Jessica Sipos

Providence Falls

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It Fell

Am I the only one in the whole wide world who did not absolutely love this 3 part mini-series? Apparently so. Oh, there were some good things about it, for sure. I liked the actors: 4 new fresh faces in lead roles, an old favorite (Matty Finochio) in a pivotal role, and 2 Hallmark mainstays in small but important parts. Kudos to Niall Matter who played a bad guy against type. The set direction and production values were top notch, and there were parts of the script that were just fine. But the whole thing felt forced and manufactured around a very faulty premise. It didn’t make sense and was just wrong. And I’m not talking about the angels and devils, the dual timeline, the time travel, or the reincarnation. I usually like that stuff. Some of Hallmark’s best movies have been based on those kinds of plots. And part of what bothered me was that they dropped the love story and all the supernatural stuff right in the middle of a police procedural for no reason I can think of that made any sense. Except to stretch maybe 3 hours of story into 6 hours. 

Cora and Liam are star-crossed lovers in 1844 Ireland who met when Liam, a thief and a rogue, broke into her father’s country estate to steal some things. They fell in love and were running away together, when, chased by dogs, torches, and pitchforks, Cora fell off a cliff and died. Liam is miserable and blames himself, but instead of being reincarnated or sent to heaven or, as they call it here, “H.E. double hockey sticks”, he is put in Limbo for almost 200 years due to a clerical error. Doesn’t heaven have some kind of quality control department? That was disturbing. Of course he had to die first and I am afraid I am a little fuzzy on how that happened. He comes to our attention because they are “clearing Limbo out”. Liam is given a chance to make up for cutting Cora’s life short and taking her away from her soulmate (who she barely met) and her important destiny and earn his way into heaven. Somehow, her death is all Liam’s fault, not her own nor the trackers chasing her over hill and dale and off the cliff. Or just an accident for that matter. All he has to do, in the present time, is to get Cora, who has been re-incarnated, back together with her so-called soulmate that she barely met, who has also been reincarnated. Cora is now a newly promoted police detective in Providence Falls, and Liam is a visiting detective (Ha!), her new partner. Her soulmate Finn (Evan Roderick) is an Assistant D.A. and is a good guy and very attractive. But despite Hallmark trying to fool us, savvy Hallmarkies know he is not the one because instead of coffee he drinks tea with sugar in it, is a lot shorter than Liam, and is a little too well-groomed. Also an old cohort of 1844 Liam is back and has been re-incarnated as the police chief. And maybe some other people? I don’t know. 

So we have 6 hours including commercials of Liam getting used to cell phones, cars, and other 21st century things and pushing his beloved Cora into the arms of Finn, who she really is not all that interested in. Just as she did back in Ireland, she has fallen for Liam at first sight. And Finn likes her best friend Suzette. Could it be possible that it is Liam and not Finn who is Cora’s soulmate? Nope, nope, nope, absolutely not. Destiny and Fate cannot be wrong, and Destiny has spoken. Even though against all of the rules in the Destiny Rule Book, Cora has started to remember her history with and love for Liam in her former life. So Destiny is wrong about some things then. But according to the angel Samael, the lady in charge of this fiasco, if she reunites with selfish bad Liam, instead of good and decent Finn, she will not be able to continue to help at-risk youth and keep them on the straight and narrow. Somehow this capable woman cannot do her good works unless she’s with the right man. I think Miss Samael got her centuries mixed up. Meanwhile Liam is proving over and over what a reformed character he is. But no, according to this angel Samael, he is selfish and bad to the end even when he is rescuing Finn from an old mine shaft and throwing himself in front of a speeding bullet to save Cora’s life. Repentance? Forgiveness? Grace? Free Will? Fuhgettaboutit. And all through this, there is a very drawn out murder mystery/burglary/criminal conspiracy to solve that was right out of the usual Hallmark Movies and Mysteries playbook.

I understand why everyone really liked this. It was a well-done ambitious production for Hallmark, and the trappings were off the usual beaten track, even though the love story was predictable and the mystery was tedious. I just couldn’t get past that damn angel Samael being so blind and misguided: Insisting that poor Liam could not get into heaven despite his proven goodness unless Cora ended up with Finn against both of their wills. I know it was to create tension and keep the thing going for 6 hours. But it was just wrong and flew in the face of what angels are supposed to be about. I couldn’t believe it when the Angel Gabriel (Brendan Penny) showed up to save the day, and he told her what a good job she did! He left Liam’s fate up to her as long as she first finally listened to the one good angel with some sense, her assistant, Agon, Liam’s handler. She should have been fired and threatened with H.E. double hockey sticks.

Rating: 6 out of 10.

Love on The Danube: Royal Getaway

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Art Lovers

I’m giving this one an almost 7, which is fairly typical for a travelogue Hallmark movie. The story was one of the “Royal in Disguise” ones and does not miss a square on the bingo card. So, as usual, the plot wasn’t much, but it was saved somewhat by the scenery along the Danube and the lead actress, Jessica Sipos. Sipos is not new to Hallmark, but this is her first time in a lead role. I hope not the last, because she was appealing, convincing, pretty, and well-cast (casting being a frequent stumbling block for Hallmark.) Dan Jeannotte was also well cast and together they made a good couple with decent chemistry. Unfortunately, although I usually like him pretty well,  in this one, Jeannotte’s over-the-top posh British accent got between his role and his performance. It was very distracting. Maybe he should have gone with an Eastern European accent? You know, because he was supposed to be from Baldonia(?), which everyone knows is on the Danube River which flows through Eastern Europe. However, his facial expressions matched what he was supposed to be conveying.

Ava is a curator in an Art Gallery who is a little burned out and still hurting from breaking up with her fiancé a year ago. Her boss convinces her to go ahead and go on the river cruise that was supposed to be her honeymoon. Hmmmm. That could have gone either way as far as a mood-booster. Josef is a Duke in line for the throne of Baldonia(?). He is on the outs with his dad, The King, because of some minor scandals (a speeding ticket right in front of the palace!) and not taking his royal duties seriously though he does a lot of charity work involving art. His Valet/Butler/P.A./Handler (Yes, one of those. Every royal has one, and this one is of the nice, not sinister, varieties) convinces them to have Josef go on the exact same cruise that Ava is on to have a think about his future and stop by the various palaces that they cruise by to gather art works for the Royal Charity Gala which will top off the movie. Of course he goes incognito as “Joe, just Joe” and strikes up a romance with Ava while montage-ing along the Danube. Despite some close calls, he keeps up the deception until he is outed by a paparazzo. 

Ava is betrayed and the Molten Fires of Hell are unleashed. Not really, but when she reads him the riot act about his deception she does it with such conviction that when she ultimately forgives him it did not follow convincingly. Usually the conflict is resolved by some grand gesture but all it took for her to give in was a nice letter from Joe’s sister-in-law, a formal invitation to the Royal Gala, and a selection of ball gowns to choose from should she decide to accept the invitation. Ha Ha. The last 5 or 10 minutes rushed to a close, with Joe’s brother, the future king (Joe decides on another career path) and his nice wife gifting them both together a painting that she has been looking for that was under a sheet in the family palace all the time. This seemed a little presumptuous. They now are co-owners of the valuable painting even though they’ve only been on a few dates and the future of the relationship seemed kind of iffy to say the least before the Royal Gala. But now they have no choice but to get married and live happily ever after because they might as well, right? Wouldn’t want to complicate matters with a custody battle over a piece of art of the “My 4-year-old-could-do-better” variety.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Betty’s Bad Luck in Love

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Bored with Betty

Regrettably, the cute title was the best thing about this one. Oh, it wasn’t bad. It just seemed a little pointless. Or maybe it was me not understanding the point.

The concept seemed promising. Betty as a young middle schooler is cursed by a classmate, Eleni Vrakos, for being friendly with a boy she had her eye on. The curse is that “disaster will befall you and every single one of your future boyfriends.” Laughable, but admittedly Eleni did look pretty scary and her mother supposedly ran a new agey occult-type shop. Plus there was that little gust of wind after the curse, so the viewer is led to believe there might be something to it. Whenever magic happens in a Hallmark, there is always a gust of wind. 

We are reintroduced to Betty 20 years later while breaking up with her boyfriend in a taxi because he almost stepped into traffic. She is a respected Risk Assessor and Actuary. We learn that all of Betty’s romances in the past have, indeed, ended with disaster. And she has decided to just give up on that side of her life. She has always blamed it on the long ago curse of her tween years. The thing is, it is all too vague for the viewer to really buy into Betty’s problem or empathize with her. We are never told what sort of “disasters” befell Betty and her boyfriends for the last 20 years or how many. Or was it just her boyfriends whose limbs and lives were in peril?   Or did she cut short any developing relationships out of fear of disaster, rather than actual disaster? Or is she just a flake? Or At what point did she start blaming the curse? We could have used a montage of a sampling of her past supposed love disasters to get an idea of exactly what Betty and her boyfriends had been up against. Did anybody die?

Encouraged by her mother and her best friend, Mya, Betty is tempted to try again when she meets Alex who is a handsome and nice new tenant in her building. A photojournalist, he leads a very adventurous life and goes to many dangerous places. Not an ideal choice for risk adverse Betty. The rest of the movie involves Betty wrestling with her fears for Alex if they get together, waffling indecisively and basically jerking the ever-patient and smitten Alex around. One day she goes too far by following him and his buddy on a camping trip and spying on him through binoculars. When she creates a ruckus over a raccoon she thinks is a bear,  he finally realizes she is too weird and decides to move on. Meanwhile, she buys a counter curse at a fortune teller shop for 149.99 plus tax. With hope in her heart, she wants to try again with Alex and he agrees. He is a glutton for punishment. The next thing we know, Alex is running into a burning building to rescue a trapped construction worker, and the building explodes. Of course, he is OK, and Betty believes the jinx is broken. They a plan a second date. But when he falls down the stairs, even though, again, he is OK, she breaks up with him at the hospital.

Searching for Eleni to remove the curse through half of this movie, she finally tracks her down. Nice suburban mom Eleni is totally confused when Betty basically accuses her of being the source of all of her love disasters for the past 20 years. She has no idea what she is talking about. Her mother was not a fortune-telling witch but worked in a bank! Eleni was an absolute saint during this encounter. It turns out it was not a real curse but just tween-age drama. Betty sees that all of her and her exes’ misfortunes have just been just random bad luck and not the result of a curse. Boy is her face red. She gets back with Alex again and they get married. In the last scene, she is going with him to the Amazon and playing gender-mixed rugby with him to show how cured she is. For the record, I don’t think men and women playing rugby on the same team is advisable.

 I just didn’t see the point of it all. Let fear rule your life until you find out the bad things that happen are not the result of being cursed, but just random? Seems a little specific. At one point she quotes Cormac McCarthy, “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you”. Sounds like words to live by, and Betty says she loves the quote. But she lives her life diametrically opposed to that way of thinking. And by the way, it is her friend Mya who is having disaster after disaster in planning her wedding and it is Betty who is encouraging her and not letting her give up. Continuing to blame “luck” for her past problems, rather than her choices or not seeing that accidents just happen sometimes seemed to undermine whatever message I thought that maybe this movie was trying to convey. The whole back-and-forth thing was tedious and made me very bored with Betty. I don’t think she learned a thing but might benefit from some professional counseling.

Rating: 6 out of 10.

A Season for Family

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No Buddy, It’s Really Not That “Complicated.”

**Spoilers**

This was shaping up to be a decent pull at the ol’ heartstrings usually involving moving forward after a death that Hallmark Movies and Mysteries specializes in. Stacey Farber was charming and refreshingly natural looking (No long ringlet over her shoulder!) as Maddie, the female lead,  and Brendan Penny, the male lead, is always at least good, and sometimes very good. The two play adoptive parents. Maddie is single by choice, and the mother of Wesley, a fairly well-adjusted kid, except he has recently learned he has a biological brother that he longs to meet. It is his Christmas wish. Brendan plays Paul who has lots of challenges in his life. He owns a struggling ski shop and his wife died a couple of years ago. Their adopted son, Cody, who is maybe about 8 or 9 does not know that he is adopted, and his mother on her deathbed and widowed dad agreed not to tell him until he was 10 years old. First, WTH? And, why?  This does not seem like a good idea in this day and age not to tell a child they are adopted. I mean, what is the big deal? If you don’t raise a child to always know they are adopted, shouldn’t you at least drop the truth bomb on him before he starts school? Why 10? Seems a little random with no regard to circumstances and your child’s personality and maturity level. But anyway, all the conflict arises from this peculiar decision, which later morphs into a “promise.” As in deathbed. Right. As we are told over and over, “It’s complicated”.

Maddie and Wesley visit her parents for Christmas in Park City Utah where Paul and Cody live. They meet at Paul’s ski shop. Mother and Father and the two boys bond immediately and it turns out that Wesley and Cody are, yes, you guessed it, biological brothers! What a happy coincidence! Here is Maddie’s son, yearning for a brother, and here is Paul’s son who is shy and timid and needing to come out of his shell, finally making a much-needed friend in Wesley. And here is Paul and Maddie who like each other a lot. But no. It’s complicated. Since Paul is too stupid and cowardly to tell his son about being adopted until he reaches the magical age of 10, everything is hush-hush. And here’s the thing. I won’t go into all of the details explaining, but he will lose his business and will have to move to Colorado because he can’t take advantage of a business proposition involving Maddie’s father, Wesley’s grandfather. Because Wesley and Cody must be separated so Cody doesn’t find out the truth (before he is 10).

Paul’s life, Cody’s life, the life of his sister who has been a surrogate mother to Cody, his best friend, and even Maddie and Wesley and Maddie’s parents are all going to be torn apart or heartbroken because he won’t tell Cody he is adopted (before he is 10). Not to mention all that he is depriving his son of. And believe me, everyone sees what an idiot he is being except him, and isn’t afraid to try to nicely talk sense into him. Too nicely. It was maddening. And to top it off, when he finally takes to heart all of the wise advice he has ignored or anguished over throughout the movie and tells Cody the news, It turns out Cody already knew! Funny stuff!

So Paul’s foolishness ruined the movie for me, despite the great job the two little kid actors did as Wesley and Cody, the previously mentioned Stacey Farber, the presence of Laura Solis as Maggie’s mom, and the nice Christmas decorations. In the last 2 minutes, Paul apologizes to Maggie, they kiss, tell the boys the truth, the two families come together for Christmas dinner,  and we leave them at the table laughing like maniacs.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10.