagree as the plot summary it gave me described it as a “humdrum whodunit.” In a string of Hallmark movies that screw up computer stuff, this one revolves around a computer game so it has it’s humorous moments.
It starts right off with one of them. A guy comes up to Kellie Martin in the bookstore and tries to show her a computer game mystery to sell in her store. Oh, and I’m getting really sick of the establishing shots of the bookstore in these movies. Do they honestly think we’ll be confused if they just cut to the inside? They show it over and over throughout the movies. But back to the plot. After identifying himself as working in the game business. Kellie Martin comes right out and gives a line that probably came right from the mouth of a politician in the early 90’s getting angry about the game Night Trap without actually knowing anything about video or computer games. She says they are “hours of mind-numbing glee watching some non-human kill and maim everything in it’s path.” I know she comes around over the course of the film, but Martin’s character is plenty young enough to know better. It’s a little ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as what he then says. He says he just “created the world’s very first computer game mystery.” Wow! That must have been news to Her Interactive who had been making Nancy Drew games for years prior. Not to mention going way back to the Sierra games and beyond. I played mystery games all the time as a kid in the 80s.
Then we meet a reclusive author played by William Katt. That’s right! The Greatest American Hero is in this and they kill him off in short order. What a shame. He should have been wearing the suit. He was asphyxiated, which according to this film either means poison or strangling. Honestly, I don’t remember one person saying that he couldn’t have just choked on a piece of a hot dog. What follows starts simple then turns to lunacy that I kind of expect from a movie made in 2005.
We do get to the see the game! It actually looks pretty cool. Seems to have around 35 levels, a trained killer squirrel, and you get to throw a cat at someone pointing a gun at you. That’s kinda cool. However, this game is treated like it’s some unpublished manuscript by an extremely well known author. We often buy that one of those will be worth millions to people, but an unreleased computer game mystery in 2005 is a little ridiculous. Even if they stop to give us an anti-piracy speech about all the money that is made pirating movies and games and tie it back to the Russian mafia with chemical weapons. Fresh off of Napster for this movie! There is also a speech equating playing games to drug addiction. The ending tries to tell us it was just meant to be humorous, but I don’t completely buy that.
There’s also some stupid scenes with Clarence Williams III doing tech stuff. He actually points to a screen that is basically white and reads off of it. It’s clear as day and they linger on it too with Martin coming up to join him and look at it. Then there’s the part where he opens up the hard drive that apparently took blows from a hammer, but it is in pristine condition. Then he describes computer forensics as not being hacking, but then uses a hard drive recovery tool called “H.A.C.K. v7.02”. He also throws around some hard drive jargon. It’s all kind of embarrassing.
But not as embarrassing as when Hallmark actually censored the word “butt” when Williams said “pain in the butt”. He says it. You can clearly see his lips. But the movie goes silent on that word then cuts to Martin. That seems a bit much and makes me wonder if it originally aired that way or if they actually received complaints about it.
Oh, well. This is average, but fun to laugh at the computer and gaming stuff.
The Color of Rain (2014) – Isn’t it purple? I mean the title screams either The Color Purple, Purple Rain, or just self-important title. Anyways, this is about what happens when cancer kills off a wife and a husband, then have the widows and their children spend time with each other in a Hallmark movie. Yep, I could stop right here, but there a couple of things to mention.
It is boilerplate melodrama. It definitely relies on gender stereotypes. It’s either a Dad thing or a Mom thing or a boy thing with this movie. Couldn’t the poor guy at least know how to do his laundry? I know it’s based on real events as adapted from a book based on those real events, but please. And the kids really needed a little personality. They basically act like they are objects rather than kids. They just do what the plot tells them to do. It’s kind of annoying. It is a little heavy on the religious part, but that’s really not that bad except there is one scene where they are singing with the kids and oh my God, it’s 7th Heaven all of a sudden. Unfortunately, no one finds a joint then acts like a mass murder has happened.
Only two other things are worth mentioning. Near the end the tone shifts rather suddenly concerning their relationship, but then shifts right back without much resolution. They needed to iron that out more. The other thing is awesome. There is a scene where the two are emailing each other and I swear, I believe Lacey Chabert was using Linux. In particular some generic looking version of Ubuntu. Lacey Chabert using Linux in a Hallmark movie is pretty cool to me.
Hopefully you know what you are getting in terms of the content, but this is the quality of production you should demand from the Hallmark Channels. This is what I thought their movies were like till I actually started watching them. I’m up to 63 of them now.
A Way Back Home/Shuffleton’s Barbershop (2013) – I don’t have much to say about the last two films. This has a troubled singer returning to his hometown only to find that the barber played by Danny Glover who was basically a surrogate father to him is dead. The singer had left town years prior angry about his father, his father’s relationship with his mother, and his brother in the military. I’m not sure if the brother was dead already when he left or not, but he’s gone by the time he comes back. Of course there are two ladies involved in this. This isn’t one where a romantic interest could be absent.
The movie as a whole is just kind of nice. You just sort of spend time with the singer and the folks in town with plot points revealing themselves whenever it’s convenient. Then before you know it, the movie is over. If it were a horror movie, then he would have discovered Glover dead and sought revenge on the town with Glover’s ghost egging him on. It’s close, except instead of revenge, it’s reconciliation with Glover’s ghost and the singer’s recollections of him egging him on.
This one’s okay, but easily forgettable.
Undercover Bridesmaid (2012) – All you really need to know is that Brooke Burns is ordered to go undercover as a bridesmaid. She is confronted with overt female stereotypes even by Hallmark standards. But she doesn’t descend into Tasha Yar in a dress territory. Thank goodness! They just have her be the way she seems to naturally be in the Gourmet Detective movies and on The Chase. Just a little out of her comfort zone. She is put undercover because someone has made threats to carry out something bad during the wedding.
Really there’s only one more thing I think of that you should know. When I got to the wedding at the end, I thought I must have missed the resolution and was going to rewatch. If you find yourself thinking that, then don’t worry, cause you didn’t. It’s still going to happen.
This one is perfectly harmless. You’re better off with The Gourmet Detective movies, but this was better than Fixing Pete.
Finding A Family (2011) – This movie is about a kid named Alex (Jared Abrahamson) whose mother has serious mental problems. She has a great degree, but her mental problems absolutely cripple her. As you can guess, they create major issues for her son who has to live with her day after day. Ultimately, Alex has himself emancipated. He wants to go to Harvard and works hard in school to make this work while not forgetting his mother. Then he decides that he really does want a family and starts writing to people asking them to take him in. It’s a nice story that really only had one issue and a minor personal complaint.
The issue is that I have some experience in this area and the depth to which his mother’s mental problems should affect him, don’t. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like The Blind Side (2009) where they gutted and flattened two amazing people, but it’s noticeable. The other thing is a minor complaint. In the old days you did receive a letter from colleges you applied to telling you whether you were accepted or not. However, I applied in 2006 and we was never sent a letter. You checked their website to find out whether you were accepted or not. This film was made in 2011. I know it’s more dramatic and familiar to go with the letter thing, but it’s time to move on.
You’ve seen it all before, but if you want to see again, then check this one out.
Generation Gap (2008) – There really isn’t much to talk about here. You’ve seen this plot a million times before. We meet Dylan (Alex Black) who is just too much for his mother because of a few scenes of rebellion. His Mom, played by Catherine Mary Stewart, calls up her father played by Ed Asner and dumps Dylan on him. After a few scenes of Asner acting like a dick, which he seems to think he is entitled to do because he’s old, both him and the kid calm down. The film does three things: 1. Asner and the kid come to realize that despite being different ages, they both occupy the same time and place on Earth, 2. Asner hooks up with Rue McClanahan who sounds weird without her Southern accent, 3. The kid also gains a romantic interest.
The only other noteworthy things are that they age Asner by about 10 years to have his character able to have been in WWII. The other is that the kid walks in on Asner and three other guys playing Halo. Pretty funny. Remember that scene in The Wizard (1989) where Beau Bridges is supposedly playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but we now know thanks to AVGN that he was probably playing Winter Games for the NES? Well, they actually show that Halo is what is being played and I wouldn’t be surprised if Asner and the others were actually playing.
This one is cliched, but okay.
Expecting A Miracle (2009) – This is a weird movie. It seems to be nice and have it’s heart in the right place, but there are some odd bits. It introduces us to a couple played by Jason Priestley and Teri Polo who have been trying to get pregnant. It seems that the couple has tried IVF several times, but there doesn’t seem to be any mention of sex whatsoever. Did they try that?
To try and calm down, they take a vacation and wind up in a small Mexican town that seems to consist only of a courtyard. Cheech Marin is here along with some other characters who conveniently speak English. There is a kid who has something wrong with his leg and is convinced that a special ceremony is going to fix it. This is the kind of place populated with people who are like the magic negro/eccentric characters that turn your life around simply by coming into contact with them.
Polo is told a line that basically says God decides whether you will have kids or not. Okay, but does that mean God also controls the adoption process which is brought up numerous times during this film. Maybe it’s the film’s way of saying that God sometimes is trying to tell you that it’s not necessary to pass on your genetic material, but instead to save a poor kid who needs a family and people who will love them.
The rest is harmless and kind of nice, but then comes the ending. The kid in the village is miraculously cured of a condition with his leg during a ceremony. The couple talk about adopting him. At the very end, they are at home working through the adoption process, talking about how much paperwork there is to adopt a kid. The wife goes to the bathroom and takes a pregnancy test. She’s pregnant! Then there are the credits. Did they have sex? Was it IVF again? Did they still follow through and adopt the kid? No answers.
It’s nice and everything, but I can’t honestly recommend it. Just a little too weird and relies on people’s assumptions about the nobility and happiness about simple rural communities.
Murder 101: If Wishes Were Horses (2007) – Another Hallmark murder mystery, but just like Murder 101, this was good. As always, I’m terrible about following the plots of these movies. It all begins when a horse is kidnapped. Once again, Dick Van Dyke is brought in to help with the case. Barry Van Dyke is back again as well, but this time Shane Van Dyke joins in on the fun. This is your standard murder mystery movie in the vein of Diagnosis Murder, Murder, She Wrote, and Mystery Woman as opposed to recent movies like Wedding Planner Mystery and Garage Sale Mystery. This one’s fine.
Sorry, but there’s going to be a few of these in a row because I have a backlog of Hallmark movies on my DVR that really need to be cleared out. In other words, prepare for death by a thousand greeting cards.
Three Weeks, Three Kids (2011) – Anyone my age remembers Anna Chlumsky from My Girl (1991). It’s nice to see her as an adult. This movie introduces us to Chlumsky’s character Jennifer who we are supposed to believe is a wee bit irresponsible, or at least hasn’t really grown up. Well, no fear because her sister is going to go on vacation and needs a babysitter quickly for her three kids. Of course the experience is going to give her a kick in the butt. It also gets her off the boyfriend that isn’t right for her and moves her onto the one that is. Oh, lord! This is a Hallmark movie. I know there was incest in For Better Or For Worse, but I didn’t intend that pun. Well, the movie isn’t all about her. Her sister just can’t relax on the vacation and the movie is about getting her to calm down and enjoy her life and marriage more too. There is a little corny twist at the end, but I’ll leave that for those who want to see this. The movie is decent.
Your Love Never Fails (2011) – However, I can’t say they same for this one. This is just propaganda. Honestly, the pastor in this says almost word for word a speech given in a very blatant piece of propaganda called Every Young Woman’s Battle. When you boil off the attempt to couch it, the movie is about a woman who has a successful job in the city, but is dragged back to rural Texas by her husband and is legally coerced into spending time with him. The pastor gives a speech that says that no relationship is perfect, but that’s human nature. Just let God into your heart and that will fix the issue. Yeah, in other words, once you’re married, if the relationship isn’t working, then that just means you’re not a good Christian. He even talks to her and says she clearly still has feelings for him because she is choosing to stay even though we know she is required to stay because the court said so. There is no reason to watch this. It’s no wonder that Hallmark aired this last month under the title of A Valentine’s Date rather than the original title that is still displayed onscreen. If I want propaganda of this sort then I will watch Deception Of A Generation thank you very much. At least that’s hilarious rather than uncomfortable. They say Smurfs are homosexual zombies in that video.
Kiss At Pine Lake (2012) – This one is much better. The only issue I picked up is a minor one. Mia Kirshner has put on a little weight. It’s only noticeable because she used to be particularly petite. This works to her advantage because it helps to make her character more believable as having aged from the younger version of herself in the movie. Also, the girl who plays her younger self bears a resemble to Kirshner. Barry Watson on the other hand doesn’t seem to change. I swear, he looks the same as he did in the first episode of 7th Heaven. It also doesn’t help that we are familiar with the way he looked on that show. On top of that, the guy who plays him as a kid doesn’t look like him at all. Luckily, the flashback scenes are short and there are very few of them so it doesn’t really harm the movie at all. As for the story, it’s about a boy and girl who liked each other at summer camp as kids, but never followed through. Their lives bring them back around to each other at the same camp many years later, but this time things work. Nice and simple. Of the four here, this is the one to watch.
Real Murders: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery (2015) – TV Movies should not have complex plots. Commercials ruin them. I wish I could describe the plot to you, but I quickly lost track of the investigation. Didn’t help that it seems to move at a breakneck pace. It actually starts off feeling like it’s going to parody these types of murder mysteries. The murder is committed, but even the person being killed doesn’t seem to care. Then the characters act in humorous ways once the murder is discovered. Teagarden (Candace Cameron Bure) dives in and moves very fast. She also talks about historical murders like you’re talking to Quentin Tarantino about movies. Quick and with a great deal of knowledge. If you are able to follow the plot better than I did, maybe catch it without commercials, then you will probably enjoy it more. Still, I just can’t recommend this one at this point. I wonder if the other Aurora Teagarden movie is better.
Through the Shattered Lens 