Snow Job

This one left me cold. The plot was the usual boring and predictable with the added bonus of annoying characters (3), examples of lazy incomprehensible plot elements (2 main ones), and downright offensive stereotypes of women (2). It drove my rating below  5 stars, that is, not entertaining but tolerable, into 3 or 4-star territory (not entertaining plus something very very wrong here.) It had some beautiful mountain scenery if you do not mind it was not filmed in Glacier National Park or any National Park at all, or even in this country.  The title of this one would be the worst ever for a Hallmark even if it were filmed in Glacier National Park.

Heather is a world-renowned expert in snow and avalanches. She has a doctorate in the subject and has developed a technology that predicts them with proven accuracy. She accepts an invitation to visit an old friend’s ski resort and install the forecasting equipment. She brings her sister who has spent the last of her and her husband’s savings on IVF treatments to get pregnant. It has been very hard on them and she needs a break while waiting to find out whether this last treatment has worked. Heather meets handsome hunky Chris who is the head of the search and rescue team. He is not only a Luddite who eschews her science-based life-saving technology, he is downright offensive about it. He relies on looking at the weather and sniffing and tasting the snow to determine whether the ski runs are safe. No kidding. His whole team is open-minded and on board, but when he stumbles into her class he rudely stands at the threshold disruptively chewing on a donut, and then leaves. Nevertheless, he is a good father to his motherless young teen daughter Samantha.  That, combined with his hunky hotness is enough for Heather to fall for him despite his disrespect for her life’s work. Especially when he emerges shirtless from the sauna looking like the top half of every action figure ever made and just as plastic. The daughter is played by Amelie Wolf, the daughter of the director. She is a Hallmark regular kid actor and she is fine. Unfortunately, Heather has a rival in red-haired Sonya, a shallow catty jealous massage therapist. She is so unprofessional that when she sees the sparks between Chris and Heather she tries to hurt Heather on the massage table. Sonya is the worst stereotype of a man-hungry desperate female (see paragraph 1) She even comes to his cabin at night to seduce him with his daughter practically in the same room. Amusingly, Samantha calls her on putting lipstick on before she goes to bed. Heather’s sister is similarly enamored by Chris’s hotness swooning and drooling all over him on her sister’s behalf because she needs a man to be happy. (Offensive stereotype #2.)

That takes care of the annoying characters. There were two plot points that were needlessly mishandled. The first was fairly minor. When Sonya shows up at a party where Chris and Heather are dancing, she is told off by his daughter in the one entertaining scene in the movie. She stops Sonya in her tracks. “My dad is with someone smart who chooses Chapstick over lip plumper. Now is not the best time.” Sonya retorts by telling her that she has some things to “talk over” with her dad which comes across as a veiled threat. I was sure curious!  But she leaves the party and the whole thing is just dropped. We never see her again. The more egregious one involves the suspense of whether the sister’s IVF, her last, has finally worked. [SPOILER ALERT] She finally gets up the nerve to take the pregnancy test while Heather is at the party. Tragically it is negative and she looks devastated. But the next morning, all is well and we have a scene where she and Chris’s daughter are yucking it up in a hot tub and jumping out to make snow angels in their bathing suits giggling uncontrollably. She doesn’t even tell her sister the I guess not so devastating news after all, and her sister doesn’t care enough to ask. Again, the whole thing is just left hanging never to be referred to again. Both loose ends could have been easily fixed with a quick edit or two. That they just left it is lazy and contemptuous of their viewers.

Despite her great relationship with his daughter and her attraction to Chris, Heather can not handle his disrespect and his refusal to even consider being open to using her technology as a tool. She pleads with him to trust her and hits him with argument after argument but nothing doing. She is strong and persistent but he won’t even explain himself.  To his surprise and disbelief (!), she walks out on him. This guy. It is only when her method saves his life, the lives of his team, and an injured skier that he admits he was wrong and apologizes.  That’s what it takes. But not before he checks with a male colleague who went to Heather’s training sessions first. What a prize.

The music was annoying and weird. The only other plus besides the scenery and Samantha’s takedown of Red Sonya was that Heather only brought 2 coats. You would have to be a Hallmark regular to understand how ground-breaking this is.