Zak Santiago

Legend of the Lost Locket

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No Festival, but a Fancy Dress Ball

Ummm. It’s a good thing this girl is an antique dealer and not a detective. She, Amelia, is a successful and well-known owner of a fine antique shop in London. She is looking to expand to Paris or Amsterdam but needs more capital to do so. To that end, she is on a mission to find the other half of a valuable locket her dead mother bought for oodles of money. Once the two pieces of the locket are reunited it will be worth lots more. Lots and lots. Like Sotheby’s level. The locket was supposedly made for Queen Elizabeth I by her true love, Robert Dudley. More importantly, she wants to find this for her mother’s sake because it was her mother’s fondest desire and she worked hard, unsuccessfully, to do so.

As the movie opens, Amelia has learned that the other half of the locket may be in Massachusetts. The locket was given to one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting and passed down. Her descendant gave half of it to her forbidden lover when they were sadly parted. He was a poor carpenter and she was a rich Lady and he left for America to prove himself worthy of her. We know he did because he founded a whole town in Massachusetts called Wilmaton, Wilma being his lost love’s name. Why, I wonder. She tragically died in a fire back in England and Jacob changed his name to James and married another woman named Jane.

So off Amelia goes to Massachusetts to find the half of the locket that James took with him. She meets the sheriff who is the love interest. The little town of Wilmaton, which Amelia soon discovers has antiques coming out the ying-yang that she can appraise for free, is, like all Hallmark small towns, not thriving. Amelia gets involved while having all kinds of adventures seeking out the locket with the help of the sheriff. She gets arrested breaking into the town archives, meets James and Jane’s only living ancestor, Enid, finds a portrait obscured by smoke damage, goes to Boston to have it restored, finds out someone is spying on her, and Enid’s place is ransacked. Is someone trying to beat Amelia to the locket? All indications point to “yes”.  And throughout we have little tidbits about how different the English language in the U.K. is different from in the United States. Like “jumpers” and “chips” and how “Featherstonehaugh” is pronounced “Fanshaw.”

**spoilers**

The reason I say that Amelia is not a very good detective is that 40 minutes in she all but ignores a big clue that Enid puts in her hands referring to it as a “family legacy.” It is a sampler embroidered by James’ wife Jane which unusually features an original poem. The poem provides all of the clues to where the locket is and also discloses that James and Wilma were actually reunited in America. I know this because I put my DVR on pause and read the thing. If only Amelia had read it. And it is not the only clue she  ignores either. She is not helped by her new friends not sharing important little nuggets of information and just casually dropping them in random conversation. Maybe Amelia’s lack sleuthing skills is why this movie was not on Hallmark Mystery.

Despite Amelia’s lack of detective skills, this was a pretty harmless and mildly entertaining effort that kept me interested watching Amelia run all around looking for clues and then ignoring them. They find the other part of the locket, finally, and save the town. I was really interested in who the locket belonged to. I would have thought it was Enid’s, she being the only descendant of the original owner, but apparently, the current owner of the property where it was found had a share in it as well. The miracle is that it was all worked out without lawyers. After all the to-do about it, it is very vague as to whether anyone actually got any money for it. I think what happened is that Amelia donated her half to the town and the other half was donated to the town by the co-owners, uniting the the two halves and saving the town by making it a mecca for lovers and antique enthusiasts. I hope that they erect a statue to those three women because it was surely one of the most selfless and generous acts of charity in the history of Hallmark. If that is what happened. It surely rates a least a plaque, anyway. Or maybe Amelia gets her new antique shop in Wilmaton rent free in perpetuity.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Christmas at the Golden Dragon

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The More the Merrier

This is a delightful interconnected multi-story movie with an ensemble cast along the lines of Love, Actually, and the Garry Marshall helmed holiday-based productions. The casting and the acting were impeccable. The stories center around a popular Chinese Restaurant whose owners are retiring and will permanently be closing its doors on Christmas Eve. Each story is an engaging little gem and they all come together in a well-organized and balanced way. All of them are wrapped up like a neat little Christmas gift, but leave us wanting more.

First, we meet a lonely widow, played by the classy Barbara Niven, whose CEO daughter, Sara Canning, is frustrated with her for her inability to move on from her husband’s death. They do not remember their late husband and father in the same way at all. At the restaurant, she runs into an employee of her corporation she is friendly with, a divorced father (Antonio Cupo, Wow!) of two girls. He is struggling with how to parent his girls as a single father. Next, we meet the weak son of the owners. He flunked out of college, is quite lost, and with the restaurant closing, his future is up in the air. He is secretly a talented chef but is discounted and dominated by his traditional father. Will he find a backbone with the help of an old friend and classmate? Working as the restaurant delivery boy is a hard-working, kind, and caring young Hispanic who has been accepted at several prestigious universities but can’t afford to go without a scholarship. He is afraid of his father’s reaction if he tells him about his college aspirations. Finally, we have the daughter of the family who has never experienced a traditional American Christmas because she has always worked at her family’s restaurant on Christmas Day. This one provides most of the humor. She is finally free to leave and visit her non-Chinese boyfriend’s family for a “real” Christmas, which, to her confusion and disappointment, turns out to be nothing but a fantasy. It’s actually pretty funny thanks to the lovely boyfriend and his patient family.

I liked that almost all of the characters start out with some unlikeable qualities. Their relationships with each other with the restaurant serving as the foundation serve up much-needed personal growth, shaking up, and change for the better. As they all come together to keep The Golden Dragon open through one more Christmas Day, we see sadness and frustration left behind and reason for hope and optimism in the future. And just maybe a few promising romances on the horizon.

Rating: 8 out of 9.

Marry Go Round

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Round the Bend

This is the surprise surprise still married to old husband trope. It’s tried and true, but unfortunately, I did not like the behavior of the old husband and really liked the new fiance who was eventually and inevitably dumped. Needless to say this negatively impacted my enjoyment of this movie.

Amanda Shull was excellent and sympathetic as the successful marketing executive who is soon to be married and moving to Paris.  And Brennan Elliot, her leading man, has some quirks, but in general, is still a favorite of mine. Top 10, anyway ( used to be top 5). But the character he plays is a bad guy hiding behind a nice guy smiley facade.

When preparing for her marriage and the move to Paris, Amanda finds out that due to some paperwork snafu, she is still married to her old high school boyfriend whom she hasn’t seen or heard from in 20 years. When she goes back to her hometown to straighten this out she meets him in court and he won’t sign the divorce papers. He needs time to “digest” this. “It’s not chicken salad! There’s nothing to digest” She cries. Amen Sister! The guy broke his marriage vows and abandoned her and their marriage and moved over 4000 miles away where he couldn’t be found like a coward. No discussion, no explanation, no goodbye except a note left on her pillow. **spoiler alert*** He let himself be bullied by her awful mother into deserting her because her acceptance letter from Princeton came in the mail. What. So no married person ever went to college? They did not discuss the possibility of her acceptance before they got married? Letters of acceptance from Princeton just don’t come in the mail without a lengthy application process.  Besides treating his bride as a child with no agency in the marriage by abandoning her, he doesn’t contact her for 20 years. Not a peep. And this isn’t some strangers in the night, they got married in a fever situation. They had been friends since childhood. Amanda was devastated and emotionally and psychologically crippled for years because of his cruelty. But once she has recovered and is happily engaged, he wants to derail her life again.

With the exception of Sweet Home Alabama, this trope usually only works if the other woman/man is a jerk and the heroine/hero doesn’t love him. But Amanda and Edward, her fiance, profess their love throughout the movie. And Edward is not a jerk. He is a demonstrably better man than the hero.

Amanda is not blameless in this fiasco, by the way. Needless to say, Brennan Elliot wheedles and manipulates her until her heart starts to soften. Isn’t there some sort of guy-rule about not making the moves on an engaged woman? Well, someone forgot to tell Brennan. But we already know he couldn’t care less about promises and marital commitment, so no surprise, I guess.  When the strong mature, wise, patient, and loving Edward shows up, Brennan scurries away. Now that he has all but won her over to giving him another chance, he starts playing hard to get. Or maybe he has either developed a conscience or at least a sense of shame? Nothing so profound. He was just embarrassed, and probably scared of Edward punching him in the nose. No such luck.

Before the “happy ending” Edward releases her to find her happiness with her still husband. He lets her go (face to face, unlike Brennan) saying “I deserve your whole heart.” Not only is he the better man, but he is eloquent too. I appreciate that Hallmark didn’t follow the usual template of making the new man a weasel, but they did too good a job of not making him a weasel and on top of that they made the so-called hero the weasel.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

September 15, 2022

The Christmas Yule Blog

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Not Much to This One

There are no real subplots to keep interest going. A very slight secondary romance, between a pretty girl and a rather plump short chef. It was not a good match even though I like unlikely pairings. It’s basically a travelogue exploring the Christmas traditions of a small New Mexican town. The acting was very weak, though Sara Canning had flashes of adequacy. Her love interest, a doleful widower (of course) with a young son, looked more like her father. He was very weather-beaten and too thin and had a terrible wardrobe. Like Hollywood’s idea of what a Mexican-American man should be dressed like.

The flirty food fight was present and accounted for but thank goodness, the flirty snow ball fight was avoided but only because it was New Mexico. Very annoying Santa Claus imposter added to the overall fail. However, one star for the attempt at diversity with a Latino lead, however lame

Rating: 2 out of 5.

November 10, 2020