Mallory Jansen

The Royal We

/ Rebekahrox / 6 Comments

What About the Foundation?

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There are some early reviews in and I seem to be an outlier on this one. I didn’t love it. It was OK. It had some cute quips and overall was inoffensive but a lot of things  didn’t make a ton of sense. Which to be fair, a lot of things in a lot of Hallmarks, especially royal Hallmarks, don’t. But this one seemed to try to be conveying some worthy if hackneyed message about girls’ empowerment, while subverting that message with many of the goings on in the movie. I can’t say that it was taking itself too seriously going by the over the top caricatures in the royal family and the butler/minder/official babysitter character always hovering either benignly or menacingly in these royal movies. And of course, we have the down to earth quirky best friend character as well. The latter characters actually turned out to be bright spots. The butler was played by Simon Kunz who fulfilled the same duties in this as he did so memorably as Martin in Lindsey Lohan’s remake of The Parent Trap. Rae Lin as the best friend seemed to be channeling Awkwafina in Crazy Rich Asians or Heather Matarazzo in The Princess Diaries and did a darn good job of it.   But overall, the message Princess Bea was sending to girls with her life’s work with the foundation was made to seem all talk but no walk.

It started with our first scene with Princess Beatrice. She is hiding under her covers with mascara streaming down her face on the Monday morning following a weekend crying and junk food-eating-ice-cream-out-of-the-carton binge. Because her boyfriend broke up with her via text message. I was really curious about this because Beatrice, who no one knows is a princess yet, is played by absolutely gorgeous Mallory Janson and whose character, we learn later,  seems like a very intelligent and nice lady with a nice personality. I mean what kind of a jerk was this guy? And what were his good qualities that would so reduce this 33-year-old woman to a puddle of misery over being dumped by the likes of him? Alas we will never know. He is never mentioned again. There are more important games afoot. Bea is the founder and head of a foundation for underserved girls interested in education and careers related to STEM. She gets cleaned up from her pitiful pity-fest to win a grant for her already successful organization from another organization. On the way back home she is stalked then cornered in a dark alley by two black SUVs with men in black popping out to take her and her loyal buddy to a hotel to meet Prince Desmond so he can propose marriage. Way to pave the way, Dude. A real charm offensive. Not surprisingly, after an argumentative first meeting she turns him down. See, her older sister, who was heir to throne, broke her public engagement to Desmond to elope with a commoner. And a plumber, to boot! Since the marriage was meant to mend a 3oo-year-old rift between Bea’s country and Desmond’s country, the only solution to a rapprochement between the two is for Desmond to marry Bea instead, who is now heir to her countries throne.  After turning him down, she changes her mind when she finds out he is a pretty good guy after all under his stiff buttoned-up princeliness. She gets him to sneak out of the hotel for pizza and bowling and he confides that he and Polo ponies don’t get along. That seals the deal and now its off to country-ends-in-rovia and it’s neighboring country-ends-in-ierrie for the engaged couple to meet the parents and the public and to attend a summit. I’ll stop there with the recap, but for a movie that touts female empowerment, there are too many scenes of her getting patronized and scolded by underlings, and being forced into an unneeded makeover and other style over substance situations. With her making nary a peep of protest or foot-putting down. They also make her wear ugly and unflattering nearly identical gowns that all look like cinched in kaftans. She rebels only once to go to the palace gate to receive a flower from a peasant child instead of being hustled into the palace by bodyguards. #ThePrincessofthePeople! There are a lot of amusing hashtags in this but I only caught a few as they go by so fast you couldn’t read them. The good thing is that all of the publicity has been really good for her foundation.  But is it the right message to send “their girls” that their mentor has been dragooned into a political marriage and taken away from the good work of  running her foundation? And they are getting the grant not on their merits but because of her now famous Princess status?

**spoilers**

At the end, Bea finally comes into her own empowerment-wise by calling a halt to the silliness and resolving the conflict between the two kings and brokering an agreement to unify the two kingdoms. This makes Desmond’s and Bea’s marriage unnecessary after all and they publicly call it off. But now they really love each other. This leads to a really dumb reconciliation scene. Desmond is driving away in a motorcade and miles and miles away, (across the border, in fact) from Bea and her palace when he changes his mind. Little does he know that Bea is chasing after him in a Vespa but they run out of gas. She starts to run down the road to catch the motorcade still speeding away as far as she knows. Lolwut? Hilarious. I guess she left her cell phone at home. Desmond, also cell phone-less, I guess, gets out of the car and starts running back to Bea in his dress shoes. As far as he knows, she is still at the palace. What was he thinking? Couldn’t he have just commandeered one of the limos and driven himself back? He wasn’t exactly just at the end of the driveway. Oh well. He may not have any common sense, but he does have a flare for the dramatic.  Luckily he catches a ride with a farmer, saving the day. They meet at the border where there is another marriage proposal and a reply in the affirmative. There are a couple of cute scenes at the end, circling back to a couple they met at the bowling alley and introducing the two royal movies that are to follow this one later in the month. Fingers crossed that those make more sense. No word on who is going to run her so important and beloved foundation she has dedicated her life to going forward.

Rating: 6 out of 10.

All I Need for Christmas

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All is Calm, All is Bright

This is one of those quiet humble Hallmarks that doesn’t try to break any crazy new ground. It’s a very usual type story with little in the way of real twists or surprises. No attempts to swing for the fences or set the Hallmark world on fire. But I really liked it and was engaged in the story and characters throughout. It’s the kind that about a half hour in, you find yourself surprised and say to yourself “This is really good!”

Both of the lead characters have equally important storylines. Maggie Mackenzie is a professional musician whose career is going nowhere. The band she was going to open for canceled her because they wanted a bigger act. To get her career back on the upswing, she needs to write some new fresh songs, so her manager gives her a phone with a series of music apps on it called “Archline” designed to help aspiring musicians with writing lyrics, sound and auto-tuning. Maggie is offended and views such things as phony, ripping off real musicians, and kind of cheating. While she’s at it, she also eschews  social media to promote her career. Since her big gig has been canceled, she decides to go home to Vermont where her parents own a Christmas tree farm.

Dan Jeannotte plays Archer, the developer of the popular app. He is one half of two estranged siblings who grew up with a very toxic father who has recently died. Usually in Hallmarks when a parent or grandparent dies, they reach back from the grave to help their beloved survivor find love and happiness. This father is so awful that he reached out to continue to pit his two adult children against each other and to foster their  unhealthy rivalry.  Piper’s two kids will get trust funds and any future children of Archer will not because Piper “won” by having her two kids “first”. His will also stipulates that whoever’s net worth is greater by Christmas, will get his seat on his  corporation’s board of directors. Piper is ecstatic and gloating because she just had 2 major settlements come in which will make her the winner. This tracks with how they were raised. As Archer tells Maggie later in the movie, “buckle up for this one.” As soon as the two were old enough to start earning money, their parents kept a record of their earnings to the penny and whoever made the most money by Christmas got a boatload of Christmas presents and the loser got nothing. When he was old enough, Archer was wise enough to get therapy and because of that had long since cut ties with his father.  “I couldn’t heal from the damage while he was still trying to inflict it.” Piper, on the other hand, stuck with dear old Dad and is still carrying around a lot of baggage because of that. Her kids are great though so she must be doing something right. Hallmark kid actor Azriel Dalman plays her son, and he is always good.

Seeing a photo of the one happy family Christmas they had in Vermont, he decides to visit the same huge cabin they stayed in and it just happens to be in the same town as the Mackenzies’ Christmas Tree farm. All proceeds as one would expect. Initially, Maggie is hostile towards Archer as she learns right away that he is the developer of the evil apps that she objects to so strongly. But she can’t help but see that Archer is not the devil but a nice decent guy despite his wealth and success. She shows him how to cut down a Christmas Tree (he has never had one before), and he shows her how his app can help whip the pretty awful children’s Christmas choir she has volunteered to lead into shape. Also her father is firmly on Archers side of technology. When he garners 240,000 followers shooting videos of his adorable pet pigs and life on the farm, her harsh attitude further softens. Meanwhile, on a whim he sends his sister a picture of the log mansion he is staying at and to his surprise, she shows up there with her two kids who have made it clear that they want a real Christmas with Uncle Archer and their own tree. The brother and sister have their struggles and ups and downs while striving to repair their breach. Of course, once we get past the inevitable final conflicts and misunderstandings, breakthroughs are finally made all over the place and we have hopeful resolutions for Dad’s farm, (which I assume was struggling, because…you know), the sibling relationship, the seat on the board, the romance between Archer and Maggie, and her career trajectory.

Their were several reasons why this one succeeded with me. First the acting of Dan Jeannotte as Archer and Emily Tennant, who usually plays the romantic lead and nice girl, as the troubled Piper was excellent. I really really liked Archer. He was so nice, normal, and steady,  handling all of the challenges that came his way with grace and humor. And both Piper and Maggie, were both pretty troublesome throughout most of the story. I liked Mallory Janson as Maggie as well. She’s a good actress and made a character that had some very irritating ways and attitudes somewhat tolerable. It was a nice peaceful kind of story, but with enough conflict, tension and anticipation to make it interesting. It was a reminder that as much as I appreciate comedy, surprises, out of the box characters and story lines, Hallmarks “old faithful” type stories can also have their charms. Predictability does not have to be boring.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10.

Paging Mr. Darcy

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Somebody Did Their Homework

Paging Mr. Darcy is the first of 4 of Hallmark’s attempts to to honor  Jane Austen with their February stories which they call “Loveuary” (gag). Oh, it’s not the first time they have based their movies on plots and characters from Jane Austen novels. Far from it. In fact, in one scene, one of their first efforts, Unleashing Mr. Darcy is being played in the background. First, I want to say that it is very apparent that the scriptwriter is either a longtime devotee of  Jane and her books or did a ton of research for her script.  I’m betting on the former. There are so many inconsequential and subtle asides and details that research alone would miss.  Period dances, costumes, Jane’s letters, leisure activities of the time,  and most especially the ins and outs of the passionate and devoted Jane Austen fandom. I cannot think of one instance of lazy writing or lack of attention to detail in this which is all too common in many Hallmark movies. In fact, in comparing many aspects of this movie to Jane’s characters and themes, it actually manages to be thought-provoking. I mean, I had several thoughts provoked. I even detected a reference to Lucy Steele (maybe).

Although the references and similarities to Pride and Prejudice are many, the key to the characters and the secondary story are really straight out of Sense and Sensibility. We meet Eloise (Eleanor) on a plane on her way to a kind of cross between a Jane Austen academic conference and Austenland. She chides her seatmate who, commenting on the book she is reading, has the nerve and ignorance to call Jane Austen novels “romances”. When he asks why, then, is she going to what is essentially a comic-con for Jane Austen, she confides that she agreed to be the keynote speaker to meet one of the organizers, the author of the book she is reading, who is a Jane Austen specialist like herself.  The professor is on the selection committee for a post at Princeton for which Eloise is a finalist. She is there to network and promote herself for the job, not to participate in any of the silly activities such as the ball or, heaven forfend, dress up in costume for the weekend. Yes, Eloise is one of THOSE Janeites. The ones that turn up their noses at anything Jane Austen-related that have a little fun with her works and might not be strictly authentic and true to her writings.  Except Eloise, though somewhat of a literary snob, tries to be nice and polite about it. Or at least, she apologizes afterward (it’s not you, it’s me type thing).

Much to her dismay, she is met at the airport by a guy dressed up in Regency costume attracting a lot of attention cosplaying Mr. Darcy! This is her worst nightmare! Eloise shies away from being the center of attention, likes to sit on the sidelines and be serious and studious all the time. This is totally not her thing.  Of course, we know, that with “Mr. Darcy”, we have met Eloise’s romantic match, and not just because he is played by Will Kemp.  Also to her dismay, when Eloise meets Victoria, the professor she wants to impress, she finds out that she wholeheartedly embraces the cosplay, fun, and fandom. Eloise pretends to go along with the dancing, crafts, leisure activities, food, and theatricals (yes, even Mansfield Park gets a nod), guided by Mr. Darcy-real name Sam Lee-who happens to be Victoria’s nephew. He and Elinor team up. He will help her get in good with his aunt, and she will help keep his aunt safe from the romantic attentions of another professor also vying for the Princeton opening. Amusingly, he is an ex-actor who played Willoughby in a 1980s production of Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen movie fans will totally get him when his character laments how later treatments have outshone these early BBC productions.  Eloise loosens up and starts enjoying herself as well as enjoying Sam’s company. We find out that they have a lot in common. Sam is actually very shy and nerdy only about computers, not books (although of course, he likes books too.) He cosplays to support his beloved aunt Victoria but also because it helps take him out of his shell and hides his shyness. Oh, and he sold his company so he’s also rich and trying to start a non-profit.

Meanwhile, Mia, Eloise’s sister descends upon the scene. Just as Eleanor and Maryanne are complete opposites in Sense and Sensibility, so are Eloise and Mia. She is heartbroken because she just broke up with her boyfriend because his marriage proposal was not romantic enough. As usual, she comes to her sister for support and comfort. And as usual, Eloise wants to fix things and advise her. Mia is an over-emotional Drama Queen and is played to perfection by Lillian Doucet-Roche. She is very funny, once we understand her role in the story.

Before we reach the happy endings for our two sisters, we have to slice through misunderstandings, reveals, learning curves for a few characters, romantic moments, hurt feelings, and a possible career crisis. And we are treated with sprinkles of Jane Austen scattered throughout.  Eloise learns to open up, take risks, and embrace the romance. “Fools and Heroines are not separate categories. You have to be willing to be one in order to be the other.” Or words to that effect. To add to the fun, we have an unexpected romantic ending for a third couple as well!

If the remaining 3 homages to Jane Austen  are  as entertaining and well made as this one, both Hallmark and Austen aficionados are in for a treat and 3 more lovely Saturday nights.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10.

On the 12th Date of Christmas

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Well Done! A Cut Above.

At first, our heroine, played by Audrey Hepburn lookalike, Mallory Jensen, got on my nerves with her lack of gumption, and too-sweet personality. At first I thought she was miscast as a girl with a mousy personality when she was so gorgeous. I guess she was, really, but the actress did somewhat overcome it with a nice performance. Then, to make it worse, Tyler Hynes, a favorite of mind, also got on my nerves. He was closed off, anti-social, and not a team-player. Even though he wanted a promotion to a position that necessitates the opposite of those personality traits! Oblivious. He, on the other hand, was cast perfectly, as he usually brings a gruff edge to his roles.

I stuck with it though and I’m glad I did. As Aiden and Jennifer started to work through their differences, and he learned to work with her, appreciating her talent, their opposite personalities added to their chemistry. Quite early on, Jennifer started to be more assertive, so it did not descend into never-ending frustration for me.

This was well written with an interesting sub-plot of Aiden’s family home needing repairs he couldn’t afford, and a very clever scavenger hunt through Chicago that the two were working on together. Definitely well above average.

Rating: 8 out of 10.

November 8, 2020