Flip Flop

This movie I had major problems with. The actors were fine. The male lead was very attractive and I liked Fiona Gubelmann better than I thought I would. It was beautifully filmed and the Irish scenery was lovely and evocative. The plot was standard stuff that could go either way between a fairly decent movie or a disaster depending on the details. This was not a disaster, but full of distracting headscratchers that pushed the needle close to disaster territory. The basic plot on which all hangs is Rose (Fiona) going to Ireland to flip a house she bought on a whim on the internet. She is a successful real estate investor and designer and who enjoys her freedom and lack of roots. She meets Sean, the handsome and sexy real estate agent/possibly mayor/most eligible bachelor/official preserver of historical cottages/anti-flipping police. Handsome and sexy he might be, but despite his banter and jokes, one senses a certain complicated mysterious darkness there. Of course he is the love interest. Fiona sets about restoring the house, bumping heads with Sean about every improvement she wants to make. Seemed like a pretty standard issue Hallmark plot, but whoever wrote this seemed determined to bewilder and perplex.

First off, Sean was clearly meant to be an admittedly rough diamond: Outwardly hard to get along with but with a heart of goo. (He has a nice mother, who welcomes Fiona with open arms for one thing.) But what about his sleazy sales tactics? Fiona based her purchase on a photo of the cottage which was charming if spartan by the sea with wonderful views. When she gets to Ireland, it turns out the pictures are several years old and the cottage is literally falling apart with tarps over the roof, water damage, falling beams, boarded up windows, with outdoor refuse everywhere inside as well as out. It was shabby behavior and false advertising. And sorry, I didn’t buy his smirking excuses: I told you to read the fine print, I told you not to buy it, etc. He claims the property itself is worth 3 times what she paid for the house. Which doesn’t do her any good because he would never sign off on demolition of such a historical hovel treasure so a buyer could start from scratch. What a weasel. Such unethical behavior on the part of a Hallmark hero is a first. I think I can say without qualification that his “Ma” would not approve. This is behavior typical of the “bad boyfriend,” our heroine gives the heave-ho to, not the good guy.

And why did a successful savvy professional house buyer purchase a cottage 5000 pounds over the asking price in another country sight unseen without reading the fine print anyway?

Even though he sold her a bill of goods by despicable means, he compounded his duplicity by refusing to work with her to make the property sellable. He wouldn’t even approve her paint colors. He apparently relents a bit behind the scenes.

And what about that renovation? We have a scene of her working like a dog for what could have been days or could have been weeks or could have been 1 day, trying to make the place habitable. It is in such bad shape she has to stay at a local inn for her own safety.  She is literally sweeping bushes out of the main room and scraping mold off the walls one day and the next she is living there. With no heat, electricity, or running water by the way. It is still a wreck on the outside but in a matter of anywhere from a day to a week it is completed inside and out complete with red trim around the (newly installed) windows, flowers in the window boxes, furniture, art, and a fully decorated Christmas Tree. The timeline is very vague to say the least, but one day Rose goes to Sean’s nice mother’s house for dinner with tarps still on her roof and boarded up holes where the windows are supposed to be, and is given a mince pie. The next scene the house is beautifully restored. It could only have been a day or two because when she next meets the mother again, “Ma” asks her how she liked the pies.

While staying at the picturesque hotel, she develops friendships with two other women. One woman’s story is fairly well developed with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But the other younger woman is just tagging along for the ride, which would be OK except that she drops the bombshell that she is actually a famous pop star (“a legend”, no less) hiding out from “the fame”. Can we have her movie please? Why drop an intriguing hook like that and just do nothing else with it? Oh, and by the way, when she first meets Rose she tells her that she is also in the midst of having her cottage renovated and she expects it to take 18 months. That’s months, not weeks. See above where Rose has hers completely renovated in the blink of an eye and with no hint of an actual worker coming near the place.

She puts the house up for sale asking the same price she paid despite all the money she must have plowed into it. Not surprisingly, she finds a buyer for the now charming little house right away who plans to gut it and flip it. Rose is very disconcerted. When she tattles on the buyers to Sean, he has no problems with those plans-talk about flipping. Suspicious much?

Throughout the movie, Sean and Rose are flirting, bantering, and falling for each other. They also have some serious talks about how damaged they are by their so-called tragic pasts. When they go on a solitary picnic she leans in for a kiss, surprising me because Hallmark Heroines rarely make the first move, and he recoils from her like she suddenly developed scales or a pig snout! I guess he was as surprised as I was over such behavior. After no explanation, other than “Sorry”, he gives her a bro-hug. I mean…I get that the vulnerable soul probably didn’t want to get sexually involved with a transient who would soon be moving on. He has been single for years to avoid another heartbreak. But the only previous heartbreak we know of was when he broke up with his childhood girlfriend after college. That must have been at least 15 years ago and it was a mutual parting of ways because she didn’t want to move back to the village. It was very fishy.  Red flags aplenty with this guy.

Rose is portrayed as emotionally damaged as well which is why she won’t settle down and put down roots. But I just didn’t buy it. Something about guilt that her mother had to give up her love of travel to be her mother? Neither of the protags supposed issues keeping them from being together really made any sense to me.

Anyway, despite Rose planning to move to Scotland after buying another house sight unseen and behind the scenes, she decides not to sell her Irish cottage. There is a lot of “behind the scenes” going on in this movie. Triggered by digging out her old photo of her mother and wondering where it was taken, she changes her mind and decides home is Sean, not a place, and as long as they are together they will be home. Being alone is the trap, not having a home. No more info about the old photo or where it was taken. It is up in the air whether they are going to Scotland or staying in the village though.

They seal the deal by taking the traditional Christmas plunge into the Northern Sea together. Fully clothed in their sweaters and coats. Which is the last scene and my last “What the Heck?!” moment of many not mentioned.