Nancey Silvers | Through the Shattered Lens

I didn’t want to see another movie starring Autumn Reeser right now. I didn’t want to see another movie written by Nancey Silvers right now. However, I haven’t done a Ron Oliver movie in awhile, and he has been nice to me in the past. So let’s talk about I Do, I Do, I Do.

The movie opens up and we meet Jaclyn Palmer (Autumn Reeser) on the right, her sister Kate (Ali Liebert), and Kate’s camera. This time Hallmark is more subtle with the camera. No obvious Nikon camera strap. Also, it’s a Canon camera anyways. Just thought I would point that out for long time Hallmark fans who remember the Nikon product placement scenes from movies like For The Love Of Grace. Oh, and you can easily miss that Kate is her sister. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t tell you till later. Up till then my Dad and I thought they were just old friends. Even the credits of this movie don’t tell you.

Then probably the weirdest way I’ve seen the wrong guy introduced in a Hallmark movie happens. Jaclyn and Kate are in front of a hospital. An ambulance pulls up, someone is wheeled out of the back of it. Then up springs Dr. Peter Lorenzo (Antonio Cupo) from the gurney.

He comes over and proposes to Jaclyn while someone films them. I’m quite sure he arranged to have someone film it. At the very least it winds up on sort of YouTube.

That’s a lot of views! Obviously Dr. Peter Lorenzo is the PewDewPie of doctors. It goes without saying that she accepts his proposal. Now she’s off to some hotel in the woods next to a lake that’s probably in other Hallmark movies. After Autumn does her best shocked look as she pulls up to see a big sign that says “Jaclyn & Peter Forever”, she is greeted by his parents. It’s always a good sign when your mother-in-law to be says this to you.

Jaclyn is introduced to more craziness such as the “Bridal Cabin” and the wedding dress her soon to be Mom wants her to wear. Seeing as Jaclyn doesn’t like her wedding dress and she arrived in a car, she of course proceeds to get on a bike to ride through the woods to get to town.

You got me! My only guess is that since her husband is crazy about health and forces that on Jaclyn too, that she felt she had to use a bike instead of a car. Why she has to go through the woods, I have no idea. Regardless, as she is traveling through the woods she runs into Peter’s brother Max played by Shawn Roberts.

You know, Dexter Durant from Recipe For Love, or Dean if you are a fan of Degrassi: TNG. Since Jaclyn’s sister mentioned earlier that she wishes the two of them could throw caution to the wind like when they were younger, Max jumps off a ledge into the water. You can think of Max as basically the complete opposite of his brother. Oh, and they kiss for reasons. It kind of comes out of nowhere. Let’s move this along now by leaping over some scenes to get to the good stuff.

The next big thing that happens is that Jaclyn wakes up the next day. That day happens to be Valentine’s Day when her wedding is because who gets married on Groundhog Day? Yes, this is one of those movies. People burst into her room to make her up for Peter’s mother’s dream wedding. I think this shot sums up how Jaclyn feels about this.

You may notice that there is a wipe transition in progress in that shot. Director Ron Oliver uses them a bunch in this movie to good effect. George Lucas used them in Star Wars. It’s a good way to maintain a quick pace by giving you no time to mourn the loss of what was onscreen. It just picks you up from one scene and throws you into the next one. He also matches this with how he progressively shortens the days. Groundhog Day (1993) and the Groundhog Day episode of Stargate-SG1 did this too.

The marriage happens, but it’s a little rocky including wine getting spilled on her. That’s when back at the Bridal Cabin, Jaclyn wishes for a do-over, and her proposal video rolls over to 1,000,000 views.

Poor Ron Oliver! His video in upper right hand corner only has 567,983 views. At first I thought they would repeat that the way the clock would turn over in Groundhog Day, but it doesn’t. The equivalent here is the phone next to her bed, which rings with a wake up call.

This time she shows up with heavy eyeshadow and blush. I guess she is trying to maybe get him to not want to marry her. No such luck.

On the next repeat she starts to flip out. I love that they even bring up the possibility that she’s on drugs.

The doctor thinks she might have cold feet. She keeps telling him she’s living the same day over and over. So of course the doctor says he is going to get her tested for drugs. To get away from crazy town, Jaclyn flees with Max to the main set of the movie.

Remember the whole learning how to play the piano thing from Groundhog Day? That’s the kind of things that start to happen as the repeats get shorter and shorter. The first thing is to overcome her fear of the water. She didn’t used to be afraid of the water, but Peter kind of got her scared of taking any risks. Apparently, this included going into the water for her. So over the course of several loops Max takes her further and further into the water.

Once that is done, the next thing on the roster is to finally learning how to dance. Again, this repeats over several days. I have to give credit to whoever was responsible for the continuity on this film for these scenes. Take a look.

Those are from two loops that follow each other. Note that his outfit doesn’t change. It wouldn’t because since he isn’t aware of the time loop, he would be always wearing the same thing. However, since she is aware of the time loop, she wears something different. It’s a nice little detail that also helps to make sure we know another loop has gone by without having to cutaway from the beach.

With that done, learning Italian is next for Jaclyn. The reason for this is that earlier a member of Peter’s family came up to her and just assumed that Max and her were together. However, the whole conversation was in Italian and they lie to her about what she said. She spends several loops learning Italian.

Next is picking out a wedding dress she likes. She even has the wedding she seems to like, but of course Max isn’t convinced. Obviously Max is lord of time because she wakes up once again.

After spending more time with Max, we get the sort of YouTube thing at the start of another time loop.

I guess we know which one of the producers on this movie was the most important seeing as Kevin Leeson’s Seagull video has 996,876 views over Dan Paulson’s 36,995 views. Although, the production coordinator Alison Stephen tops them all with her 2.9 million views.

Anyways, this is when Jaclyn finally decides to stop the loop by saying that she doesn’t want to marry him. Just like in Bridal Wave, it turns out getting married wasn’t really something either of them wanted to do. She seemed to have been swept off her feet and he was kind of under pressure from his Mom. Even Dad chimes in to tell Mom to sit down here. When somebody tells you to sit down with these eyes…

then you sit down.

She and Max fall asleep at the beach. The time loop breaks, and they wake up together. After jumping in the water, they go and get married.

My final thought on this one is that it comes in third out of the four Groundhog Day movies/TV episodes I’ve seen. The first two are Groundhog Day and the Stargate SG-1 episode. However, number four, called Pete’s Christmas, is a huge drop off from this one. I really didn’t like that film. So check out the Stargate SG-1 episode called Window of Opportunity, and this one too. I recommend it.

Here are the songs from the credits:

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!