Lauren and Lockheart

This was very enjoyable thanks to the charisma and southern charm of Lauren Alaina and her chemistry with Tyler Hynes. The plot wasn’t much, but I do love a fish out of water story and two loves being from different worlds. Lauren is back home from her stint in the army and is upset to find that things haven’t stayed the same as when she left her small southern town of Lockheart, Tennessee. Her boyfriend has found someone else, and her family’s charming barbecue roadhouse is on the verge of failure. If that weren’t enough, her dead grandfather’s barbecue sauce recipe has been lost and they now use store-bought (!!!) Because it’s Hallmark, only a festival can save them, but ticket sales have been slow. Enter Tyler Hynes as a Hollywood TV director who gets stuck in town while driving his girlfriend’s birthday present to her in Nashville. Tyler’s gradual thawing to the ways of a small southern town, and coming to appreciate Lauren, was involving. The shallow girlfriend threatening from the background kept up the tension and suspense.

Unfortunately, the conclusion left a lot of loose ends and questions. Bad girlfriend agreed to give the festival a social media push in exchange for Tyler directing her movie. She holds up her end, but he welshes on the deal! Not Good. Another thing that bothered me was the dissonance between the plot and the theme. The moral of the story seemed to be that change brings good opportunities as well as sadness and disappointment. Yet instead of developing her own recipe for BBQ sauce, which would have symbolized moving forward and a fresh outlook, she just finally finds her grandfather’s. And finally, how are Tyler and Lauren going to make their relationship work when they live in different worlds? Will Lauren leave her small town to develop a singing career? Or will Tyler give up his successful profession to hang around Lockheart Tennessee? Neither option was given any time at all. Like Lauren’s own BBQ sauce, and Tyler’s lack of integrity,  it was left dying on the back burner.

September 15, 2021