She Can Pronounce “Spanakopita” but not “Gyro?”

 This was a very well done movie! It combined what is often so good about the travelogue-type Hallmarks with a good story and likable characters. The travelogue part and local culture part was smoothly incorporated into the story. It didn’t take place on one of the touristy islands so we are spared the usual famous ruins. It had affecting family conflict, a fair amount of tension and suspense, and a believable love story. Best of all, the characters not only did not act like idiots, but were sensible, capable, and smart. The two leads were attractive with the added bonus of being fresh faces.

Abby is fired from her job in New York as an Assistant Manager of a prestigious hotel. Not sure why, since she is demonstrably very capable at it. She goes up in the elevator expecting to be deservedly promoted and comes down fired. Weird. She takes the opportunity to visit her mother who moved to Greece a few years prior. Her mother is a real estate agent with a pink office building which just doesn’t fly in Greece where everything is white and blue. She is also dating a handsome Greek man. Abby, being the good manager she is, soon puts a stop to the pink, revises her mom’s website, and her real estate business starts to take off. Thanks to her Mom’s Greek assistant, she also partners up with Theo, who is a wonderful Cordon Bleu trained chef who wants to open his own restaurant but knows nothing about business or customer service.  Helping Theo will give her resume a much needed dose of restaurant experience and Abby is nothing if not a go-getter.

Theo at first comes off like an entitled jerk but as the movie goes on his character softens and he comes across as rather sweet and shy.  The two work together to outfit the restaurant, work on a menu, tackle zoning problems, and get the place up to snuff so it will pass inspection. They butt heads over some things, but refreshingly, they compromise and keep moving forward. To keep things interesting, unbeknownst to Abby, Theo is a billionaire scion of a powerful shipping family who wants to make it on his own. He goes by his down-to-earth late mother’s name and it’s a big secret. The ongoing conflict is with his powerful father who, of course, like all powerful Hallmark fathers, wants his son to join the family firm. Definitely not follow his own different drummer by opening some rinky-dink cafe.

While we tour around Greece, make olive oil, and eat delicious Greek food there is a specter of vague menace and disaster lurking around the corner. His Dad has sent his minion (or maybe it’s his other son) Dmitri,  to get Theo back to Athens. Although not stated, there is a distinct threat of “Or Else”. Dmitri is as scary as he is attractive. We suspect that he might be responsible for the chain of difficulties Theo and Abby have to contend with business-wise. Whether that is actually the case is left up in the air. Also adding to the suspense is how the big secret of his true identity will go over with Abby. When she inevitably finds out, she does not freak out but is level headed about it. In fact, she uses  his renowned name on her resume to snag an even better job than the one she didn’t get a promotion to!

What I liked about this one was that the roadblocks to Abby and Theo’s relationship and the challenges they run into opening the restaurant are resolved with common sense, hard work, and effective communication. I thought “Well good for her!” or “Good for him!” more than once. That is more unusual than it should be in a Hallmark movie. The end is predictable, of course. But when Theo’s powerful father shows up at the restaurant and concedes his formerly intractable position on Theo’s future, I almost choked up a bit. Nice closure at the end as well.