David Attar

Round and Round

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A New Spin

**Spoilers**

As an unabashed Tribute? Homage? Knock-off? of the classic movie, Groundhog Day, this one really works. One can hardly do a time loop movie without embracing and acknowledging that film, and it is referred to often. In fact, it is why our victim, Rachel, knows what is happening to her. And how she describes her dilemma to others. “It’s like I’m in…Groundhog Day! I’m in Groundhog Day!” The movie was full of other pop-culture references as well, which was fun. The fast-paced script sparkles with self-aware humor and clever dialog. But this version of a time loop movie has enough twists and divergences to take it off on unexpected and entertaining paths. It goes its own way.

Rachel is an assistant editor at a major publishing house but who once dreamed of being a writer herself. She is in a relationship with an assistant professor at Columbia University. But the first time we see him he is on the phone with her lying to get out of spending the seventh night of Hanukkah with her and her family at their traditional party celebrating the night her parents met. Loser. On the way to the party, Rachel is crashed into by a cute guy spilling all of the traditional jelly donuts she was tasked with bringing to the party. When she gets to her home, there he is again! I think we have a winner. Her grandma Rosie (Paula Shaw) has brought Zach along from the assisted living facility where he teaches art as her driver. (But really to set him up with Rachel). In the course of the evening, Grandma Rosie gives her an antique dreidel that has been in the family for generations. She tells her that “it brings light into the lives of those who spin it.” But when Rachel spins it during the dreidel game the curtains catch on fire. Due to the faulty wiring of their strand of dreidel lights, or so says the fire department. The next morning, Rachel wakes up and immediately realizes the day is repeating itself, setting her on a mission to break the cycle. In doing so, she enlists the help of Zach who is a fantasy role play nerd. He believes her after she predicts everything that is going to happen at the party. He in turn enlists the help of his buddy Seth who is even more of a fantasy nerd. Each day she gets Zach and Seth up to speed and on board to help her. Kind of like a 50 First Dates situation. On the third repeat day, they start to try to find the “inciting incident” that triggered the time loop.  As “experts” in the “field”, Zach and Seth point out that there must be something off in her life and she has to fix it in order to resolve her little problem. In the course of their mission, Rachel dumps her bad boyfriend, shares a Young Adult Fantasy novel she wrote years ago with her new friends, opening herself up to the feedback she has been afraid of, and Zack and Rachel fall in love. Seth is with them through it all and meets his own unlikely soulmate.

Finally, on the 7th night of Hanukkah, Grandma Rosie, and later her family, share a secret with Rachel. With all of the changes Rachel has made in her life and the understanding she has gained, this time when she spins the dreidel, the curtains do not catch on fire and the cycle is broken. But she and Zach have a misunderstanding that part them. The next day is the 8th and last day of Hanukkah, and Rachel must resolve the problem with Zach. We learn that Rachel is not the only one who has been hiding her light under a bushel.

This movie was, for me, the perfect mix of romance and story and full of funny, lovable, and well-crafted characters. The whole cast did an excellent job including the leads who are new fresh faces for Hallmark and veteran actors Paula Shaw and Ric Hoffman as Rachel’s father. It was a warm and wonderful little gem and one that will only improve upon re-watching because of the fun script.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

Field Day

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“As soon as you think you’ve got it all figured out, Bam! A wall of corn.”

~~Musings in the Corn Maze~~

Very Nice. Very Very Nice. Field Day is another Hallmark plot that ventures off the usual beaten track of go to small town add festival and old boyfriend and save some tired old institution. Yes, it’s another Hallmark that mixes it up a bit. This happily seems to be becoming a trend. Rachel Boston, who has been getting a lot of Hallmark work these days, plays Jen, a widowed mother of a teenager who moves back home closer to her and her late husband’s parents for support. Needless to say, she is still nursing her grief and has closed herself off from truly moving forward in her life, especially her love life.  OK, OK, so far it does sound like business as usual. And there is a festival. But trust me.

Jen is sharp, funny, and relatable. Driving her daughter to school in her pajama bottoms, “because no one will see. I’m not getting out of the car”, the inevitable happens and she winds up out of the car, attending a PTO meeting, and roped into volunteering for the dreaded Field Day fundraising event with two other moms we have been introduced to.  Marissa is a confident and canny Lawyer Mom who has put her family on the back burner in favor of her career. Kelly is an annoying Social Media Mom with over 10,000 followers devoted to maintaining her influencer image as the perfect wife and mother. Together they form an unlikely trio intent on making the infamous field day a success, (despite the mean-girl PTO president). In the process, they become firm friends and regain the balance in each of their lives. It doesn’t start off well. Kelly and Marisa have been on the outs because Kelly once publicly pointed to Marissa as an example of how working mothers neglect their kids. And now, to compound the situation, she just posted a picture of newcomer Jen’s pajama bottoms as #3 of 5 things not to do at a PTO meeting. Kelly sounds like a real stinker, but thanks to good writing and acting, we like her anyway. After many bonding adventures and the highs and lows of putting on field day, Marissa regains her work/life balance and Kelly realizes she doesn’t need her phony perfect image and becomes her real self. Jen, who is the main focus of the story, starts to become “unstuck” and (bonus!) finds love with the school’s athletic coach played by a well-cast Benjamin Ayers. Because he has some issues to overcome as well, their romance doesn’t follow the usual predictable arc and is interesting and engaging.

Field Day is fast-paced, funny, touching, and wise. I teared up at one point and felt like cheering at another. The characters are well drawn and engaging even down to the long-suffering but loving and supportive husbands of Marissa and Kelly. If these guys love their challenging wives who have gone a bit off track, they must be worth rooting for. The humor is witty and snarky with a few doses of slapstick.  At one point, Marissa makes fun of baking montages so beloved by Hallmark scripters. The three women have an easy and natural rapport and play off of each other very entertainingly. Well-written and well-acted. It’s a lot of fun. Yay, Hallmark.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

A Fabled Holiday

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Pretty Packaging

**spoilers**

I wavered between a 7 and an 8 for this one. I liked the trappings and the framing of the story but the basic plot of strangers coming together to repair what is wrong with their lives was tired. None of their arcs had a lot of substance or originality. Or, failing substance, humor, suspense, drama, or engaging romance. On the positive side, it did have Brooke D’Orsay and Ryan Paevey as the main couple. Their performances were charming as usual.  I like them separately, and they were OK together, but just OK. Maybe they are both just too nice to generate much romantic tension with each other.

It all starts out with a little girl and her father reading a fairy story about a magical town called Wunderbrook. Sadly the Dad dies and the little girl and her mother move away. Before she goes, she gives her storybook to her best friend Anderson and she promises to send him her stories as she writes them.

When next we see her, she owns a bookstore. Her aspirations to be an author have died on the vine due to her lack of self-confidence and fear of failure. Meanwhile, we catch up on her childhood friend Anderson who is now a surgeon who is questioning his calling due to losing a patient. We also meet a married couple who have grown apart and are on the verge of divorce and an old man who is very lonely since his beloved wife died.

Through various magical means (a detour on a road, a wrong number, getting lost, and a flooded basement) they find themselves together in Wunderbrook. It is the magical town of the storybook come to life. It turns out that they all had the book as children, but for some reason, it is only Brooke that starts to make the connection between the story and the real-life town they find themselves in. She is poopoo-ed throughout the whole movie, almost. As they spend time with the owners of the B&B and their daughter (really the King, Queen, and Princess), and the other denizens of the place, including the wicked witch, they start to get cured of what ails them. The hostile bickering couple starts to repair their marriage and the old man finds a friend in the owner of the bar/restaurant who is also bitter and lonely (the witch.) The two childhood friends start to fall in love as well as, in the end, get over the fears that are holding them back from fulfilling their dreams. It all comes together at the end with not only our friends on a happy road to love and success but Wunderbrook itself being saved, thanks to a certain aspiring writer.

Their individual stories of love and learning are told by a storyteller as if they were characters in a storybook. This was a new path for Hallmark to take and I liked and appreciated the creativity. Christmas Magic is a common trope but usually has to do with Santa and time travel. This was something quite different and, again, I appreciated it. Unfortunately, they forgot to find engaging stories to put in all that creative framing. It was, to paraphrase one of Brooke’s publisher’s rejections, “cute” but not entirely enough for me.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Autumn in the City

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New York is so Nice!

This was fairly watchable despite a few troublesome aspects. One of which was the mismatch in the casting. Aimee Teegarden is an attractive and relatively youthful Hallmark leading lady and Evan Roderick as her love interest was a fresh new face and did well. Unfortunately, together, the pair didn’t work. Aimee is in her early 30s playing an almost 30-year-old. Evan Roderick is 6 years younger and could pass for 17. So, for me, the chemistry was off.

Piper has escaped from her hometown and her over-protective parents to pursue her dreams in New York City. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have any dreams other than escaping from her dead-end life in Iowa or Omaha or whatever. This leads to a series of temp jobs where she hopes that her destiny will hit her “like a bolt of lightning.” She is almost 30 years old. Honey, if lightning hasn’t struck by now, it’s not going to. The thing is, her passion is right in front of her, but she is totally oblivious. Big Clue: She is constantly drawing and coloring in her sketchbook which is never far from her side. So, Piper, art? Maybe? While waiting for her bolt out of the blue, Piper waves aside several amazing opportunities that most young ambitious *20* somethings starting from scratch would kill for. I could neither sympathize, understand, nor relate. She turns down a supervisory position in a museum, which I’m pretty sure would be snapped up by most master’s degree holders in the field just to get their foot in the door. She takes a job as the personal assistant to a Broadway star. But she is about ready to go on a national and international tour, including London. Piper doesn’t want to go (why not?????!!!!!!!) and quits or is fired. Then she gets a job in an art gallery where she promptly sells a painting they have been trying to get rid of for months and earns a 10% commission which the owner has to insist she accept. New York certainly is the land of opportunity and New Yorkers are all just waiting to give nice mid-westerners cool jobs. But not cool enough for Piper. Despite being a closerthanthis match to her artistic talents, she quits to go back home to her boring life and suffocating parents even ditching her own birthday party. (She is sad because her boss told her her cute sketches weren’t quite gallery show material.) Spoiler alert. She changes her mind at the last minute.

While all this is going on she gets to know Austin, the son of a world-famous journalist and Piper’s next-door neighbor. He is writing a  children’s book about Nathan the Squirrel rather than following in his egotistical mother’s footsteps. His mother won’t let up and she gets him a job he doesn’t want as a reporter and instead of just turning it down, he is a waste of space, acts like a petulant child, and gets fired. Both of these two lead charmed lives, however, even for Hallmark. Austin submits his manuscript to a publisher, thanks to some shaming from Piper, and, even without an agent, it gets accepted. And not only accepted but they want a whole series about Nathan! He had talked Piper into doing the illustrations for his pitch. Lightening Bolt! By the end, after a lot of “tragedy” and triumph, she has her dream career and a boyfriend. There were no pumpkins in this one (pumpkin spice lattes don’t count) but lots of leaves. Attention young midwesterners! Life in New York City really isn’t like this!

Rating: 6 out of 10.