"Get out of your head and into your heart."
Hello everyone!
I feel like I'd need a special sort of category on this blog for the purposes of housing my Hallmark Channel movie reviews.
Looking at the blog itself, I can see I've done quite a number of them over the years.
And I mean, how can I not?
There've been hits and misses, but most of them have been hits recently, as it seems there's either been a shake-up in the creative room OR someone out there heard the viewers and started putting some diversity into the plots and romances they spin for us.
I don't usually pay much attention to anything beyond Countdown to Christmas, but recently I've been taking a look at the schedule and I kinda love it.
I still have to catch up on Love on the Menu, actually, because Kavan Smith. COME ON.
But for tonight's blog post, I'm talking about a very recent movie as it only aired this past Saturday.
This is a part of Spring Fever and I think I'll be watching at least one or two more from that category so the links will eventually be grouped together, but for now this is the sole representative, so let's get right to it, shall we?
Hallmark veterans Michael Rady and Nikki Deloach lead the cast into this story of compassion, acceptance, leap in the unknown, and love.
Two single parents, Eric and Kate, both turn out to want to adopt the same dog, Bruce.
Special shout-out to whoever named this pooch because I can only think of that shark from Jaws as apparently that's what the maquette was named.
Anyway, Eric has a son, Owen, and the two couldn't be more different - where Eric works for the PTA and is OCD about everything, with rules all around and a structured life which he's trying to corral his son into, Owen is playful, happy-go-lucky, and wants to be a superhero.
Probably because his dad is one.
Meanwhile Kate is an animator and creative director, so she's the happy-go-lucky kind of person who prefers chaos to organisation, and her daughter Sophia is the slightly OCD one who makes presentations to convince her mom into things and just loves rules.
So these two unlikely duos meet up over Bruce, and while the parents are attempting to figure the situation out, the kids are both in love already, and the person responsible for Bruce suggests a one month trial period where Bruce will be co-owned by both mini families.
Kind of like joint custody over children, only this will be a dog.
Considering I've just told you all about the two wildly different personalities up there, you can probably imagine this will be hilarious.
I mean, Eric laminates the rules both families have to abide by. Come on.
Of course initially this starts as a slight disaster as the two adults try to juggle new responsibilities AND attempt to be nice to one another, which is kind of difficult when Eric ropes Kate into helping with a carnival and she in turns demands to be given free reign over choosing which obedience school Bruce will be going to.
Needless to say, all those breathing exercises at said school made ME antsy let alone Eric.
But through it all, the four slowly become friends, as Owen and Kate have a lot in common, as well as Eric and Sophia, so the orbits are coming closer for these planets and their moons and there's also obvious attraction between the adults.
This is commented upon by all and sundry surrounding them, but another prevalent theme while the duo fight this is that Kate is working on an animation short that could potentially be submitted to the Academy for a nomination, and she's stuck.
See she doesn't want to make it a romance, she wants it to be different - because she herself is sort of anti-romance, even if she denies it.
It takes Eric, who looks at her short and explains she already drew the fireflies as if they're in love, for her to see that, just maybe, she could make this work.
Meanwhile on another front, Eric's current girlfriend Bianca returns from a work trip to Chicago, and explains that she wants more out of a relationship than what she and Eric have, and in a very VERY lovely scene, the duo quite non-dramatically and fairly discuss what they want and what they expect, wish each other well, and go separate ways.
Now single, and realizing his feelings for Kate might be stronger than first assumed, Eric is all about her finishing that animation, going so far as to banning her from the carnival organisation teams.
Kate has also learned, meanwhile, that Eric used to be married, but his wife, Amy, unfortunately passed away. She apologises to him for initially thinking he was so stuck up and arrogant and full of rules that made no sense during their would-be date stargazing which he takes her to so that she can get out of her creative rut and get the ending for her animation right. She realizes that he put all those rules in place to find some structure for himself and his son after Amy died.
And then Kate gets a breakthrough, realizing she needs another beginning, not an ending, and goes to work it out, but at the same time as her professional front opens up, her personal one closes.
See, Eric asks her to an actual dinner and a date, sans kids, but she turns him down. Her ex husband Liam (a very cool guy who's a photographer and who babysat the two kids so the other two "kids" could go stargazing) points out that she's just afraid because she's never been in love as an adult, only as a teenager, but that she needs to shake off her fear and go for it.
Yeah, it's terrifying. But that's what love is.
So both she and Sophia hand over invites to Eric to tag along to her animation short presentation, during which she explains that someone taught her to believe in love again, and maybe it wasn't off the table.
After which the two finally kiss and agree to that dinner date. It isn't the end of the world, after all!
And Bruce?
Well, a champion throughout the movie in bringing the two families together, he gets to live in his forever home with the four people he's come to love most: Eric, Kate, Sophia and Owen.
Fin!
Ahhh I loved this movie (even though I spent most of it hunting down a missing file on my computer which was eating up a full gigabyte of my hard drive space). It was quirky, it was adorable, it had relatable characters but not too many sob stories, but most of all it had reasonable, adult conversations. I feel like that's missing a lot from creative directing these days. For some reason, adults are supposed to behave as flighty teenagers and just stalk off without explaining themselves or what they want from the other person, which usually infuriates me.
Not so in this movie, where communication was actually at its very best, and Kate even managed to get Eric to admit what his dream job was (working in affordable housing) and helped him score an interview for it, among other things.
Adding a dog into the mix was just an added bonus, since pretty much everyone loves dogs.
So if you need a pick-me-up and want to watch a cute dog, adorable kids, and lovely adults, this is the movie for you!
xx
*images and video not mine
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