Which does not take place on Machu Picchu

This is the last of the Passport to Love series before we once again experience Christmas in July at Hallmark next week. Time flies. Dan and Katie are twins and throughout the movie they throw out terms like Twin-Tuition, Twin Talk Time, Sacred Circle of Truth, and put their fists on their hearts as a gesture of solidarity. So that was annoying. They also are alike in that they both have been raised to believe that planning and organization are the keys to a happy successful life. Spontaneity and impulsiveness make them very uncomfortable. No prizes for guessing the kind of people they end up with by the end of the movie.

Dan, who does something with cutting edge technology,  is going to Peru to visit his girlfriend and meet her family before proposing to her at Machu Picchu. That’s the plan, anyway. Katie is a high school Home Economics teacher. That gave me pause. I didn’t know that they even still taught “Cooking and Sewing” in highschool. And that is Katie’s own description of her field. Dan finds her in her classroom testing out Bolognese sauce during the summer break in preparation for her fall classes. He wants Katie to help plan the proposal which must be amazing and spectacular and because she speaks Spanish and he doesn’t. Even though this is a spur of the moment invitation which is just the kind of thing that Katie dislikes, he guilts her into going with him. Something about her weighing one more pound than him when they were born. And off they go.

When Dan and Luciana, his girlfriend, meet up in her hometown, they find that she has surprisingly (yep) invited an old friend from school, Carlos, to hang with them. Carlos, like Luciana, is easygoing, a free spirit, and prone to spur of the moment changing of plans. And, true to form, by virtue of his ability to make friends everywhere, Carlos has without consultation committed the four to a “behind the scenes” VIP tour of Machu Picchu for that very day. Poor Dan! Poor Katie! They are not happy about having to cancel their meticulously planned out visit/marriage proposal that was to take place on Thursday, after Dan has met Luciana’s family and asked her father permission to ask for her hand. Luciana, however, is thrilled with the new plan, and Dan and Katie’s concerns (they have already bought the tickets) are waved away. They go to the ancient lost city, Dan gets altitude sickness, Katie can’t work the camera, and the proposal is thwarted. And so it goes.

That proposal did not work out and neither do the subsequent attempts at other tourist destinations in the area. The brother and sister blame Carlos for these failures, but it is mostly their own fault. Dan gets drunk, gets a rash from an alpaca poncho, drinks a glass full of a milk-based Peruvian drink when he is allergic to dairy, and they lose the engagement ring while making chocolate. In addition to the cocoa bean tutorial, the viewer is treated to all kinds of interesting activities and some great scenery. In no particular order, we visit the Mara salt mines and learn about that, the city of Cuzco, the Sacred Valley, learn about Rainbow Mountain, visit Pisac, the spiritual center of Peru, visit an alpaca farm, make empanadas, and eat all kinds of other local delicacies, including bugs. Katie and Dan decide that they must keep the proposal a secret from impetuous unpredictable Carlos and that the occasion must be photographed with Dan’s state of the art 360 degree live-streaming camera. The upshot is that by the almost end of the movie Luciana is still unproposed to but Katie and Carlos have formed a romantic attachment. Katie has learned to be more spontaneous which leads her to set up the perfect proposal for her brother so, thank God, Luciana gets asked for her hand in marriage. But NOT at Machu Picchu!  And, even though Dan has been kind of a drag throughout the movie (including an ugly and senseless argument with Katie), for some reason, she accepts. Honestly, I fear for the relationships of both couples, once they return to Chicago. Katie learns to appreciate spontaneity, but Carlos doesn’t change a bit. Luciana and Carlos have more in common. They even visit romantic Rainbow Mountain together without their ostensible love interests! I was amazed why neither Katie nor Dan seemed to be at all threatened by their relationship. Which was very mature of them. I guess?

Usually, Rhiannon Fish really leans into a “wide-eyed dorkily hapless” schtick with her acting style. This movie is no exception, though she does tone it down just a bit in this one. Alex Santos, who plays Carlos, is very cute and charming. But apparently my unease over his relationship with Rhiannon will prove justified. He will already have moved on next week as the love interest of Natalie Hall in the first of the July Christmas movies. Glad to see him again so soon, however unfortunately timed, Hallmark.

Away with the Penguins

**Spoilers**

I guess it’s not that I’m not particularly a fan of the actress, Rhiannon Fish, I think it’s more the roles she seems to gravitate to. Or is put in. She does “hapless” really well. I did like her in one movie, but generally I find her acting a little too self conscious and stagey. “Look at me, I’m so quirky and cute.” I’m in the minority, however, in seeing the appeal. I actually just saw her in one of her early roles for Hallmark where she played “the sister”, and she was just fine.

Sometimes in order to get past the first 15 minutes of Hallmark movies, you have to ignore the absurd setups which serve to throw the hero and the heroine together. I have to say the one in this movie was one of the most preposterous ever. One day, Emma (Rhiannon Fish) gets a phone call from her father who is in the Antarctic researching penguins with which he is obsessed. The satellite phone keeps going in and out but Emma hears “Real Problem” “Ice sheet breaking up” “Real Danger” “all alone”, and “Killer Whale”. Combined with the chest pains he has lately been experiencing, concerned Emma concludes her father must be in grave danger and is calling for help. She decides she must hot foot it to the South Pole to rescue him from the killer whale, or avalanche or heart attack. A task she is uniquely qualified for as she is a courtroom artist. It doesn’t occur to her to question why he would call his daughter 1000s of miles away in America instead of the team at the substation a short snowmobile drive away from his outpost. The situation only gets muddier as Emma tells her friend that there was no luck getting through to anyone at the nearby research base, but then informs her that his satellite phone isn’t working and no one’s seen him for weeks. Kind of contradictory. It was noticed, screenwriter. Because I didn’t believe for a second that she did not talk to someone at the base, why didn’t Emma just ask the team at the substation to go check on her Dad and rescue him from whatever kerfuffle he has gotten himself into? As we find out later, it wouldn’t have been that big a deal. Because she is kind of a wackadoodle and it turns out the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

She finds out that another research team is catching a cruise ship from Buenos Aires to the base that her Dad drops in on from time to time. To her dismay, she is turned away from boarding the ship since she doesn’t have a ticket or any of the required permits and permissions. Since the Chief Officer turns down both cash and her credit card (because, you know, international law and safety) she decides to sneak on board pretending to be part of the research team. The handsome head of the team, smitten by Rhiannon Fish’s prettiness, puts his whole career on the line, not to mention risking possible arrest, to hide her away and help her.

After all kinds of shipboard high jinks, romantic and otherwise, she finally gets to the substation. She is loaned a snowmobile by head honcho Peggy and goes to her Dad’s Cabin where she finds out her Dad is perfectly fine and that it was all just a big misunderstanding. Turns out it was Lola the penguin’s life which was in danger, not his own. Boy, is his face red! What a crazy guy!

By this time, I was pretty much done. But I had to stick around to the bitter end if only to see if Rhiannon ever puts on a warm hat while tramping around or riding a snowmobile in the minus 50 degree weather. She doesn’t. But she does manage to put on a bathing suit. Rest assured, Lola is saved and reunited with her mate, Hugo, Dad and Peggy become a thing, and Emma moves to the South Pole to continue her romance with Andy the engineer. No one is arrested, and we leave Emma sitting outside in the snow illustrating a Children’s book about Penguins. Still hatless, bless her heart. This movie was filmed in Patagonia and has some nice scenery.