Good Title, Anyway.

Spoilers

I almost liked this. There was some good writing in there and some funny quips. It started out pretty well, but unfortunately the three main women characters turned out to be too much of a mess. Things started to look up a little over half way through and I started to hope that as least two of them were starting to turn things around. But no, our main protagonist gets herself into so much trouble with everyone else in the movie that they hated her for awhile and I couldn’t blame them. She did bad. The secondary lead backslides from all of the progress she had made to get her life on the right track and I threw up my hands. Of course the big crisis results in lessons learned and a happy ending for all but by that time it was too late after grinding my teeth through the whole movie.

Rachel Leigh Cook plays Megan, who is the founder and CEO of her own tech company based on a scheduling app she created. In the first scene she is ousted by the board of directors due to a downturn in their stock during the last 3 quarters. We are to understand this was an unfair and unwise move on their part especially since she is to be replaced by the daughter of the chairman of the board. At first I was skeptical of how realistic this scenario was. How could Megan allow herself to be placed in the position of being fired from her own company? But a quick Google search taught me that this is quite common. In fact, it is the usual fate of the founders of companies. Did you know that Elon Musk was fired from PayPal? And who founded Tesla? No, not Elon Musk. It was Martin Eberhard, who was also fired from his own company to make way for you know who. What was unrealistic about Megan’s firing was how shocked and surprised she was. But I digress.

Megan does not know who she is or what to do with herself without her company, so when her screw-up of a little sister asks Megan to help her get her life on the right track she recognizes that this is something she can really sink her teeth into. Or, as her assistant Chris puts it, “Really sink your claws into, shred into pieces and eat the beating heart out of.” She conceives a plan to treat her sister’s makeover like her sister is a struggling company to be turned around. She appoints  a board of directors, with herself the chairman, and together they will change Izzy’s life trajectory in personal appearance and branding, love, and career path. Izzy wants her hair to look like the shampoo commercials and to be able to “afford stuff.” All of “The Board” are friends and connections except one guy, who is to be the independent director to ensure everything stays on track . He is a professor and chair of the psychology department of a local college. The only reason he gives for applying to donate his time and expertise to such an off the wall project is that it is so off the wall as to be intriguing and he has a light schedule this semester. He looks like a young Clive Owen, seems to have it all together, and is Megan’s love interest. I liked him. He gives good advice to Megan throughout which she ignores. In fact, I liked all of the characters except the main ones: the two sisters and their mother.

Megan is a workaholic with no time for her family or a personal life. This is hardly unusual for a Hallmark Heroine who has to learn balance, the importance of family, and find love in 89 minutes. That plot is a Hallmark mainstay.  But Megan treats her mother and sister with contempt, clearly looking down on them and lets her disapproval shine through with every word and interaction.  When she is not rolling her eyes, she looks like she is about to. But then, she acts all sorry for herself at being excluded from the tight bond between the two other women. But when they attempt to include her, she rejects them and wants no part of it. So I had a hard time feeling any sympathy for her despite her dead Daddy issues. When she gets her sister under her thumb thanks to her project, her dictatorial ways did nothing to soften my feelings toward her. Daniella Monet, who played Izzy, brought as much charm and likability to her role as she could. She did a great job with a very troubling character. Almost 30-year-old Izzy  spends her life going to festivals, partying, and dating useless men. She spends the money she does earn with her dead end job foolishly. She does not still live at home, but her lifestyle is subsidized by her indulgent mother and her reluctant step-father.  We first meet her delivering pizza. Our first impression is of her reaching into the top delivery box and tearing off a chunk with her bare hand and stuffing it in her mouth. Since this was despite a warning from her boss not to sample the merchandise we can assume this is not an isolated incident. I found it very difficult to look at her with a kind eye after that. And the last of the terrible trio is the mother. As Megan says, Izzy and Lois are codependent. Lois is a bad mother, treating her like a best friend rather than a parent. She enables her in all of her foolish behavior, pays her bills, and even seems to resent Izzy’s respectable new job in an art gallery because it takes away from their fun times together.  To top it all off she puts a tracker on Izzy’s phone without her knowledge.

They’re not all bad. All three demonstrated some charm and redeeming characteristics here and there. Like last Saturday’s movie, I appreciated the big city setting and city concerns rather than being plunked down in the middle of farms, small towns, and festivals for a change. The rest of the cast was unobjectionable to very good.

By the end, Megan finally mends her relationships with everyone she needs to including the handsome professor.  Izzy gets her life together in about two seconds at the end, out of nowhere, does it her way, and by herself (!). And Mom comes to an understanding with both of her two daughters. On the professional front, Megan starts a new business with a product that was lurking in the background all the time, and we have the satisfaction of knowing that her old company is tanking without her. Always a big “Yay!”