Cindy Busby

Everything Christmas

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Don’t Peek Behind the Curtain

This one was not a real disappointment because, for some reason, I wasn’t expecting much. The leads were likable, not a Hallmark that I pre-judge negatively because of the actors. I’ve always had a soft spot for Cindy Busby and she did her typical Cindy Busby thing in this one. And Corey Sevier is always good. Unfortunately, the plot was rather a throwaway one, and I didn’t think Cindy and Corey had great chemistry. Although at least in this one there was not a big age gap. And yes, I can buy the 40-year-old actors being 32. I don’t think Hallmark had a lot of faith in this one. The production values were sub-par and the title is vague and seems lazy.

Lori Jo quits her job in the first scene because her bratty boss who has a man bun tells her she must work through the holidays and she has Christmas plans that are 10 years in the making. She is going to Yuletide Springs, the ultimate Christmas town, to put a special ornament on their town Christmas Tree. This is a trip she had always planned with her Grandmother, who unfortunately has recently died. She is doing this for Gran. She convinces her friend and co-worker, Tori, who is much more practical and down to earth to go with her.  What we have here is a road trip. And it’s kind of blah.

On the first day out,  LJ meets her Christmas-loving soulmate, a garage-owning mechanic who rescues the pair when their car breaks down. A magic Santa Claus figure also enters the picture and he gives the trio each a little gift that will prove to be mysteriously useful in the next few days. Through a series of his seemingly magical manipulations, Zack, the garage owner meets up again with LJ and Tori even though they are much further down the road from where they left him in his garage. This was confusing and I really needed a map. They have been diverted by Magic Santa whose name is Kris Kringle (nothing subtle there!) to another town on the way to Yuletide Springs. There, Tori meets her lovematch, Jason, and they visit an attraction called the Enchanted Forest, where the first gift comes into play. Jason decides to join them as Zack drops out because he has to go back to work.

Skip skip skip. They eventually get to Yuletide Springs, which is somewhere out west (I need a map!!) and LJ breaks the special ornament while hanging it on the special Christmas tree.  Another gift comes in and the situation is saved in another seemingly magical and fateful way. Also, Zack shows up in Yuletide Springs. The movie ends in a strange way. All through the movie, we are wondering if this Kris Kringle is the real Santa or just a magician. When they reach Yuletide Springs, Kris is there and established as the town Santa. By this time all 4 are convinced that there is real Santa magic going on, but then we learn some information to the contrary. He is a retired professional illusionist named Chris Bronstad. They are confused and disappointed. Especially Tori who has been the “logical explanation” girl throughout the whole movie. But all those magical occurrences that happened on the way to Yuletide Springs can not be explained by a magician’s tricks and illusions. It ends with some dissonance that is rather awkward. And you know what? It could have been fixed by having Chris’s surname mean something like magical or mysterious elf or saint or something in Swedish. But wait, that elf at the very end. Haven’t we seen her before? I’m still confused, but as Chris/Kris says at the end, “Don’t peek behind the curtain.” Mmmmm…that doesn’t fly with me. I probably won’t be peeking at this one again. But not horrible.

Rating: 6 out of 10.

Love in Zion National: A National Park Romance

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Hallmark Takes on The Anasazi

Love in Zion National is the type of Hallmark movie that you can watch while doing your household chores. Actually filmed in Zion National Park, the scenery is beautiful. Cindy Busby is a Hallmark actress that people seem to either really like or really not like. I’ve always liked her, and she has never looked better, seemingly having resisted the urge to immobilize her forehead. Liked her new straight hair too. Once you get the gist of what is going on you can basically turn off the sound for great stretches of time and not miss a thing. So that’s a problem. Another problem is with the love story. Their relationship seems to have more of a Big Sister/Little Brother vibe rather than loverlike. Other problems include inaccurate history and legal improbabilities on many fronts. Also Hallmark’s usual problems with packing, only this time its backpacks and not suitcases.

Cindy plays assistant curator Lauren whose Denver museum might lose 3 rare pieces of Anasazi pottery that have been willed to them by a wealthy and loyal supporter. Her heir who is a really really bad guy wants the pottery for himself and is challenging the will. Seems very much of a desperate longshot, but the museum is thrown into a tizzy. He is really hateful. Lauren realizes that the 3 pieces are part of a set of 4 and travels to Zion National Park in an unofficial capacity to try to find the missing piece. She hopes that securing the 4th piece for the museum will ensure that they all stay together there. Before hiking into the park, she meets Ranger Adam Proudstar who tells her a mess of things she should have known already about the pottery. She realizes that she will need him as a guide to take her on the weeklong trip to and from “the hidden passage” where she hopes to find the missing vessel. Meanwhile, the bad guy figures out what she is up to and also heads to the park to find it before her.

There is a lot of hiking through the stunning scenery, a twisted ankle, North Star gazing, an encounter with a rattlesnake, and romantic campfires. They find the hidden passage with the help of ancient drawings matching the vases that have somehow escaped the prior notice of God knows how many archeologists and scholars. Selfie time! But before they can find it, the bad guy swoops down out of the sky in a helicopter and takes the vase from right under their noses! This gives us a chance for the big conflict because for some reason Adam is upset that she didn’t tell him that the ownership of the vases was in dispute, and he could have prevented the lost vase from getting stolen. It’s all a bit of a muddle of poor reasoning because all he has to do is get on his satellite phone and have him intercepted and arrested for stealing the vase. It’s not exactly finders keepers when it comes to ancient artifacts, I’m sure. And that applies to Lauren and the Museum too, by the way. Maybe this is why she was so mysteriously cagey with him which seems a little shady? This is typical of Hallmark’s very loosey-goosey relationship with real life. We’re meant to kind of close our eyes and move on, and I’m usually fine with that, but this is one of those times that it just seems really wrong. A writer actually had to write this script and presumably had to do some sort of research?

But never fear, the museum gets the vases back when it is proven that Adam Proudstar’s family actually crafted the vases at least 1000 years ago and they belong to them. This is laughable and absurd and not just borderline offensive. And why did Grandma Proudstar keep these supposedly historical and culturally groundbreaking photos and documentation secret? “Because you didn’t ask me.” Oy Vey. The stunning scenery is beautifully photographed, though.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

Chasing Waterfalls

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Chasing but not Finding

This was a very boring story with a good cast. I usually like Cindy, but as usual, she doesn’t have much to work with here. And unfortunately, she seemed very stiff with Christopher Russell who is gorgeous as usual but really needs some spark with his co-stars to bring him to life when the script does not give him anything else to work with. She did have a good scene on the phone with her boss though.

Speaking of the script, how do I count the ways that this fell off the cliff (pun intended)? One line comparing a mythical waterfall to a unicorn was used twice. Speaking of which, she found this legendary waterfall which is so elusive explorers believe it doesn’t even exist without even breaking a sweat. It turns out was within a few hours hike from a busy lodge. She led the world of waterfall enthusiasts to another hard-to-find fall that she promised to keep secret. Her boss betrayed her and put in the GPS coordinates with the photographs she published in the magazine. We never find out what the outcome of that was. Do the sightseers leave a trail of litter, or do they respect the sacred place? She doesn’t quit in anger, like she should have, and is going on to her next assignment. If she changes her mind, we never know about it. Will she continue on with her dream of being a professional photographer, or will she quit and stay with Christopher and his daughter now that he’s not mad at her anymore? He was about to send a chopper to the secret location of the mythic waterfall, by the way, when they talked about how secret it was throughout the movie. Another silly lapse in the writing.

Nice scenery though. And in a first for Hallmark, at the end, they are planning to spend the night together in the same tent. We have to assume, since it is Hallmark, that this means she is going to quit her job and be a wife and mommy (since his ex travels and leaves their daughter with him most of the time. And why should he take on another one of those situations?) It all ends very vaguely.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

March 23, 2021

Joy for Christmas

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The Mystery of the Lost Plot. Or Was it Kidnapped?

This movie began by ticking me off. Cindy Busby plays a publicist whose boss screws up a booking with their client leading to great embarrassment for her. Then he turns around and throws her under the bus when it was his fault. And apparently, it is not the first time. Now, most “Hallmark” heroines would suck it up and take one for the team, but not Cindy. She ups and quits on the spot! Her boss is horrified because she is his star employee. So as quickly as it made me angry, it immediately redeemed itself.

At a loss as to her next career move, the family business beckons. Her sister is a top executive with the family firm and she tells her that they need her desperately. All of the money meant to fund their big charity of the year has been swindled. Cindy left the firm after her father, under the apparent influence of his second wife and her son, had gotten away from the charity, community, and people-focused ethos begun by her dead mother and is now solely focused on profits. So it’s the two sisters, “the Silver Belles” against the rest of the family. This is shaping up nicely into an interesting story involving more than a hint of family skullduggery with a dose of wicked stepmother and an equally wicked half-brother. And maybe even some justice served, groveling, and redemption on the horizon.

To save the charitable event she recruits a fellow victim of the charity swindler, Sam Page, a famous ex-baseball player. It isn’t easy because he eschews social events and is a famous Scrooge. It seems like a high-cost and low-probability of benefit scheme, and it’s boring. But with only the support of her sister, she finally succeeds in getting his help. Romance proceeds but they fail in attracting enough donations to benefit the needy children. Disappointingly for the intrigue and plot, the stepmother turns nice and helpful all of a sudden.

Cindy and Sam have fallen in love and have shared intimate confidences. At the end of the failed event, her still wicked stepbrother spitefully twists her words about Sam to him which results in hurt, confusion, and a breakup.

Ok, it’s all shaping up as usual and I was all set for the misunderstanding to be cleared up, the charity saved at the last minute, and best of all for the bad stepbrother to get his comeuppance. Then the story just falls apart at the seams. I don’t know what happened but either the writers either lost the plot or the powers that be in charge of family values at GAC tampered with the script. Without warning or explanation, the stepbrother’s firmly established conniving bad-guy persona gets abandoned and he’s suddenly all about goodness, family values, rainbows, and unicorns. The charity and the romance are rescued in a non-related plot development and the bad guy is as happy as the rest of the family. It was downright insulting. So this was an 8, got demoted to a 6 or 7 during the middle, and ended up a 1. I’ll be nice and up it to a 3 out of respect for Cindy Busby and Sam Page who were great together.

Rating: 3 out of 10.

December 29, 2021

Toying With the Holidays (The Holiday Train)

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On Track

Workaholic Danielle ( Can we get a Hallmark heroine who is kinda lazy just one time?) is taking her son home for Christmas to experience the holiday the way she did when she was a child with all of the bells and whistles, including the town’s famous holiday train. At the last minute, her boss lays a project on her that she can work on through her vacation. She briefly stands up to him but when he frowns at her, she caves. When will we have a female employee who is a shining star for the company not give up her power and submit to the boss’s unreasonable demands? In this case though, she is not struggling with the project throughout the movie casting a pall on the family time and celebrations. She pretty much knocks out the project right away and we move on to the important stuff. How refreshing!

Dani is as energetic at home as she is at work and when she learns the Holiday Train which her late Dad took the lead on for the town is kaput, she is determined to set it back on track (no pun intended). To that end, she gets together with Chad Michael Murray who repairs her Dad’s Lionel train she found in the attic. He is a train enthusiast as well as a hobby shop owner. CMM is as lazy and disorganized as Dani is efficient and hardworking. He’s also a little grumpy and a slob. (“Sorry, It’s the maid’s day off.” “Are you sure she isn’t hiding under all that stuff?”) His business is suffering (surprise surprise) possibly because he leaves his store open with no one on the floor while he is in the back room repairing stuff with headphones on so he can’t hear if he has any customers who might would want to buy something but more likely just steal it and he would never know the difference. But opposites attract. Danielle whips his business into shape in no time with a website and a human presence minding the store. CMM embarks on restoring the holiday train and romance ensues, despite some competition from the frisky flower shop owner next door.

Cindy was well cast as the peppy smiley Dani and I liked the pairing with laidback CMM who can do “scruffy” like nobody’s business. Cindy looked great as did the actress who played her Mom who had a little promise of a romance of her own. The Lionel train aspect was interesting. I love trains. Also, I loved Danielle’s house, which looked like a real home in a real neighborhood.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

December 21, 2021

A Christmas in Royal Fashion

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Mis-Cast

I know this was a fairy tale-type movie, so I won’t criticize all of the unlikely events that occur. In fact, I enjoyed the ending where they provided a book end to the story to match the “This is a fantasy-don’t judge us” beginning.

My main problem was with the casting and the acting of Diarmaid Murtagh who played the prince. I should probably blame the director rather than the actor, though. The character was supposed to be an immature and devil-may-care international playboy. That’s why King sent him to America in place of the ambassador: to learn some responsibility. First off he was too old for the part of an immature scamp who needed to grow up and get his priorities in order. And once he got to America, he had a personality transplant and acted like he had a stick up his you-know-what the whole time. And he acted like he had never been out of the castle. Oooooh…The Ocean. Hardly an international playboy. He might make a good Viking,

but as a suave handsome prince, he was a bust. You know how they say, “He cleaned up well!” ? Stay with the bedraggled Barbarian thing, Diarmaid.

Cindy Busby was likable as usual, as a girl who just wants to do the right thing and a good job, but gets caught up in an embarrassing and career-wrecking situation of her own making.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

November 14, 2021

Follow Me to Daisy Hills

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Another Delusional Store Owner Without a Lick of Business Acumen or Common Sense

Cindy Busby, a small-town girl, runs her dead mother’s general store which is going bankrupt. Her Dad calls her ex-boyfriend, a New York City wunderkind who specializes in saving businesses from failure, to come home and help them keep the store from failing. For free. Cindy resists all of his sensible advice until she doesn’t. She won’t even move the candy away from the front door where shoplifters and moochers can reach in and steal it. Because God forbid the elderly patron has to step into the store, pass what tempting merchandise there is, and go to the register to actually pay for her candy. Oh no, her not having to cross the threshold to get her Snickers is the “highlight of her day.” How dare he suggest customers have to pay for their merchandise?! He is a hard-hearted capitalist and all he cares about is money and profit. I kid you not. This store owner’s father has a heart attack from the financial stress and he is about ready to use his life savings to keep the store afloat. She is totally unaware that there is not enough cash to pay the bills, college for her young sister costs money, and an online presence is not an instrument of the devil. She is a menace to her family and the business.

It is easy to see that it didn’t take a marketing genius to save the store, which had little to offer customers except for the 10 bags of Cheetos and 15 cartons of oatmeal that were skillfully arranged on the otherwise empty shelves. What finally saves the store is her getting hit with a clue-stick that her fellow townspeople can use the store to sell their own homemade products from BBQ sandwiches to baked goods to art. Let’s hope she understands that she gets to take a cut of their revenue without being a greedy money grubber. A real go-getter of a business owner would have realized this years ago. An energetic ten-year-old playing with their “Little Tykes Let’s Go Shopping” play store would have done a better job of merchandising.

I usually like Cindy Busby, but her character in this one was so technophobic, ignorant, unpleasant, and stubborn that my eyeballs practically fell out of my head from all of the eye-rolling.

The only other aspect I want to comment on is the weirdness of the way they groomed the hero. His colorless hair was slicked back from his pale forehead in a way that would only be acceptable if he had had a ponytail. but since men with ponytails are verboten on Hallmark, He looked like a dang Nazi. He’s probably a nice enough-looking guy in real life, but he was downright creepy-looking in this.

Also, this movie is in IMDb under Hearts of Down Under. I think someone confused this with another Cindy Busby Hallmark that actually was set in Australia, Hearts Down Under, now called Romance on the Menu. Somebody really screwed up.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

September 21, 2020

Love in the Forecast

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Yay, Teamwork!

Finally, Hallmark teamed Christopher Russell up with an actress he had some chemistry with! He showed a lot more personality than he has in some of his recent roles. The best he’s been since Midnight Masquerade. Although I seem to be the lone ranger here, Cindy Busby is one of my favorite Hallmark actresses and she did not disappoint in this one. The basic plot isn’t anything much but the two leads really played off of each other well. It was a straight-up romantic comedy with no festivals or save the— fill in the blank— gimmicks to prop up a tired plot and fill in the 2 hours. Plus, there was a lot of good information about the weather.

Rating: 8 out of 10.

June 15, 2020

Lucky in Love

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When Mira’s April Fool’s Day tricks materialize, she finds herself promoted to the perfect job, dating the perfect man and living in the perfect home. Mira’s newly upgraded life even involves working with her CEO and her good friend, on a coveted work project. When these seemingly positive changes result in big challenges, Mira realizes that the pursuit of perfection is a fool?s errand. In order to achieve a life that’s perfect for her, Mira must let go of perfection and chase what brings her true happiness.

I Change My Vote!

When I first saw this movie 4 or 5 years ago, I gave it a 5. I just rewatched it and I am bumping my grade up to an 8. Unfortunately, this is a sad commentary on how mediocre the current crop of Hallmark-type movies are. They now churn them out so frequently, that the quality of the acting, plot, chemistry between the leads, directing, and writing has inevitably suffered. Consequently, when I see one that is halfway decent or has one great thing going for it, it earns at least a 7 from me. This one features some actors who have since made it pretty big in Hallmark-Land. namely Benjamin Hollingsworth, Ryan Kennedy, and Peter Benson. And low and behold Cindy Busby in a bit part as a friend of our heroine and barely recognizable with brown hair. I loved Jessica Szohr in the lead role as a girl who achieves the life of her dreams due to a series of coincidences. She was very exotic looking and a far cry from the pageant-ready looks favored by most Hallmark heroines. Her acting was top notch as well, and I loved the ups and downs she goes through to achieve her happy ending and the right man for her. All in all, it was very entertaining, especially since they didn’t cling to stereotypical black or white characterizations. The guy who was the initial “villain” turns out to be a great guy, and our good girl heroine turns into a bit of a bitch before she sees the error of her ways. It looks like Jessica has gone on to other projects besides Hallmark. Hallmark would do well to groom more female leads with her range and interesting looks.

Rating: 8 out of 10.

March 1, 2020

Wedding March 5: My Boyfriend’s Back

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For the Love of All that’s Holy! Will Someone Please Help Josie?!

Although the plot is tired and the writing unoriginal, this one was worth looking at due to the principal love interests. Cindy Busby has been a favorite for quite a while. Tyler Hynes caught my interest as soon as he appeared in a Hallmark last year. He has now become a big favorite. I will give any Hallmark a chance if they have one of these two actors.

On the other hand, poor Josie Bissett’s hair situation has become a concern. She is a lovely woman who has aged gracefully and plays women of her own age. The pairing with Jack Wagner works. I am not sure what is going on with her health or her hair, but there are plenty of attractive wig options out there for those who are in need of some extra assistance. If she has been wearing wigs, they are frightful: stiff and cottony looking. If that’s her real hair, please buy some conditioner or go back to the darling pixie haircut she was once famous for. Sorry, but this is something is totally fixable. I am being cruel to be kind.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

June 9, 2019